Portland, take 867...or so

A drive down to Portland was how we spent our weekend.

Nothing too exciting...stayed at the same ol' place (which has the most amazingly comfortable beds!!), ate at Stanford's & PF Chang's (again), saw a movie - She's Out of My League (actually pretty funny!) and picked up some fun things for my niece & nephews at Powell's.

Always fun, but a little predictable.

I've decided that next time we head down that direction we are definitely going to do something different...just to mix it up.

Non-stop weekend

We spent this last weekend in our home away from home, Portland. We took Rob's younger sister and cousin down there to celebrate her 18th birthday.

We did lots o' shopping. And I mean lots. Sure, I can shop with the best of them, but those two teenage girls sure WORE. US. OUT.

Rob says he got a taste of what it would be like for us to have girls, 'following them around the mall, opening his wallet every time he turned around' and he 'hopes for boys who like to stay home on the weekend and watch sports'. Ha!

There was a big figure skating competition going on in the mall's skating rink so Rob and I spent a good chunk of time resting/watching it while the girls ravaged the mall. The younger skaters was so cute! There was a little guy that did a pirate routine that I thought was adorable.

Nordie's had a New Moon party going on, so of course we had to stop by and blow a kiss or two to Edward and Jacob! Oh, and on that note...I can't wait to see New Moon this Friday!!!

In keeping with Portland tradition, we caught a late movie. I was bummed that there weren't a lot of kid friendly movies in the theaters, but luckily 2012 was age appropriate for them and, we all thought it turned out to be pretty good.

A short drive later and we were back home, just the two of us, loaded down with lots of new goods, full of tasty grub and ready for a three day long nap! We had such a great time with the girls, even though they made us we aren't that young anymore. ☺

Portland and back

On a whim, Friday afternoon my Robster and I packed our bags...and Jackson's 'diaper bag' (Rob's words, not mine), dropped our pup off at the sitter's house and made our way down to Portland for the weekend.

It was a couple days full of doing what we do best...going to the movies, staying up late, eating out, shopping and sleeping in. Oh, and our version of car karaoke.

It was such a great time! Rob went and saw The September Issue without so much as a groan. He also followed me around shopping all Saturday (and half of Sunday!), even carrying my bags. Have I got a winner or what!?!

Our movie night was actually a double. After the first show we decided to stick with the documentary theme and stay around (and out of the cold) to see Capitalism: A Love Story. Great movie, but definitely a different feel from the world of Vogue we'd just visited.

There was a Halloween convention-like thing going on in the hotel during our stay. This big scary guy (I thought was a statue!) caught me off guard and I nearly lost it when he lunged for me. Halloween is weird. ☺

After a great Chinese lunch in the Pearl District and then a few hours and few hundred dollars later at Powell's City of Books we were on our way back to good ol' Washington State. We ♥ us some Portland!

Over the Fourth

Day one of our adventure was pretty adventure-less. We browsed the Lloyd Center Mall, got our pictures taken in the photo booth a la Jr. High style and saw Transformers 2. Total waste of two hours if you ask me. The first one was pretty good, but the second one was just plain stupid. It was just a bunch of running around, blowing up and machines zooming all over the place. Not good.



A yummy Standford's dinner after made up for the lack of cinema excitement and then back to the hotel for some shut eye. I am not a big sleeper, but Rob had to drag me out of bed the next morning because this hotel has the most comfortable beds I have EVER slept in. Seriously. That is why we always stay here in Portland. Not for the amazing location, great nightlife or the charming shops. It's the beds.

Next up was the St. Paul Fair and Rodeo. It wasn't much of a fair, but it sure was a good rodeo! As we parked at the city cemetery and walked into 'town', we passed this chalk art and it made me laugh. Had to take a picture!

Rob thought it would be $10 well spent for me to get a palm reading. I went for it and the whole time she was doing her thing I was thinking 'what a bunch of garbage', but she was SO serious, it was almost funny. Apparently I will be on the receiving end of a promotion within the next 3-4 months, I have a long life line (isn't this the lamest line in the palm reading book!?!), will be married within a year, will have three children (two boys and a girl) and will be financially successful for the rest of my days. OK, so I liked that last part.

At the rodeo the bucking bronco was right up there near the top of the list, followed closely by the bull riding, but my favorite part was when the rodeo clown reenacted every dance step of Beyonce's entire Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) video. It was SO funny!!

