First Days in Portland, Oregon

Jill's Journal: Saturday we arrived in Portland with the magnificent Mount Hood appearing to be just at the end of the road. However, that snow-capped peak is around 50 miles away! She stands at over 11,000 feet tall and sports 12 glaciers.

We’re using part of our time in Portland (we’ll be here a couple of weeks, more on that later) to do some spring cleaning. We’d pulled out all of our school books to organize and Erika immediately nestled into a spot on the couch with them. She pulled out her top 20 or so “textbooks” to re-read over the next few days; how many schools have that happen? This picture cracked me up.

Meanwhile, Madelyn – who has very little interest in organizing, but loves helping with the laundry – was supposed to be folding the whites. I turned around to find her wearing her Daddy’s socks and wrapping Victoria up in towels to pretend they were at the beauty salon. This picture also cracked me up.

A day later, the little ones were at it again! This time Victoria got kitchen clips in her hair, which was being styled with kitchen tongs. Oh, to be so creative!

Although we haven’t done much exploring in Portland yet, we did manage to see Cars 2, much to the girls’ delight. Their grandmother sent us movie tickets (thank you, Andee!) and a wonderful selection of Cars toys. The girls have been in heaven playing with them.

We spent this afternoon at Oaks Amusement Park (established in 1905, it's one of the oldest continuously-operating amusement parks in the country), not because we had a burning desire to be in a carnival-like atmosphere, but to meet one of Rob’s friends from high school with her kids. However, she didn’t make it and it turned into a family day instead. With over a dozen rides, the girls had an absolute ball and Rob and I got the lovely privilege of realizing we’re not as young as we used to be (really, does every ride have to spin??).