Portland

We took a quick get-away to Portland this weekend.

Highlights:

* staying at the Embassy Suites - located in an historic downtown building. It was pretty posh. Adana walked into the front lobby and declared, "It's a castle and I'm a princess!"

* getting a military discount on our room!

* the indoor heated pool. Who cares if it's 40 degrees outside!?

* the hotel "Game Cellar" - complete with pool table, air hockey, pinball, and video games. Happy times for pre-teen boys!

* the complimentary breakfast every morning - a full buffet of hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, eggs, oatmeal, fruit, yogurt, cereals, pastries . . . plus a custom-order omlet chef. We told our kids "EAT UP" so we could skip lunch.

* the Manager's Reception each evening - free, all-you-can-eat/drink soda, pretzels & goldfish crackers. I'm telling you, this place takes "Kid Friendly" to a whole new level.

* riding the TriMet train from our hotel to the Children's Museum

* the Children's Museum - Adana wasn't much into the Bob the Builder exhibit, but she loved the water play area

and the Crocodile Dentist (although she quickly got bored of brushing his teeth and instead preferred to stick her head inside his mouth and scream as if she were being eaten. Funny, but even though the place was majorly crowded, none of the other kids seemed to want to play on the giant crocodile after Adana was through.)

* eating out in the hotel's great restaurant - Kincaid's. We left the kids back in the room with Jared and enjoyed an adult evening with our friends who had come too.

* VooDoo Donuts. This is not your regular donut shop. This place was right across the street from our hotel and it's open 24 hours. We never saw it without a line out the door and down the sidewalk. So after our no-kids dinner, we thought we'd stop by for some dessert.* Boy Howdy! Talk about sugar rush! I decided to splurge and eat a donut - then spent the rest of the night with a major sugar headache. But it was so worth it. Here's a sampling of what we got (there were more, but we ate most of them before I thought to snap a picture).

Here's a cream-filled maple head, a "Grape Ape" (vanilla frosting with grape powder), an "Orangatang" (vanilla frosting with Tang), and "Dirt" (covered in crushed Oreos).

They were so outrageous that we had to stop and get more before we left town on Monday. Here's Emma with her Captain Crunch donut:

And their famous "Maple Bacon Bar" (we thought about you, Sloan, they whole time we ate it). :-)

* If you do decide to stop by VooDoo Donuts on your next trip to Portland, I recommend not bringing your kids in. Take a peek around their website and you'll probably figure out why.