Happy New Year!!! and Day #2

Well, we didn't really "usher in the New Year" as most people probably did. Our children were asleep and we were laying in bed praying for sleep to over take us. We had been up since 1:00am the night before and were running on "fumes." Nevertheless, we told eachother happy new year just before falling asleep shortly after 2008 officially began. Wow!!! That just feels strange to type. This past year sure went fast and was full of lots of changes.

We spent the first day of 2008 looking around the city of Bend. We are beginning to get a small sense of the layout of the city from East to West and North to South. Most of the street names have NW or SW or NE or SE before the actual name of the street. For example, our hotel is on NE 27th street. We have seen a couple of streets without the tradmark compass heading, but for the most part, the majority of the streets have it.

We went into the Old Mill District today to look around at the shops and to take the kids to the children's museum. Unfortunately for us, the children's museum is only open Wednesdays thru Sundays so we couldn't go do that today but hopefully sometime this week. Instead, we walked around the shops which are right on the banks of the Deschutes river (pronounced Deh-shoots). It had snowed a little the day before we arrived here and it has been very cold so there was still a little residual snow "dust" on the ground. It was absolutely beautiful.

Then we ate at Ryan's favorite restaurant.... Red Robin. Yes, they have one here too! This picture is of Riley inside Red Robin waiting for his corn puppies to arrive. Corn puppies are miniature corn dogs. Ryan doesn't like the idea of Riley eating anything called puppies.

Hannah got the good old Mac-N-Cheese. Our pictures of her today didn't show up very well so we will have to post more in the days to come.

The shops at the Old Mill District were very nice. They have A Children's Place, American Eagle, Bath and Body, Motherhood Maternity, REI, and others. It kind of reminded me of South Lake Tahoe's Heavenly Village shops. They also have the old smokestacks still on the top of one of the buildings. It was kind of cool. Here are some other random pictures from today. Check back tomorrow for another post and more pictures