Adventures in Oregon!

I had a marvelous extended weekend in Portland.  On Sunday, I got to go to my cousin Liz's house for dinner.  It was so much fun!  I adore Liz and it was so great to be there with her family, my sister Deborah and her kids, and my brother, his wife and kids.  A full house for Liz, but she is amazing and fed us a fantastic dinner and we gabbed till past time to go.  It was so nice and I wish I had more family close enough to do that with.

As Liz and Ryan were talking, I realized I had not yet gotten a picture of them. I handed Savannah my camera and sad, "Get my picture with them!"  This is the result. 

This is the picture when they knew it was being taken! 

 My sister and her cutie-patootie baby.

On Monday, Savannah took my on a fabulous whirlwind tour of Portland.

 We went to Pittock Mansion where I swooned over the colors.

 And these colors.  The fall foliage was so gorgeous I wanted to move to Portland immediately! I mean, just LOOK at this road!  It isn't even a special road you'd take just to see the colors.  They have roads like this all over! Can you imagine?

I got to go to Powell's Book Store, but I was too excited about the books and I forgot to get a picture of me there.  I have books as evidence though!

I was introduced to VooDoo Donuts.  I'd have said one donut shop is like another, but I would have been mistaken!  Where else do you find any kind of donut your mind can imagine? I should have taken pictures, but I did not have the nerve to bust out the camera in public and start taking pictures of the donuts.  I guess I should have.  Maple bacon donut, fruit loop donuts, cigar donuts.... it boggled the mind!

Here I am with my box of delights! 

Savannah introduced me to the Truck Food lot.  Yumminess everywhere!  How to decide!?  Fortunately, we were in a hurry and got some amazingly delicious curry chicken from the Tai place behind me.  Oh, my happy mouth.  Well, happy and burning from the spices. 

I got to see the OHSU building and see Adam in his element.  Here he is with his VooDoo donut- a peanut butter oreo donut.  Hey, he likes it! 

 Then we rode the super-cool sky tram from the top of the hill to the bottom.  Here we are at the top and I am again enthralled with the trees and colors below.

Can you see the tram coming up?  We went all the way down those cables. 

Here I am on the tram with my adorable niece, Denali.  She's amazing and I wanted to take her home with me, but she said no. 

Lastly, I got to go to the Portland Temple.  That was awesome.  Sadly, it was too drizzly to do more pictures than this but let it be known, I was there and it was lovely!

And then I came home.