All kidding aside, God has abundantly blessed us with wonderful friends since we moved here 8 1/2 years ago. So many couples and families to share life with. It hasn't been until the last 5 years that I've truly learned the value of a good friend and how worth it it is to invest in their lives and allow ourselves to be invested in as well.
And Jeremy and Kristen are all kinds of wonderful and we love them.
So we decided to double date. Something we haven't done in awhile and something we will most definetly do again sooner rather than later.
Two teen girls watched our kiddos (6 kids for a whole day? Built-in-birth-control right?) :-) The kids did great and we lucked out with a beautiful day in Portland.
Agenda for the day......eat at Benihana's. Then find additional activities that could be structured around eating at Benihana's. Maybe we're best friends with them because we.know.how.to.eat.
We left around 9:45am and headed to the waterfront to enjoy the sunshine and walk a bit. Uninterrupted time to just enjoy conversation and share with each other....awesome! Add in some vitamin D and we were loving it.
the cool bridge we walked across
Then came Benihana's. Oh wow. Let's just say I may have eaten every.last.little.bit of my filet/scallops combo dinner. With rice, vegetables, shrimp, salad, soup and a scoop of chocolate ice cream. SOOOOOO good. I want to go back. Now. And the best part is that they give you $30 gift certificates for your birthday month so both Peter and Kristen had one to use. Amazing food with bills cut in half? Perfect.
After lunch we headed to the Pittock Mansion (inspired by another amazing friend Heather - thanks for the idea!!) We're too cheap to pay the $8 per person admission but you can tour the grounds for free and it was really pretty. We made it part-way down the path to see the arboritum, but didn't finish because it was getting late. Besides, according to Kristen, wasn't the path we were walking on God's arboritum? Ha ha.
After a quick stop at Washington Square for a slice of cheesecake a piece and a coffee (which we may or may not have consumed in it entirety on the drive home) we came back to our kiddos. The babysitters had survived, cleaned the house and made cookies. The best part was they wore our kids out and there was only an hour until bedtime once we got home.
It was a wonderful day filled with lots of laughs, food, and conversation. Thank you Lord for our friends!!
Such a perfect Portland day! I love that you went to Pittock Mansion! We just found out our Library has passes to take the tours, so we'll just enjoy our cheapness some more and be taking advantage of that little perk. :)
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