portland eats and greets

sorry for the silence over here! we took advantage of the three day MLK weekend to travel down to portland for a little getaway. we booked a room at the crowne plaza near the convention center, because the kids have been asking to stay at a hotel with a pool for a while. most of the weekend was spent eating, drinking, swimming, and visiting. it was really fun! 

we left seattle saturday morning, stopped for coffee in olympia...

and got to portland around lunch time. we met up with thatcher's friend/former co-worker darryl who moved to portland from seattle last summer. we ate at hopworks, which we've been to many times before and it was delicious as always. 

after lunch, we headed over to the hotel because the kids were super excited to go to the pool. we swam for about an hour (i tried to stay in the hot tub as much as I could - ha!). the kids loved every minute of it. 

then we headed downtown on the street car and roamed around powell's books for a bit. you could spend an entire day there - it's like its own city. 

after that, we grabbed a late dinner at whole foods because ashford was getting overtired and the restaurant we planned on going to had a wait. we all were asleep at the hotel by 9pm :) 

ashford was wide awake at 6am (whyyyyy). i made him stay in bed until 6:45 when we let the kids turn on the tv. ah, the joys of sharing a single room! after we got ready for the day, we headed downtown to go to blue star donuts. we had not been there before, but we had heard great things. it did not disappoint! super creative flavors. everything we tried was delicious. 

we went back to the hotel again to relax for a bit before meeting thatcher's cousin lloyd and his wife jammie for lunch. we met them at a combination brewery (labrewtory)/mexican kitchen (tamale boy) and it was really good! the brewery had coloring stuff/games for kids. always a win in my book! then we headed with them to a board game bar called "game knight" that allows kids during the day. it wasn't open for another 30 minutes, so we went to coffee shop nearby to kill some time. we ended up spending a couple hours at "game knight" playing games. it was nice to spend the afternoon with jammie and lloyd. 

for dinner we headed back near our hotel to meet thatcher's other cousin jade and her husband ben (as well as jade's friend and her daughter who were visiting from the seattle area). we met them at "sizzle pie" which had great gluten and dairy-free options for thatcher. ashford fell asleep on the way there and had to be carried in, but he rallied for pizza. 

it was nice to catch up with them and for the kids to hang out with the 7 year old girl who was visiting. finally we headed back to the hotel, and while it was getting late, we had promised the kids we would go swimming that day, so we took a quick trip to the pool before family bed time. ha! 

sunday morning we grabbed breakfast at a bagel place about a mile away (we ended up running into jade and her friends because we were right by her house!). so, that was a fun surprise. 

then we headed to the pearl district and the kids played at a playground and we wandered around a little bit before it started to rain. 

we decided to head back to seattle early in the day, so we could beat the rush hour traffic. we stopped at a DQ on the way back for a late lunch and were home by dinner time.