An Unforgettable First Christmas

O.K.'s first Christmas will not be soon forgotten--at least by his parents. We had a WONDERFUL time visiting family, but in between the fun was filled with...well, "adventure" is the most positive way to put it. One day (probably soon) we will be able to look back at this trip and have a good laugh.


Things didn't start well. We missed our flight out of Philly, but thankfully we were able to get a flight to Seattle for later that day. Oscar was almost as antsy as his parents to finally get on the plane.

Once settled in our seats, he konked out pretty quickly.

When we arrived in Seattle we picked up our rental car and drove through dense fog to Portland. We could see only 20 feet in front of us. Add to that the fact that we were on "east coast time" which put it somewhere around 1:00 AM for us when we started. By the time we arrived, we'd been awake for over 24 hours.

Grayson had stayed over at Nana's, so when we awoke on Christmas Eve Day, he was there! We loved getting to spend some time with him.

Nana and her grandsons (and Eli, the dog).

Grayson snapped this shot of Elizabeth with her camera.

We had a wonderful day, relaxing after our long journey, playing games, opening stockings and gifts, and eating, eating, eating. (Have we mentioned before Nana's talent for "throwing together" a terrific meal? She makes it look so easy.)

Christmas Day we headed out to Newberg. Again, the day was filled with good food (and coffee), stockings, caroling, hacking, plenty of picture-taking, and lots of catching up. The days that followed were filled with more of the same sweet stuff.

Oscar and Darcy made some noise.

We even took in a 3D movie with the siblings.


Uncle John and Aunt Erin took some great pics of O.K. at the park.
Here are a few...

And then, Oscar got sick. So did John and I. Then Pop (aka Gum), Uncle John, and Aunt Erin got it. And then it hit Uncle Pete, Grandma Williams, and our cousin, Derric. It was a knock-you-down kind of sick, but thankfully it didn't last more than a day or so for most of us. Oscar, however, continued to be pretty ill. Being sick kept us in Newberg longer than we'd planned.

Is THIS where O.K. picked up this nasty bug?

Finally we decided we needed to get back to Portland to get in some more Nana time. It had started to snow, but we figured if we hurried we could make it there before it got too bad. We left at 4:00 PM. We made it up Rex Hill to Sherwood in about 2 hours (this normally takes 8-10 minutes). There we stopped to put chains on the car and contemplated turning around. Right about then we heard on the radio that Rex Hill was now closed, so we kept going toward Portland. To make a long story short, it took us SIX HOURS to drive what is normally a 35-45 minute trip. As if that weren't enough, O.K. continued to be sick during the drive. Once again, we were so thankful to finally walk into Elizabeth's cozy home.

BUT, the next day Oscar was still not well. He was getting more and more lethargic and he didn't want to eat or drink anything. We were worried, so we took him to the emergency room. Once there, the docs tried some less invasive treatments, but they didn't help. O.K. ended up with an IV to replenish lost fluids.

One sad kid.

A week and a day is not nearly long enough to get to see our families properly, but when the time came to leave, we were ready to be done with this adventure and back safely in our own beds. Unfortunately, only hours before we left, Nana was also hit with O.K.'s nasty bug. We worried for her (and for the passengers of our flight), but we could not get on that plane fast enough.

Oscar is not yet 100% but he is on the mend, thankfully. After a long sleep, he opened a few presents left by Santa. Some day we will tell him the story of his first Christmas--including all the joy of being with family as well as the "adventure" that made it truly unforgettable.