Some Time in Portland, Oregon

 

After my time in Rockaway Beach for Tony's family reunion, everyone headed to Boise and I had decided I was going to stay, go to Portland to visit friends from the mission and take a few days just to soak in the areas I served in from 2003-2005. 

Portland Oregon Day 1

I know I have other things to blog about but I wanted to blog about this trip while the details are still fresh in my head. Tony dropped me off at the airport about around 630. My flight was supposed to leave at 8.  I have not flown in 5 years so I was a little nervous about remembering to do everything correctly. Lucky for me, everything went perfectly and I boarded my flight, bought some wifi and the hour and a half passed pretty quickly.

Pieces of Portland - Saturday

Saturday I had hoped to see a lot of people but it didnt end up working out like how I had planned in my head. Still, it was a super fun day. Jeremy was able to come along with me everywhere I went so we started at Jamba Juice, then headed to Costco for free samples. Then drove to the Yates to visit them and see their new house!

 I met this family in Clackamas and Bro Yates eventually became the ward mission leader. They'd sometimes sign up to feed us dinner, always so good! I knew them before their cute girls were even born!

 

Of COURSE I had to eat at Big Town Hero - my favorite sandwich shop in Oregon. Jeremy made his sandwich into a face while I just enjoyed my turkey-cucumber sandwich. Mmmmm

 Gave Jeremy a tour of my first area where I served - Grehsam - and here I am at the apt. complex where I served with Stringham (Townsend), Rasmussen and Offret and Weston. I was here for the big snow and ice storm in 2003 when I first heard of freezing rain.  Ahh fun times.

 Got to show Jeremy the building that was built in Gresham on Stark St. for the Hartley Park ward (and a few other wards) I did an open house here with the other missionaries serving in the area and we even had a few protesters out front. Sadly the Hartley Park ward original no longer exists and they dont meet in this building anymore but it still holds great memories for me!

Me with the Merricks! Thanks Jeremy for the picture. Ahhh this family I knew them when they just had their twins and a new baby girl. Very nice family with big hearts and very school-reading-minded. I think Bro Merrick works for the school district. He is very smart about phones and helped fix mine a bit. Had a very enjoyable visit with them.

Driving to Beaverton area for dinner with Sera Jordan and her friend at Olive Garden. Sadly I got no pictures of that but I did get this one in the Sellwood area. A favorite road of mine in the Milwaukie area. Its just so pretty and cool looking!

Sky cab...we were going to ride in it but ran out of time. Its to take people to work back and forth across the river.

 

Ended the evening by driving to the edge of downtown Portland and testing out the night shot on my camera. Turned out pretty cool! Wish I had gotten more pix but it was almost 1am and the lights were all turning off at that point.

Pieces of Portland - Friday

Friday I should have been out seeing more people, and looking back I feel like kind of a slacker. I showered, hung around Jeremy's house for a bit catching up on emails , facebook and twitter. I figured it might be hard to see people on Friday because of work and going out of town for the holiday weekend.

Ate at Noodles & Co with my friend Crystal and got to meet her fiance Josh who was really nice.  Also a surprise to me was that Crystal's mom Kim showed up! I haven't seen her in forever long! It was a nice reunion and the restaurant let me use my birthday coupon for a free meal even though it was expired. Sadly there are no locations for them in Arizona.We got this picture together (above) and my camera, well I don't know what happened, but Kim has more of the all of us on her camera so I am waiting to get those to put on here.

Next, after getting lost numerous times and finally ended up taking surface streets, I found the Portland temple and spent some time just walking around, reminiscing and taking some pictures which I thought turned out really well. I like the pictures where the sky got included because it looked neat that day!

Next I hurried over to West Linn for dinner which was luckily only about 15 min away. The Starr's, who were a senior couple in the mission when I served, had invited me over for dinner along with a girl from their ward and also the elders. They had made such yummy food, chicken, potato salad, carrots, and cornbread with vanilla ice cream and blackberries from their backyard. I got myself into a food coma!

We went to tour the new church building that was recently built. Their first Sunday in it is on the 12th. We walked all around the outside trying the doors but they were locked. However, the very last door we found was UNLOCKED! So we went in and gave ourselves a person tour.

 The stairs in the second picture [click to enlarge]  lead up (of course) to a storage type room and all the air ducts, etc. I have never seen this before so it was kind of neat to find!

Here I am with the Starr's before heading out. I love them so much and have lots of good memories of them. How I wish I could rewind time some days but I'm so glad we are friends still and get the opportunity to meet up once in awhile!

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Headed over to Hillsboro to visit Adrianna, Josh & Charlene. Charlene was sick though so I didn't stay too long but it was nice to visit them! I'm especially excited because they are moving to Arizona soon, to Chandler. They are such a fun family & I am excited to enjoy them here before I have to move to Utah in the spring. 

 So Jeremy has this manikin (I called it a she-akin) in his house for a project. He wants to paint her.But for now she hangs out by his work desk. My friend Rachel (black) and Libby (blue) we picked them up on Friday evening and got ice cream with toppings from Safeway and hung out at Jeremy's playing Skip-Bo and watching YouTube vids til 1am or so. Yawn. A great end to a relaxing Friday!

Pieces of Portland - Thursday

I got to spend five whole glorius days in Portland, Oregon, one of my favorite places to visit because its where I served my mission! I got home April 2005 but have been so blessed to go back to visit quite a bit & keep in touch with sooo many wonderful people there. Wednesday night I flew in and my friend Jeremy picked me up and we went to eat at Sheri's where I had my favorite Smores pie. Yes! The next day Enterprise picked me up and I got my rental car. The rest of the majority of the day was spent in Seaside and Cannon Beach.

Saw this sweet ride while getting gas

 

HECK YES I see green! You dont see green like this in Arizona & I miss it a lot. Here we are driving on the Sellwood Bridge - its 85 years old!

Top 2 pix are of the new buildings in downtown Portland

This is the only spot along the way on this road that you can see this mountain

This place was along the way to the beach and someday I want to go back here to do a hike. It was so pretty, green and peaceful!

It's a must to stop at Pig'N Pancake for breakfast! There are quite a few locations, I had forgotten! We seemed to get less food for the price this time but at least I didn't have any leftovers! The orange marmalade syrup was tasty

Various poses and fun shots captured at Seaside & Cannon Beach

I wanted to stay all day. The weather was PERFECT!

Cannon Beach has this cool river of water that flows from somewhere down to the ocean I think. It is so neat to wade in

Headed back to Clackamas to meet up with Christine and her daughter Brie at Sweet Tomatoes where they treated me to a delicious dinner. It was so awesome to see them again as it hasnt worked out to see them the last few times I came to visit. They are really nice people and I enjoyed catching up with them face to face!

 Stay tuned for Part 2...tomorrow? Most likely!