We skipped out before the fireworks to avoid the crowd when leaving. Little did we know, this sneaky maneuver led us to hit downtown Portland just as their fireworks were getting out, so we didn't get back to our hotel until 12:30. Genius, we know. We still caught some fireworks along the way.

The next day we grabbed lunch and did some shopping downtown.

Rob fell in serious like with an extendable scrubber at Sur La Table and insisted on carrying it around all day. Next stop, Puma. They had the funniest signs! Here's the Hot Stuff sign with my Hot Stuff underneath it posing with his new friend. This last sign was my favorite...it was in the mirror in the dressing room area.

Good trip. We had lots more planned, but ran out of time. It'll all have to go on our list of things to do on our next trip down.

Away we go

Tonight we are going to endure the drive down to Portland, yet again.

Well, Rob will endure the drive...I will be the amusing passenger and instigator of The Name Game.

We plan to have three days full of sleeping in, golfing, a baseball game, fireworks, a blues festival, shopping and perhaps a rodeo or two.

We are quite looking forward to the time away because after all, Portland is the Paris of North America. Fun, I know, but don't be jealous. We'll take some pictures and share it all upon our return. Have a fun and save 4th!!

Cannon Beach

Rob and I just got back from a long weekend down to Cannon Beach, OR. It rained a lot in the beginning so we lounged around and did some shopping. Sunday finally brought some sun and we got to put in some beach time. It was sunny, but freezing cold!!

The most notable 'attraction' in Cannon Beach is Haystack Rock. We set out to see it, but the cold kept us from heading all the way out. I cheated and just zoomed in so it looked as if we had seen it a little closer up. Lazy, I know. But really, it was freezing! We didn't think ahead enough to actually dress for the weather we were having. A little more beach play and we were racing back to the warm car.

In all of the shopping we did, I never managed to buy a souvenir. I mentioned it to Rob and he didn't see too concerned about it. Turns out he brought home a souvenir of his own...the TV remote from our hotel room. Apparently it fell into his laptop bag. Oops!

Don't worry I am mailing it back to them this morning. :) Good trip overall, much needed! I am back to school tomorrow...

Movies, movies and more movies

We took advantage of the long weekend and took a mini vacay down to Portland to attend the Portland International Film Festival. It was really fun!!

And as if that wasn't enough we also saw two non-festival movies: Friday the 13th (not my choice!!) and The International. I tried to drag Rob to Confessions of Shopaholic, but had no luck!

I kept my eyes closed for most of Friday the 13th because it was too gory for me. My eyes were also closed for half of The International, but that was because I was so tired. I am too old to go to the 10:40PM showing...it's WAY past my bedtime! And, it wasn't really THAT great of a movie anyway.

We managed to fit in some shopping, sleeping in and a lot of eating...apparently one HAS to have popcorn in every single movie! We didn't get to see all the films we wanted to, but now we know how to plan better for next time.

Portland, again

Since there was nothing exciting happening for us at home we thought a quick weekend jaunt down to Portland was in order. We packed a few bags, I grabbed an audio book (which Rob nixed as soon as we got in the car) and we were off. On the way down we watched (well I watched and Rob listened to) Snatch. It is such a funny movie, but I have the hardest time understanding all of the British dialogue. While I was struggling to follow it while watching it, Rob was getting the whole thing without even seeing what was going on! Every time I watch it I pick up more and more of it. At this rate, a dozen more viewings and I should be about 50% there. :)

We checked in to our favorite Portland hotel, the Lloyd Center Doubletree (which has the most comfortable beds of any hotel we have EVER stayed at!!) and headed across the street to the mall for a little shopping. Number one on my shopping list is something to wear for the family photo we are having taken while I am home for Christmas. For this we head to our bestie, Macy's. Their Macy's is quite different than the ones we have back home. One of the funny things they have are little quotes on the dressing room mirrors from Clinton and Stacy from TLC's What Not to Wear. It made me laugh! :)

After striking out horribly at Macy's we did some more shopping, I tried (unsuccessfully) to get Rob to ice skate at the rink in the middle of the food court and grabbed a bite to eat at the Billy Heartbeats diner before we mosied across the street to the movies. We saw The Day the Earth Stood Still. It received two big thumbs down in my book. Rob thought it was great though. This led me to wonder if I really hated the movie or if I am just too old to go to the late movie and be able to get into it entirely. After careful deliberation I concluded that the movie really was garbage. I am not into all that sci-fi stuff. No judgement.

After sleeping in late, here are a few shots of what we looked out upon when we finally got around to opening the curtains.

