Portland Weekend

Grant was in Portland for a few days this week for a national Moot Court competition. He had a great experience and his team did really well. They didn't advance to the finals, which Grant says was a relief; he's been working so hard for the last few months and is glad to be finished. Up next are his final exams (yuck!), but before we dive into that, we got to enjoy a fun little getaway in Portland. Thanks to our friends' over-the-top generous offer to take Eliot for the night, I got to join Grant for a relaxing night in Portland, and then Eliot joined us the next day for a trip to the OMSI museum. What a great little last hoorah before we dive into the long weeks of finals prep!

Here's where we got to stay -- The Nines Hotel in downtown Portland -- a super posh and funky place. Definitely not the "family style" places we're used to staying! We got to walk around downtown and window shop, and had a fabulous dinner at Pastini, a local pasta place. The atmosphere was fun and the food was delish!

Saturday morning we waited in line (seriously!) to have our first "Voodoo Doughnut" experience. What a bizarre little place, but seriously amazing donuts! The "Portland Cream" (supposedly the "official donut of Portland") was to DIE for! You can order Cookies n' Cream donuts, cream-filled donuts with Oreo cookies on top, a Voodoo doll-shaped donut with a pretzel stabbed into it (told you it's a bizarre place!), or even a bacon-maple donut, a maple bar with strips of bacon on top. It looked disgusting to me, but my friend Mary says it's really yummy (I'll take her word for it)!

I loved the box and stamp on top almost as much as I loved the donuts.

After indulging in way too many donuts, we picked up Eliot and checked out OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It was amazing! As with the rest of the weekend, we were so busy we didn't take time to stop and take many pictures, but here are the few we took:

Me in the "Scream/Goose Bumps" exhibit, an exhibit all about the science of fear. I loved that these pictures were right next to each other because I'm terrified of needles, and I have a sister who's deathly afraid of clowns. This picture's for you, Lauren!

Eliot in the Science Playground, where we spent most of our time. As you can see, he loved the water tables and the sandbox most of all. I thought the little chipmunk costumes they had in the little "forest" area were too adorable and insisted on getting a picture of him in one. He tolerated me putting it on him but then ran off to the other exhibits.

It was a whirlwind of a weekend, but so much fun! It's sad that we've lived so close to Portland for over two years but have barely even scratched the surface of the amazing things to see. We'll definitely have to take a few more trips up there over the next several months. (Maybe we'll invest in a GPS in the meantime ... we spent a lot of time getting "un-lost" this weekend!) With Grant's busy schedule with Moot Court nationals and now finals on the horizon, it was great to squeeze in a fun and relaxing weekend together!