Our First Family Vacation

We are currently on vacation! We made it to Portland!

This is the first time we have been to Portland since the summer before Owen was born. Heath and I both went to college and met in Portland. We will always have a special place in our hearts for this city and the people that live in it. We constantly think about moving back but we know it would not be the best thing for Owen's medical care. Someday we hope to move back to the Northwest but for now we will stay in California and make sure Owen is taken care of by the best!

Anyway, we decided it would be best for Owen if we drove. Driving to Portland without children is about a 14hour trip. We were a little nervous about a long drive with our kids but we knew they were no strangers to living in their car seats for a day (due to frequent trips to Oakland). The planning was a little tricky. Because Owen is on TPN each night, we had to take a whole duffel bag of medical equipment. We also had to bring a cooler loaded with ice packs (the gel kind because if you use regular ice the TPN could freeze), TPN bags, and the meds that need to be refrigerated. We had a thermometer in the cooler to make sure the TPN was kept at the appropriate temperature.

Because it is such a long drive, the TPN supplier told us that we would have to stop every 4-5 hours to re-pack the TPN. This presented a problem because stores do not sell gel ice packs already frozen. We were told that we couldn't use ice so we really didn't know what to do. So, we started thinking about relatives or places we could stop that would have the gel ice packs. Fortunately, I have a cousin that lives in Red Bluff - which is about 5 hours from Sonora. Perfect! I called her right up and she was happy to pick up some ice packs and freeze them for us! It was a pretty perfect place to stop because we arrived in Red Bluff at about 11am. We ended up stopping for an hour and a half as we ate lunch and let the kids run around.

They were even able to meet some chickens!

Our second stop was at another cousins house in Grants Pass. Again, it took us about 4.5 hours to get there! Perfect timing to change the ice packs! We had a great visit with more family :)

The whole trip went pretty well. Our kids are so good in the car :)

 Owen had a couple of poops that were pretty bad but, thankfully, it never ruined the car seat! Also, Isaiah didn't get fussy until we were about 2 hours from Portland. He cried for a solid hour but then fell asleep . . . poor little guy

Owen playing peek-a-boo

A bottle can always calm Isaiah down

We arrived at Heath's sister's house (in Vancouver WA) at around 9:30pm. As soon as we got the kids to bed and the car unloaded, Heath and Dustin (brother-in-law) got started with the endless video game playing - in 3D

What a great first vacation for our little ones! Excited to share more . . .