We are in Portland & today was Wednesday.

I thought it was Tuesday until like an hour ago. I told Mike, Wow! It's only Tuesday! & he had to correct me. Oops. 

It's my mom's birthday. She's great! Tara's kitchen was decorated early this morning & we surprised her with breakfast (crepes!) when she walked in the door from picking my dad up from the airport this morning. Hooray! For my mom of course, & also for a really great breakfast. We love our crepes in the Hudson family. Love them. Peaches, yogurt, powdered sugar, whipped cream. Best breakfast ever, really. We don't say CREP, though. We say crepe like we say ape, because we're not in France so it would be kind of silly to use a French accent. Anyway. We love crepes, & we ate them together this morning, & Mike led us in a rousing rendition of the Hudson Family (aka Aspen Grove) Happy Birthday song. Fun.

And then! It was a day of food. Mike is probably more obsessed with Food Network than I am, & because he travels so often he's always keeping a running list of various places in the country that he'd like to try. I think he needs a blog dedicated to food / restaurants because he's checked off so many obscure places off of his list from New Orleans to Minneapolis to San Diego. Case in point: Bunk Sandwiches & Voodoo Doughnuts (the latter technically being Tara's find) in Portland. We ate what was the best pulled pork sandwich I've ever had in my life, drank Mexican Coke from the bottle, & then ventured off to a doughnut shop that can only be compared to a trailer park yard sale - slash - garbage dump - slash - carnival. It would be safe to say that it was reasonably close to my personal version of hell. Such a disaster, completely cluttered, filled with totally random junk & likely a whole bunch of germs. There was a trailer in the parking lot, inflatable toys / tacky Christmas decor everywhere, used furniture piled up & handwritten signs everywhere you looked. Maybe like Napolon Dynamite meets a junkyard? I don't know. It was a disaster. But the doughnuts: amazing. Really, really fantastic doughnuts. A chocolate doughnut WITH COCOA PUFFS ON TOP? Yes, please. I mean, if you're going to go, you may as well go big, right? Wow.

Tara & I spent a few hours afterwards at Bridgeport Village - which we could call my personal shopping Heaven (& it was, with JCrew offering 30% off this afternoon, on everything, just because). Anthropologie, The Container Store, MAC, Apple, Crate & Barrel... It's a beautiful little piece of pure shopping bliss in one convenient location & without sales tax (thank you, Oregon). We went, & let Quinn have some bonding time with his dad so that I could have some bonding time with my sister. We shopped, & it was happy. I picked up a bath ball (?) that Tara loves & swears will work amazing & therapeutic wonders, so this week - I fully intend on taking a bath in Tara's gigantic & beautiful tub. Quinn will be totally occupied, because everyone loves him & he is not hurting for attention. His Dad is always around (except for some snowboarding), his cousins are constantly wanting to sit by him & play, his aunts & uncles love to make him smile, & he's so happy to be with his Grandma & Grandpa. He's a happy boy this week.

It's raining in Portland. Off & on I suppose, but the forecast is basically cool & raining. That's okay, because it's Oregon, & that's what I expected. Tara actually said today that there are sun advisories (!!) when the sun is going to be out. Like, they actually announce it on the news & on the radio, because what will people do with themselves when they see that BIG GLARING BALL up in the sky? I went to school for one quarter in western Washington & just about died because of the constant rain & mist. The northwest isn't for the faint of heart (or the slightly depressed). 

Randomly:

My parents both got iPhones. Which basically means we'll spend the rest of the week teaching them how to use them. 

I'm thoroughly obsessed with Instagram. And I'm hating Facebook & kind of wanting to quit. I got a friend request the other day from a former college roommate who I know for a fact basically hated me (& was never especially nice to me, either). Um, IGNORE. I don't really love passive spying (or passive relationship upkeep?), & isn't that what Facebook kind of is? I mean, if you're my friend, we talk, right? And people who want to talk to me call me. And I blog, which is kind of more than enough, I think. Anyway. 

Also.

I've realized that I have a bit of a problem right now with grey, & also with sweatshirts. I'm really loving both (see first photo below - oops). I told Mike the other week that I wasn't allowed to buy any more grey sweatshirts (of the zip up, button up, cardigan or pullover variety) After picking up a few things this afternoon, Tara said You're really liking comfortable clothes right now, aren't you?! Yes, yes. And maybe I bought two grey tops that could potentially fall into the sweatshirt category. But they're so cute! And comfortable! And soft! And my wardrobe needs to be breastfeeding + spit up compatible, so I'm definitely leaning towards soft & comfortable vs. dry clean only. And grey matches everything! At least I'm not wearing 97% black like I used to.

What else. 

So happy that we're only halfway done with our trip! 

Photos from our Wednesday (iPhone):

Basically the most indie restaurant I've ever been to in my entire life. We totally fit in with a carseat. 

Voodoo Doughnuts. I told you. A trailer. And a bunch of random stuff. 

They had a shelf of vegan doughnuts, too. Because Portland is like that. 

Next to the photobooth that we intended on taking family photos in. And then we discovered that it was broken. Boo. On the agenda: The 2nd Annual Cannon / Whiting New Year's Day brunch at Bubby's. We'll take some in the photobooth there. 

Did I mention that the building is PINK? Random, random, random.