It snowed!! What the crap!?! I flicked on the news and they said that it would only get worse. Upon hearing this we high-tailed it out of there as fast as our tired selves would take us. We did not want to get stuck in a snowy icy forever-long drive home that evening. I know that this may look like nothing to most of you, but the entire NW shuts down when it snows. We do rain, not snow! Locally we have huge icy road problems due to all of the millions of hills that make up our city.

The drive home was definitely longer than usual, but not as bad as we had expected it to be. Here is Rob being a super cautious driver, a.k.a. driving with one hand lightly placed at 9:00 and playing with his iPod in the other. He makes me feel so completely safe when he is at the wheel! :)

In hopes of out maneuvering the weather, he was determined not to stop until we got closer to home...not even when I begged him go to the Starbucks drive-thru. He is a real toughie...I almost cried (not really!). After a quick stop at our local IHOP (of course!!) for the starving driver we were back home. Even though our trip was shortened a bit, we still had a great time!

Who knew Portland was so funny?!

I have just hit on to the funniest blog Overheard in PDX. I subscribed to it in Google Reader and have been reading them for the past half hour...it's hilarious. Check it out!

***DISCLAIMER***

After some further reading I realized that some of the comments are of the PG-13, borderline R nature.

Weekend in Portland

We just returned from spending a couple of days in Portland. The drive down wasn't too bad. I tried to get Rob to play the name game with me (I will have to explain that one in a later post), but he wouldn't give in. Instead he read his LSAT prep book out loud to me and quizzed me on what he had read me. A learning experience for both of us!

Once we arrived the first thing on our agenda was to visit the Oregon Zoo. I felt that it was a little bit of a letdown, Rob thought that a zoo is a zoo, no expectations, no disappointment. They had several exhibits under construction and a lot of the animals were no-shows. It was also so hot! My car said that the temperature got up to 107*! I think that the highlight of the zoo was the birds making out...it really is one of the only pictures we took. How immature, I know...but it was Rob's idea :)

Once we checked in to our hotel we walked over to the Lloyd Center Mall where we people watched and browsed through jewelry magazines over some Cinnabon (Rob's absolute, all time favorite!). When I was younger my Mom and I would played a little game while we looked through the jewelry flyers that would come in the Sunday paper. Page by page we would silently select our favorite piece of jewelery and then share it with each other. Most of the time we would select the same pieces. I try to get Rob to play this game with me, but we just aren't as in sync as my Mom and I. As it turns out, Rob is quite the flashy while I am a little more conservative! We then went and saw the movie Mirrors (NOT my choice). I thought that it was incredibly stupid, but still pretty scary. Rob says he enjoyed it, but I think he just enjoyed watching me gasp and jump throughout the movie. I don't do scary movies well. :)

The next morning we lounged around and watched License to Wed while enjoying a late check out. After grabbing some lunch we headed downtown to do some shopping. I got some great stuff at Anthropologie (one of MY favorites). I definitely could have got some more stuff, but Rob was dying of boredom and blown away by how much I was willing to pay for stuff that I thought would be 'fun' for our house. He just doesn't get it! Then we stopped by Powell's Books. It is a HUGE bookstore that takes up an entire city block. We browsed for an hour or two and left with a bag full of books.

Before heading back home I decided that I wanted to track down the apartments we lived in when I was little (we lived it Portland while my Dad was attending Chiropractic School). It took a little while to find. I kept driving around the block where it was supposed to be, but only saw a couple of smaller complexes. We drove into a complex parking lot and saw a sign that posted the address that we were looking for, but the complex was so small. I have always had a memory of a big apartment complex, but as Rob reminded me, I was only three when we moved, so of course it seemed bigger to me. Even as we drove away I was still amazed that my perception was that off after all of these years. I snapped a couple of pictures to show my family...I thought it would be fun for them to see. It is the one on the bottom left (with the lovely blue drapes). When we lived there the apartments were green. I guess they got a face lift.

On the way home Rob decided to nap a bit, so I popped in the book on CD I had been listening to before the trip (Love the One You're With). About a half an hour or so later I turned it off and Rob startled me by asking me why I turned it off. This whole time I thought he was asleep he was actually listening to the book along with me. He then said that he was into it and wanted to hear what happened. So, for the remainder of the drive home we listened to it together. I was a tad bit embarrassed that he might think this is the kind of book I always read, but oh well...a little chick lit is good for everyone now and then, right?

Glad we went...good times!