random things+lake michigan+portland = cool blog!

So, here is an update. Finally.

But first there are some pictures from things that happened before the trip.

one day when we went to get daphne up from her nap, we found her this way

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we got a little pool on clearance at target. daphne really likes it since we don't have a bath tub in this house for her to splash around in. the picture below... i think she was trying to lay out and get a tan or something...

we did a lot of yard work in the backyard to make it a little nicer. john is repainting the white trim, we scraped off weeds and over grown grass from the brick path, and dug up half of those little green plants on the left of the shed because they were growin everywhere like crazy. we also put bricks around the plants to make it look nicer.

something you'd never see in california... spray paint just sitting on the shelf at a store...

And here are some pictures from the Saturday before the Portland trip when we went to Lake Michigan with some of our friends. It was a nice day. Daphne was hesitant of the water at first but right after that she never wanted to get out. It was pretty cold so we made her get out and wrapped her up in a towel because she was shivering. It was really cute. She was pretty much out of the water the rest of the day. She also got the hang of digging in the sand. She helped me bury John.

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It’s been pretty busy since we’ve been back. We drove to Detroit the night before to make the early morning flight a little easier. We didn’t go to sleep rtil pretty late though, and Daphne slept in the bath tub.

The flight to portland was pretty hectic. It was very nice that we had a whole row with three seats in it all to ourselves on the first flight. Having a two hour lay over in Denver was nice too. Then on our next flight from Denver to Portland John and I ended up in completely differnt rows. Daphne was asleep, and the flight attendant let me sit next to John, but there was another lady in our row too, so it was pretty cramped. That lady didn’t seem to mind though. We made it into Portland around 2 pm Pacific time, but we felt like we’d been flying all day, because we had! Daphne had fun putting her stuffed rabbit on the luggage convayer belt and then running after it while we were waiting for our luggage to come out, that was pretty funny. we got it on tape so hopefully we can get a youtube up on that one.

we were tired after flying all day

Our hotel was nice! I was very happy of the selection I made on Priceline.com. The Hotel was on an Island in the middle of Columbia River which is the border between Oregon and Washington, which was about 15 miles from downtown Portland. We spent the rest of the first day driving around downtown Portland in our rented Prius! We loved the mpg on that thing, and pretty much EVERYONE has one in oregon. i've never seen so many prius' in my life.

John instantly fell in love with Portland. He loved the big city and the trees, he had never been there before, but I had and I was lovin it! We ate at Jack in the Box because Michigan doesn’t have any and we had to partake in the opportunity while we could. My friend Andrea who lives in Tacoma came down and visited us. She drove down and arrived that night. John and Daphne were already asleep when she got there so we hung out in one of the lobbies.

The next morning, John had appointments with attornies downtown and headed out by himself. Andrea met me at our room and got to meet daphne for the first time. Daphne didn't warm up right away and was super clingy, which made it very difficult for me to finish getting ready- it took me 2 hours to get ready for the day trying to deal with daphne. by the time i was done daphne had fallen asleep on the floor. so i just covered her with a blanket and andrea and i hung out on the balcony of the hotel room. She slept a good couple hours and then we woke her up and picked up John from downtown and then Andrea found out where a Sonic was for us. It was in Hillsburro which is a suburb of Portland. There’s no Sonic in Michigan either. We were pretty hungry by the time we finally got out and about. It was yummy. We drove around Hillsburro a little bit and then we drove around Beaverton. Hillsburro was pretty nice, Beaverton was worse. Oh ya, keep in mind that one of the big reasons why we came out here was to decide where we are going to live and one day buy a house when law school is done.

We drove around in this really rich neighborhood after that called Kings hill. These houses were like in the millions and over looked downtown on this hill. The hills is so hilly that some of the houses are halfway on stilts. John says he doesn’t like the idea of having a house on stilts because it would fall over, but on the bright side, it would be protected when global warming floods oregon. I don't think we'll be living in that area regardless.... I don’t remember what we did the rest of Tuesday...
there were itty bitty cars like this all over portland

above is daphne at sonic in cutie pig tails, and below is a view from atop kings hill looking at portland

here is a view OF kings hill above, and a view FROM kings hill below.
On wednesday we were able to get out a little earlier. John had more appointments downtown, this time at the district attorney's office. Andrea, daphne and I went downtown to see the city. We started out with some breakfast and then we walked the waterfront path. It’s really pretty down there with lots of bridges and a park like area. We walked around a little in china town and a little below it. We went into this Oregon Jewish ancestory museum which was cool- small, but cool.
By then I think John was done and he wanted to take the train out to hillsburro to see what the ride would be like if we ended up living there, also to see some office in downtown Hillsburro, because Hillsburro is in another county than Portland. On the way was a park called Washington park which has all kinds of attractions, so we stopped there. Only one of the attractions was free though, which is the one we went to, the rose test garden. This is the place where they test new breads of roses I think. It was really pretty- hot but pretty. Hillsburro is kind of plain. It’s a lot like Bakersfield, which is where we’re from, so we definetely do not want to live there.
here we are at the rose test garden, and here were some of my favorite roses

a view of portland
We rode the train back to downtown portland- on a train that had no a/c which was horrible. We talked to this girl who is from Hillsburro so we started asking her questions. She had an opinion of Hillsburro that painted it to be this wonderful place to live. we asked her about Lake Oswego which we were still interested in, but this girl said it was kind of “yuppy” which I think was her term for "snobby" or "ritzy". I thought it was interesting that this girl said that. She also told us of this street art fair they do on the east side of Portland that was the next night.

