My Birthday!

Last week, on Thursday, was my 34th birthday!! Whoo hoo! Yes... I know, I am old. It was the day before we ran the Hood to Coast (post on that will be coming soon) and so my sister Lani, her husband BJ, and their baby girl (Ashlyn) were here to celebrate with me! (They ran H2C with me).

We wanted to do something fun, with everyone (kids included) so Joe planned a fun excursion into downtown Portland.

The key to visiting downtown Portland is finding a good cheap place to park. We met Joe at his office building in the Lloyd Center district of downtown portland, which is on the other side of the river from the city center (where we were going). It's not walking distance, but parking in the city center is a nightmare, so instead of just picking him up and driving into to find limited, expensive parking closer, we parked at the Lloyd Center Mall (which has free parking):

Walked a block to Joe's office building:

and then hopped on the Max and rode it to the city center:

The Max is free to ride when you are in downtown, so the price was definitely right!

Here are some pictures from the train ride:

Levi and I

Ashlyn, my adorable niece.


Kaelan (who was absolutely in 7th heaven because he LOVES trains)


This is what he did the entire train ride:

On the ride we saw The Rose Garden (where the Trailblazers play) it is 2 blocks from Joe's work:

The Portland Convention Center (which is kind of a Portland Icon), also a couple of blocks away from Joe's work:

And got to ride the train over the Steel Bridge that goes over the Willamette River. In the picture you can see that MAX is on the top level and regular trains go on the lower Level.

Right now they are in the final stages in the drawing board for putting up a new MAX bridge that will look like this:
(if you look close you can see OMSI on the right side, just behind the bridge)

Kaelan was NOT happy when we got off the train, and threw a spectacular fit for all to see.


Our first destination was Glowing Greens Miniature Golf. It is the coolest indoor miniature golf course I have ever seen. Every thing is glow in the dark, lit with black lights. It is Pirate themed. It is below the Downtown Portland Hilton.

Out front of the entrance:

The entrance (the golf course is down the stairs- or the elevator):

Some pictures of the golf course:

Cool, huh!! The boys LOVED it, even Kaelan. He had his own club and ball (which also glow in the dark) and would hit the ball once, then pick it up place it in front of the hole and whack it in! It was SO cute. Also, he was wearing underwear this whole time and didn't have an accident!! The best birthday present of all! ;-)

When we were done golfing we hopped back on the MAX (much to Kaelan's delight) and rode it to E-SAN Thai restaurant. It was rated 4.5 out of 5 stars, so we thought we would see what all the hub-bub was about.

The exterior was really neat. I really liked the architecture

The interior was really neat too. I really liked the windows. We sat on the first floor, but the boys loved going up and exploring the second floor balcony.

The food was DELISH!! My kids love ethnic foods, so they consumed it all, with much gusto.
Here is a sampling of some of the foods we ate:
(sadly the accident free trip came to an end at E-Sans. KK got stuck under the table somehow, and we couldn't hear him yelling Pee-Pee at first, so he peed under the table and was very sad. Luckily I brought a second pair of underwear and a new outfit just in case)


KK's sadness was mollified when we got back on the train to go home.


When we got home, Joe made Lemon bars for my birthday "cake":


They were SO yummy. The only downside was that Joe put the candles in when it was still hot and it melted the candles down to the string, so we had little puddles of wax in the four candle holes!! It was really funny pulling out those candles to see nothing but string!! It didn't ruin the lemon bars though.... phew!

Joe got me some perfume (Lancome Hypnose) and some Lancome makeup. That's a first! I loved it. Lani gave me some awesome (well needed) sunglasses, Levi gave me an awesome pencil sketch of the Golden Gate Bridge, and Joe's parents gave me a gift card to Borders books! It was a Great day.

But the best gift of all was family time!!