Portland!

Playing catchup again! Being an adult leaves little time for things like journaling/blogging, doesn't it? But I'll try to do a broad recap.

For Landon's Spring Break this year, we decided to head down to Portland, Oregon to visit his Grandpa Burgener.

I'm so glad we went! We have lived within a few hours of Grandpa and Betty for years and hadn't done a proper visit. They were very gracious and happy to see us.

While there, we figured we may as well do some epic exploring!! We've been to Portland twice before as a family (and I used to live near here as a young child), but we haven't had much chance to see the sites.

We decided to use our time to take a ride on the Portland Aerial Tram, visit Powell's, eat our weight in food at the Portland food trucks, and visit an ice cream hot spot called Salt & Straw. There's a lot of eating involved in visiting Portland. :)

The next day, we had a huge surprise for Walter. The OMSI Museum happened to have a traveling display the same time we were in town called Game Masters. It was about video game designers through the ages, and included actual game consoles, from 80s arcade games to the most recent Kinnect and Wii games. When I saw the advertisement, we discussed it at length. It was expensive. And we work pretty hard to stay OFF screens when we're together on vacation. But it just seemed like too great of a chance to pass up. Walt's favorite thing in the world on display in the town we were hanging out in? So in the end, we went. And literally this photo made it all worth it:

This was his face when we got close enough in the line for Walt to see the giant Mario/Zelda poster and realized what we were doing. He could NOT hold still. He tried out nearly every single game, we stayed for hours. He bounced from one thing to the next and told us all about the different Zeldas, Marios and Minecraft games. He asked lots of questions and we enjoyed chatting about game design and showing Walt some of the games from our childhood. He LOVED it. Sometimes, spoiling your kids is a perfect idea.

Meanwhile, Zuzu found some fun things to do, too.

They had a great children's play space and she spent about an hour exploring it while Walt continued gaming. :) Rumor has it there were several sections with science and art and some other stuff, but we never made it that far!

We had a great time. Each year, we've managed to scrape together enough money to do a little spring break trip, and I've loved all the memories we've made! We've seen some fun things around the PNW, and spent time with great family members. And of course, Walt's favorite thing in the world is staying in hotels. So there's that.

Peace out, Portland. Hopefully we'll see you again soon!