here are some random funny pictures of daphne

in the picture below, daphne is holding two balls, and a stuffed dog. she insists holding at least 3 or 4 things at a time these days for some reason. Anyway, we got to our Prius and decided to drive to Lake Oswego to check it out, check out the temple and then eat. We found the temple after a bit of confusion. The trees are so thick! You’d think you’d be able to see the temple from afar, but you can’t. The mistake we made is we took this small highway when we should have just stayed on the 5, you get off at Lake Oswego and it’s like right there. But we did’t figure that out til later. We didn’t get out and walk around at the temple, we just went to go eat since it was getting so late. We ate at Azteca, and it was yummy! We don’t get mexican food that much out here in Michigan. I’m pretty sure that was it for Wedesday. Andrea headed out to Washington that night too.

On thursday we went back down town and ate at carls jr. another west coast treat. we walked around and john showed me the court house where he hopes to work someday at the district attorney’s office. we went to the mall that is downtown too. it’s really nice. i bought a bathing suite because i didn’t bring one and john really wanted to go swimming at our hotel. we headed out to Lake Oswego again so we could walk around the temple more and look at housing prices and neighborhoods. we were almost certain we wanted to live there, this trip we took there that day confirmed it. We love lake oswego. By the time we got there Daphne was asleep in the car, so we looked at the houses and neighborhoods. Some of the houses there range in the millions, but other older ones are substantially cheaper. I think a lot of investors are buying the cheaper houses, then tearing them down and building really really nice big new ones and selling them for lots more. john is thinking about doing that too cuz it would be cheaper for us- to buy an older house and then tear it down and build a new one.

i think this is the courthouse where john thinks he'll be doing his externship and then someday working at.

when daphne woke up we walked around the temple. it was really nice. we couldn’t ever go inside though because i didn’t have my temple recommend signed by the stake president. it was nice to walk around and have daphne play in the fountain though. we went back to our hotel to go swimming. the weather was nice the whole time we were there so the water was perfect. after the swimming we went to that outdoor street art fair that the girl from the train told us about. it was really cool but we very quickly realized that this was a like gathering of hippies or something. lots of art, everyone was sellig their hand made crafts, food, music, and lots of people. it was a fun night, I had lots of fun and i was glad to see that portland has lots of it own little culture. That’s what i felt like anyway. daphne likes anything sweet, even pomagranite juice

here's a pretty cool english folk band playing
On friday morning we realized that our flight wasn’t leaving until 8pm that night. I had originally thought it was leaving at 2pm. So we pretty much had the whole day to do anything else we wanted in portland. we packed up our stuff and then took some pictures by the river where we were staying.

we went to vancouver since it was right there, not much to write home about though, looks like any other town. we walked down the water front path, john hadn’t walked down it yet. i really like that path, it goes right down this river that runs straight through portland, i think there’s like 8 bridges that cross over it. We walked around downtown again. We decided to get something to drink at a little italian restaurant called pinocchio’s. we got some diet cokes and sat out on the side walk for a really long time and just enjoyed the city. we were there for so long they brought us some fresh plump blueberries for free. we had a couple and they were like, the best blueberries ever.

I can’t remember why, but we went out to lake oswego again before we left for the airport. we left lake oswego at 5pm and it took us an hour in traffic to get to the airport which was probably only 20 miles away. it really wasn’t that far, we’re just not used to the traffic. that’s something we’ll be comprimising on by moving there, is the traffic. one thing about portland is there is this big green movement. we saw so many prius’ there i couldn’t even count them all. we drove the WHOLE week on less than one tank of gas. a lot of people walk, ride bikes, and use mopeds. we got to the airport just in time, but a little too late to enjoy a relaxing dinner. we decided to eat at this irish restaurant right by our terminal, but realized our plane would be boarding very soon. we had to rush to eat our food and got on the flight just in time. both flights on the way home had us seated across from eachother over the aisle. which i guess wasn’t so bad because it made it easier with daphne. flying through the night was a little rough with a toddler, daphne barely slept on the second flight into detroit.

we arrived in michigan at 5 am, and got to lansing by 7 am saturday morning. we all slept in til 1 pm that day. it felt pretty nice.

So, lansing is pretty ugly compared to portland. I miss it a lot. And bakersfield is ugly compared to Lansing... if that tells you anything. I can’t wait to move there. I guess john already has a place set up to do his externship with the district attorneys office. they are really excited that he speaks spanish and want him to contact them next year. so, we are pretty much planning on moving to portland a year from now so john can do his last term in oregon. i’m so excited.

so daphne has learned a lot of new words since we have gotten back. I dont know, maybe the trip inspired her or something. she has said “go”, “hi”, “shoes”, and something that sounds like "your welcome". she knows for sure that shoes mean she gets to go outside. she’s also learned how to point to her nose and to dada and mama when we ask her to.

I’m really beginning to HATE the bugs here in michigan. a mosquito got into our house, i have gotten like 5 or 6 bites since the other day. we just now figured out it was actually in our house because we saw it landing on our legs while we were sitting here in the living room. good thing we killed it. AND, there was also this HUGE spider on our porch... it was icky and I had john kill it. Portland doesn’t have any bugs. At least I didn't see any.

we have arranged for our vacation back to bakersfield already. we decided to buy early so prices don’t get too high. we’re going to be there for almost 3 weeks- december 17 through january 3rd, i can’t wait to see everyone and their babies!

so, anyway, I guess that’s everything.