Our first overnight trip

To celebrate Matt's birthday and Grady's six month birthday, we decided to go to Bend, Oregon.  We had heard great things about it and had been meaning to go for quite some time.  Plus, we figured we would have to take the kid overnight somewhere else at SOME point.  Well, that was our first mistake.  No, no, no.  It wasn't all bad.  Just Saturday from 3 PM on or so was bad....

First, let me show you a screen shot on my phone to give you a sense of how far away from civilization we were on our way to Bend:

That's far!  Grady was a champ for most of the way.  He only got antsy the last 40 minutes or so - and Matt and I were pretty antsy by then too.

By the time we got to Bend, we didn't have time to do much but admire the hotel, unload all our earthly belongings from the car, and get Grady ready for bed.  We ordered some delicious room service and were very pleased with ourselves and our cooperative baby, who slept in his pack n' play like it was nothing.

The next day we started out at the coffee shop across the street for a delicious scone (Matt) and chocolate croissant (shocker, me).  Then we went for a walk around scenic Bend.

Look at those adorable birthday boys!  Then we got a little more adventerous and decided to head over to the Mt. Bachelor region for a hike. 

Grady was really interested in touching different textures.

Grady takes after his mommy and was not so keen on the historical markers. 

Anyway, it was a beautiful hike, but, looking back, we should have gone back to the hotel first for a nap.  Grady really never recovered.  It was quite a night, the highlight being at 5 AM when we finally tried to get Grady to fall asleep with us in bed after 2.5 hours of pffltting and crying (by Grady and us, respectively).  Grady was craning his head madly while I tried to calm him on my chest.  "Let me try," says Matt.  The two then entered into quite a wrestling match!  Matt and I both started cracking up and Grady joined in! 

After pretty much constant sleeping this afternoon Grady seems to be recovered from his sleepless night. 

Oh, one exciting thing is that Grady made big strides with his sitting between yesterday and today.  Here's the little guy sitting up on his own to play with his little dashboard toy.

 (Excuse the spit up.)

All in all, it was a nice - if not restorative - trip.  We definitely learned a bit about how to go about our next overnight trip.  And it was really nice to come home to the kitties!