Portland

Ron had a law conference in Portland in mid-March and I was lucky enough to tag along. Grandma and Grandpa Cali were kind enough to come up to take care of the kids.

We drove down to the airport, picked them up, drove to get some food and then they dropped Ron and I off and they drove the kids home.

Ron and I enjoyed a relaxing flight with no one to entertain but ourselves and finally got to our hotel around midnight Pacific Time, so we were exhausted.

Wouldn't you know, we were awake and alert at 5:30 a.m. so we decided to just get ready and head to the Portland temple.  It was beautiful and a great experience.

We then picked up some breakfast, and then Ronnie's boss from the airport and were lucky to get to visit Bountiful Farms - the amazing farm owned by my college roommate, Carissa's family.

I heard about this farm for the three years that Carissa and I shared a room at BYU and had never made it out to visit.  I was happy to finally see it all!

I wish I would have taken more pictures of how amazing this place was, but we only pulled out the camera for the shaped bushes, something the farm specializes in. All of the bushes in these photos have been recently shaped, and would need a year or two to fill out and look really good, so you couldn't see the wires anymore.

Amazing butterflies.

Elephants.

They had just shipped a whole bunch of bushes shaped like Shrek characters for the opening of a park in Florida and this was one of the left over Shrek bushes (uncompleted).

Carissa and I on the Gator.  I love this girl!

After a lovely visit with Carissa and her cute family, it was back into Portland for a conference dinner.  The next morning Ronnie had meetings and I did a walking tour of Portland with important stops at Powell's and Voodoo Donuts (no pictures, unfortunately).

That afternoon we did a tour of Columbia Gorge and hiked to the top of Beacon Rock for some pretty great views.

We then drove to and saw a few waterfalls (names have been forgotten, sorry Oregon!)

Finally, we drove up to Crown Point for some more amazing views.

After another dinner that evening, we took an early flight back to Denver and did the airport switch again with Grandma and Grandpa.

It was a great trip with a great guy and the perfect way to get a few days to ourselves.  Now, if only we could have spaced these little trips out over the entire year, instead of in the first three months!