It was so cute to see these young boys so into birds and looking forward to a festival like this. They yelled out all the birds they saw flying in the air on the way there. (Most of them they were sure were hawks or eagles of course. But I'm pretty sure they were pigeons and seagulls... :) When we got there, there were a few other families with kids, but really it was mostly adults. They had art galleries of people who had painted birds, sculpted birds, and made bird related items. There were vendors in the street selling all kinds of yummy food including lots of chicken and bush tit sandwiches... (Just kidding. The bush tit sandwich is an inside joke in our house). First we went to the kid's section in the park and they did some activities like throwing worms into logs, painting fish, making bald eagle puppets, building nest out of twigs, and playing bird bingo. It didn't take long to do everything so we just looked around.
Then, after looking at the brochure, we decided the kids would love to see a movie being played in the old theatre in town called Winged Migration. So we headed over, but we were a little early and there were some blue grass singers, banjo, violin, cello (?) and guitar players in there. We thought the kids might enjoy it while we waited so we went down to the front to watch until the movie started... Only they just kept singing and playing and when we looked at the brochure again we realized that the movie wasn't playing until the next day! Oh well. Cambria just loved it and had a huge smile on her face with her little legs swinging away. Lochlan bounced up and down and yelled (appropriately) every time they said the word Cajun. This was hilarious because they told people if they were Cajun to yell when they heard that word, if they were a drunk Irish to dance in the aisle, and if they were a redneck to yell yeee ha! Since Locke's birth father is from Louisiana he probably has some Cajun in him and he really DID yell when they said that word! It was so funny. Didn't see any drunk Irish and there were a ton of rednecks (as a side note).
Anyways, the boys were ready to get back to bird festivities, so we headed over to the middle school where they were having a live raptor show. This brought the most people yet! The Oregon Zoo brought up some of their previously injured birds. They had a barn owl, a western screech owl, a vulture, a red tailed hawk, an eagle, and a bald eagle. The boys had a front row seat and were enthralled the whole time. Mason even answered a question right about what kind of owl it was... but it didn't really count because I told him they were going to probably bring the same birds I had seen the week before when I took the younger two to the zoo with my friend Steph. The birds flew back and forth between two stands with the reward of dead, limp mice. Mmmmm! Quite a shocker happened when the bald eagle lifted its tail and squirted out a huge poo almost nailing about ten people seated on the gym floor. Yuk! (but exciting none-the-less!) I didn't get pics because I was too far away trying to keep Lochlan entertained and quiet. But it was a great show and boys loved it.
To end the day well, we thought we'd take a nice drive through the bird sanctuary reserve. The younger two would finally get a nap and we could just have a nice little drive. We thought wrong. The closed the reserve to all individual cars and instead had tour buses leaving every 2 hours to do an hour and a half guided tour. We thought this sounded kinda long so we said "Oh, sorry boys! We can't go in. You don't want to go on a really long bus ride right?" "Yes!!! Yes!!! WE DO!!!!"
Wow.
They really wanted to go. So we waited for the bus, which thankfully was only in 20 minutes. Of course there were no bathrooms and we were about to go on a really long bus ride with 5 kids. So we took them all down the hill and peed in the forest behind a church. Then we loaded up onto the bus. We sat right in the middle of a bus full of older people who I'm sure were thrilled to see us! The kids were given a bingo card and a crayon to mark off key birds they saw. And if they got three in a row, they would get a prize.
The first half of the ride went well. The bus had a forest ranger and a bird expert on board to answer questions and point stuff out. Lochlan was very happy on no sleep and was slapping the windows, playing with the rubber calking, messing with the trays that came down, and looking around at and charming all the people behind us. Cambria was into the scenery, and Kaiah had her binoculars and was following along pretty well with what the guide was saying. The boys, however, were TOTALLY in to it. They were so excited and pretty much standing on their seats the whole time, very frequently exclaiming, "Awe-Some!! It's a Blue Heron!!" or, "OH Yeah!! I saw a hawk!!" Everyone on the bus was chuckling at them and the bird expert made his way to middle of the bus to talk to them. He really enjoyed helping them identify and look for things.
We saw some new things for us: a Kestrel hunting, a Northern Harrier (hawk) gliding around hunting and a few sitting in trees, and some new kind of small duck (don't remember the name). There were a lot of Mallards and Herons and several Sand Hill Cranes.
Half way through the trip they let everyone off to take a quick hike and see a new vantage point. Then things started to go downhill... Cliff discovered that Cambria had developed a fever of 102 and was beginning to feel terrible. Thankfully she was quiet and even more thankfully I had some Tylenol in Lochlan's diaper bag! So he medicated her and tried to look inconspicuous while I handled the other children... Well, the bird man was still totally into the older boys, and Kaiah is never high maintenance. So that left Lochlan. Who by now was getting louder and less content. the tray and the window and the people behind us were no longer fascinating and he required some major bouncing and creativity. To make matters worse they refused to turn on the AC (because the dust from under the bus would come in) and it was like 85 degrees in there. Only 45 minutes to go! We saw some more of the same and enjoyed Mason and Isaiah's enthusiasm and the beautiful fall scenery and tried to make it through.
As we pulled up to the parking lot, the people next to us tried to encourage us by saying what a nice little family we had (which was kind) and then, apologizing to all the people behind us for the noise (from Lochlan), we tried to pretend we didn't have a diseased toddler in misery and got off!
The good thing was that the boys had a GREAT time and were never affected by the stuff we were dealing with! It was a really nice and quiet ride back home. 4 out of the 5 were asleep :)
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