What a day!

     Who knew two people could have so much fun in just 24 hours!?  This past weekend as you could tell from my previous post we were in Portland.  It was a relatively short stay but man did we fill it with fun!  We started our day by heading down to Voodoo Doughnuts in old town for some of the best doughnuts I have ever had, and I consider myself quite the connoisseur of sweets!  We then headed over to Ikea and made our way through the maze to find the platform bed frame we were looking for, along with a few other "necessities".  Next we went to the Oregon State Zoo where we pretty much had the place to ourselves because of the 19 degree temperatures!  Although it was extremely chilly, we still saw all of the animals except the lions, tigers, and bears.  Most of the animals were indoors from the cold but they had indoor viewing still so we got to see almost everything that we wanted to.  I think both of our favorites though was probably this baby elephant and his family.

     This little guy is only a few months old and the big ones you see with him are his mom on the left and his "auntie" on the right.  I guess when elephants are born their mom gets help form another female who is adopted into the family and considered the aunt, together they take turns protecting the little one its entire life.  It was pretty special to sit here and watch these magnificent creatures for a while!  We enjoyed every second of the zoo while we were there, then at the advice of my cousin Amber, we went down to a section of downtown that was full of little shops and restaurants all decorated up for the holiday.  We walked up and down the street hitting up all of the little shops and a couple big ones, like a two story Pottery Barn that I had trouble getting Kelli out of!  It was fun to walk around these stores with her and watch her design mind at work!  We then had an amazing dinner at one of the restaurants before heading back towards the house we had rented.  We capped off our day of fun by going to the Kennedy elementary school, sounds exciting right?  This is a school that was shut down in 1975 because it was too dilapidated to continue using and a local family bought the school and completely transformed it into a fun center!  Inside the school there are 6 pubs that each serve food, a restaurant, two event centers, a 100 degree salt water soaking pool, and a movie theatre!  We sat in the soaking pool for about an hour then got out and went to a movie where admission was $3, the popcorn was an affordable $4, and it's in the old auditorium where they've replaced all the original seating with love seats, couches and lounge chairs!  It was an amazing experience that we will definitely do again when we go back to Portland!

     Our busy yet fun day was finished off by relaxing in the quaint little rental house we had found, reminiscing about all of the fun we had.  Even though it was only a couple days it truly was one of the best vacations we've ever had!  There is so much fun stuff to do in that city that I feel like we could go back 10 times and still not even break the surface of all that we'd want to do!  It truly was on we will remember for some time!

Remember, everyday can be fun if you just open up and let it happen!:)