Ah Portland, land of my fathers. Or at least my mothers. Or at least my mother, singular (lest there should be confusion). I can still remember my mom telling me about these bubbling downtown drinking fountains when I was little (I thought they sounded like the coolest thing ever, and told all my friends about them). It was nice to see my own boys taking advantage of them, making three generations of bubble-fountain-drinkers!
New cable-stayed bridge, still under construction
In Portland it rained, as it should. We spent the wet morning in OMSI (the science museum) and had a great time.
Abe, lifting boxes with a crane onto the container ship
You wouldn't believe how hard it was to build this thing. It took about 6 of us to finally get it done.
The girls giggled over the Van de Graaff Generator
The dinosaurs roared and opened their mouths. (Abe appears to be roaring back. Or he's astonished. I can't tell which.)
The boys played Connect Four with Robot Arms
Malachi made a sailboat
And people looked very tall.
Then the sun came out, as it should, so we headed out to the Chinese Garden. It was such a tranquil little area, right in the middle of the city. Beautiful architecture and stonework! And lovingly-shaped trees, and reflecting pools.
Every "room" had a different pattern of stones, all intricately set edgewise-together, in various arrangements. It made me want to collect beach rocks and do this in a garden myself. So lovely. My favorite were the ones with moss all grown up between the stones.
In several of the pagodas there were fragrant groupings of peonies, arranged singly in thin vases. Very spare and restrained. But so beautiful!
These were colors I'd never seen before in peonies. I love the yellow ones!
Then the sky began to darken. And suddenly it was raining again.
Pouring, in fact! (As it should.)
The only thing to do was visit a couple of Portland's delightful chocolate shops
to get a chocolate bunny truffle
and some hot chocolate. Delicious!
You make it all sound so simple and delightful.
ReplyDeleteWhat adventures your little family as been having! We lived just outside of Portland for several years back when we were a puny family with just three and then four (and then almost five) kids. I miss it often and all of these north west posts are certainly fueling that ”missing”. And how how could we not have gone to visit all of your magnificent trees while we were there??? It seems utterly certain that, had I sat amongst those giants for even an hour, I would have somehow come away with all sorts increased wisdom and understanding gleaned from trees themselves!
ReplyDelete