marching into spring, a housewarming party, minnesotans in portland

hello march! january dragged on, but february was a super quick month. last week i went to homegoods and was looking at spring wreaths for our door. all the ones i liked were really expensive, so i passed. i went to michael's next door and decided to buy the supplies to make my own and it was much less expensive and i got to make it look exactly how i wanted. win-win. 

so far march is proving to be rainier than february, but hopefully things will turn around. this is from last week when it was dry: 

i treated myself to a pretty manicure

on thursday night i was invited to a housewarming party at my friend rachel's (striped shirt in the front) new house. there were about 20 moms from school there and it was so much fun. we all crammed in her kitchen and it was so loud. i love the community of moms at the kids' school. :) 

on saturday we headed to portland for the weekend to stay with our friends ian, joanna, and kyla. they were our friends in minnesota and moved to portland in 2018, so we love having them close by. we met them at pine street kitchen (a fun food hall) for lunch. every one was able to get whatever food they wanted: mexican, korean, american, etc.

 then we took the train to the US forestry center in washington park. it was an inexpensive museum and a great place for the kids to run around and explore. 

on the way back, we stopped at blue star donuts for a treat. it was pouring rain when we left.

we hung out at their house for the rest of the night and had tacos for dinner. sunday morning we decided to go for a short hike in the city at reed canyon (which is on the campus of reed college). 

we went back to their house for lunch and ice cream from cloud city ice cream. then we went to the oregon rail heritage museum. we went a couple years ago and had family pictures taken there. 

then it was time to hit the road back to seattle. it was a nice short getaway but it made our weekend fly by.