Traveling Queen

As the next few posts will detail, we took Audrey on yet another trip. This time we ended up in the Pacific Northwest for both Kelly's 10 year college reunion, and to visit my family and friends in Washington.

Unfortunately, I came down with a case of shingles before we left and I ended up canceling most of my plans to see friends who had yet to formally meet Audrey. Audrey still had a great time and met lots of new friends, starting at Lewis & Clark College.

We stayed in the "dorms" while on campus, which were much nicer apartments than when we attended. We had two great roommates--Alicia and Lee, who weren't bothered by my "scab head" (as our other friend Jason referred to me the whole weekend). We reconnected with lots of people we hadn't seen for years (10 years to be exact) and had a great time wondering around our old haunt.

Audrey was a super traveler. Sometime between when we scheduled our flight and our trip, Audrey stopped wanting to take naps in our arms, which was unfortunate since we scheduled our flight to be during one of her naps. Instead, she arrived in Portland a little cranky and crashed as soon as we got to L&C.

Even though we had a gracious offer to drive us up to Tacoma, we ended up taking Amtrak instead. We've already done a three hour car ride with Audrey, and decided that big comfy seats with the option of walking around might be a better choice.

And it was a good choice. Not because she was cranky or needed to walk around, but she loved looking out those huge windows and watching the scenery go by. Much better than the small airplane windows with nothing to see but blue and white.

To save a few hundred dollars, our flight home was later than we would have liked. It arrived at 10:30pm Mountain, but her clock said it was 11:30pm. She managed to keep her eyes open until we started our decent, then it was lights out. She stayed asleep through the flaps going out, the landing gear going down, touch down, reverse thrusters, the seat belt sign dinging, the captain talking "uuuuhhhhhh follllks, wellllllcome to (uhhh...) Salt Lake City...", getting off the plane, walking through the terminal, getting bags, being put in the car seat, and getting on the parking shuttle. Only the shuttle driver's maniac cornering finally woke her up. She just quietly opened her eyes, looked around confused, then started slowly waving at everyone in the bus. She definitely made a few more friends on the way home.

This last picture of her passed out in Kelly's arms is just the latest reminder of how big she is getting. Compare it the picture of her on our trip home in December.