Balloons Over Bend

During the past year, we have made a few day trips (as opposed to overnight visits) to see Grace's birth family. This works out really well because we leave home around 8:00 a.m., and we stay all day until Grace's bedtime so she can sleep in the car the whole drive home. This enables us to make more frequent trips since we are saving on hotel expenses.

Our last visit was in June during the hot-air balloon festival. Although it was a gorgeous day, it was just a little too windy for the balloons to go up. But there were lots of other fun things to see & do, especially in the Kid Zone. Gracie had tons of fun in the inflatable bounce houses (sadly, we did not get any good action shots):



She even got to ride a pony!





















After exploring the festival for awhile, we stopped to have lunch. Gracie had her favorite (spaghetti and meatballs), but she really enjoyed sharing Mama Ashley's lunch, too.



After lunch, we walked along the river, listened to some music, and took some cute photos:





Later that afternoon, Mike and Ashley shared a special treat with GG.









To round out our day at the festival, we did a little shopping. Mike and Ashley bought Gracie her very own pair of pink "Mama Ashley" sunglasses. Grace LOVES them and wears them every chance she gets!





As we were leaving the festival, Grace REALLY wanted to go to REI. We could not figure out WHY she was so fascinated by that particular store, so Chad finally took her inside. Well, it turns out she spotted a tent through one of the windows and she really wanted to go in it. She was so proud of herself!



After leaving the festival, we went to visit Grandma Heather and Jessy. Grace and Jessy are only six months apart, and they always have such a great time together! Here they are riding on Jessy's car and tractor:





... going down the slide:



... and playing in the dirt:

At some point, Chad got these adorable shots of Jessy hamming it up for the camera. When Grace sees these pictures, she mimics Jessy's facial expressions. In fact, just tonight as we were looking at these photos again, Gracie told us she misses Jessy. So we called Ashley, who happened to be with Jessy, so Grace got to talk to them both!

As you can see, Gracie couldn't get enough of Mama Ash and Jessy tickling her feet:


Heather was so sweet to make dinner for us (which enabled us to extend our visit a bit), and afterwards we changed Gracie into her jammies and said our goodbyes. I love this pic of GG and Jessy hugging:


This one is super sweet, too:


Saying goodbye is always hard, but thankfully we're just a few hours away. We always look so forward to the next visit.