7 Years and Counting

Yesterday Brian and I celebrated our 7th anniversary, and it was the BEST ONE EVER! In the past, our routine has been the same: dinner and a movie. As boring or cliche as that sounds, it was always magical because neither of those activities is something we do without our kids other than the one night a year basically.

This year though, we decided we'd better take advantage of having only 2 kids for a sitter to watch and Devon's unmarried availability (until this March) and Devon stayed with the boys OVERNIGHT! Brian and I headed up to Portland yesterday and had an amazing 24 + hours child-free.

We started at McGraths before leaving town where Brian's boss graciously comped our meal for us. Brian surprised me with the hotel and I was delighted to see this:

Alright, so technically, that's the back and I never saw it from that side. But any pictures of the front (see below) don't do it justice. This was definitely the nicest hotel I have stayed in that I can remember. (Note to unmarrieds - pick an anniversary date that's off season) It had the grand piano in the entry and and a fancy restaurant that looked over the river. The Red Lion Hotel at Janzten Beach was like it's own village. Very large. Our room looked so luxurious and the bathroom was at least twice as large as ours at home, plus generally much nicer.

This was the view from our room, a little foggy because I couldn’t get the door open.

After checking in, Brian and I found our way to the Max station – the local train. I should mention that Brian’s “gift” to me was to come without his laptop. Unfortunately our GPS crashed and burned minutes before we left for Portland earlier that day, so this was a technology-free trip. It was actually pretty fun to get ourselves around with one map (of Portland Downtown only) and rough it like that. Thank goodness I married a boyscout because I never had any idea where on earth we were or how the heck Brian managed to get us anywhere. Anyway, we found the train station and rode it into Downtown Portland.

It was FREEZING cold outside (we reminisced about Rexburg quite a bit) but we made our way to Powell’s City of Books where we thawed out and bought a couple books. Downtown was beautiful with the Christmas tree and grand buildings and lights. We loved it!

Back at the hotel we ate dinner at the restaurant overlooking the river and called it a night.

This morning we had our delicious breakfast at Denny’s (o.k, first of all, we love Denny’s anyway, but they have for a limited time a “cranberry orange pancake” which I highly recommend. I think we’ll start making our own pancakes that way all the time!) and found our way to Lloyd center. We wandered around the mall for a while then got our slick on for some ice skating.

All in all, we agreed this was our most favorite anniversary ever. I love my wonderful man I’m so excited for the next many, many anniversaries to come!