post christmas trip to portland

we are back from our portland trip and it was so nice to have a few days away to break up the two week break from school. we got to see family, friends, and eat tons of good food! even though we've been to portland a dozen times now, it never gets old and we always find new things to do. 

we left thursday morning and drove down to portland, making a quick stop in olympia for coffee. 

thankfully traffic wasn't too bad and we made it down in a little over 3 hours. we went straight to sauvie island (30 mins northwest of portland). thatcher's cousin jade and her husband ben bought a house there over the summer and we were excited to see it. the island feels almost completely rural and it was so beautiful. their house was amazing. thatcher's aunt and uncle and other cousin lloyd were also visiting, so we got to spend the entire afternoon with all of them and it was so nice. i told thatcher it was the most relaxing time i've had in a while. we had lunch and then every one was eager to entertain the kids and they also spent lots of time outside and playing with their dog, murphy. 

we finally left at dinner time and the four of us grabbed some pizza at mississippi pizza in portland. 

we checked into our hotel the duniway which was a hilton-owned hotel downtown. it was so nice! the kids couldn't wait to get to the pool. unfortunately there was no hot tub, but the pool was nice. 

friday morning we went for brunch at "jam on hawthorne". we were smart to get there early because it's super popular. the food was great! 

we went back to the hotel for a bit then took the train to OMSI, the science museum.

 it was also packed because there was no school, but the kids enjoyed exploring all the activities for a couple hours and it was reasonably priced. 

we went back to the hotel again to figure out our next plan, but everyone was feeling sort of lazy and 3 out of 4 of us fell asleep. 

when we woke up, it was dark out and time to find dinner. i wanted to go to a brewery, but they had a long wait, so we found a thai place instead. it was not the best dining experience we've had, let's just put it that away ;) you win some you lose some...

saturday morning we went to blue star donuts, which is a favorite. 

then we checked out of our hotel and drove to camas, wa which is a suburb of vancouver, wa. thatcher has a friend from high school named brandon who recently moved there from denver with his family. we both used to work with brandon (and his brother steven) at southwest community education, but hadn't seen him in at least 15 years. they have 2 kids who are the same age as our kids. we hung out at their house for a couple hours with the 4 of them as well as the grandparents who were visiting. it was really fun. the kids made slime in the backyard and it got every where and they had to wear clothes from the dirty laundry on the way home ;) 

we were all starving when we left at 1:30, so we stopped at a hopworks brewery in vancouver before hitting the road for home. 

it was nice to have this trip to break up the break from school. and it also meant extra time with thatcher as he normally would have worked on thursday and friday.