New Furniture; Painting Shelves; Vacation to Oregon and Washington

The time had come for us to move the old living room furniture out to make room for the new living room furniture we had bought and brought with us from the mission home.

I wanted our old couches to go to a good home. They had served us well and were still in good condition. Glen put them up on KSL.com and pretty soon we had a taker.

The woman who came to get them was so pleased with them.  She told me she had had her couches for 20 years and she was tired of them and was ready for a change. I just smiled, not bothering to tell her we had had these couches for 30 years and I was ready for a change as well.

Welcome to our new living room! We are loving the "new" look, which is a constant, happy reminder to us of the past 3 years we spent with this furniture in the mission home.

On the day the last of our family members left, and I was anticipating taking a breather from all our hecticness...

I walked back inside the house after telling Rebecca good-bye and saw this scene.

It was like stepping foot in a horror movie!!

We had spent so much time the previous month moving back into our home and getting cupboards and drawers organized and putting every last thing away.

So imagine my dismay to see everything we had done was all undone once again.

I exclaimed my surprise and distress right as I spotted Glen with a paint roller in his hand.

He was working inside one of the pantries. He was in the process of painting both pantry closets and all the shelves in the kitchen cupboards.

He didn't stop there. He painted all of the shelves in the house including this freestanding bookshelf. He was a painting maniac!!

Truth be told, I was so anxious to be done with improving and upgrading household things that I wanted to scream!! But, instead, I got busy helping wherever I could and putting all the stuff away once the paint had dried.

What a welcome respite from hard labor it was when we got our bags packed and loaded in the car and were on our way out of town.

We had looked forward to this moment for a long time. We had earned this bit of fun and frivolity after all the work we had been doing. We felt very justified in our great escape!!

We headed north to Idaho, enjoying the corn fields, blue skies, mountains and all the other changing scenery around us. 

 We went to the Meridian Temple.

After dinner we walked around the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge.

We spent the night in Nampa where it's a miracle Glen lived to tell the tale.

He was confronted at a gas station by a man who asked him for gas money. When Glen refused to give him a hand-out, the man started yelling and swearing at him and making a big scene. Another man drove up in his truck and told the man, "We don't talk like that here."

The irate man turned his wrath in the direction of the man in the truck and took off after him as he drove away, leaving Glen alone. WHEW!! I was happy no harm came to my husband.

Right before we left on our vacation, Glen was in the process of getting hired by the Church as a Manager in Welfare and Self-Reliance Services.

He was told to show his passport at any Deseret Industries and they would make a notation in the computer and that part of his paperwork would be completed.

So, he found a Deseret Industries in Nampa and we spent some time there getting his passport business taken care of to get him one step closer to being fully employed.

Then we got back to the business of enjoying our vacation. We drove from Idaho to Portland, Oregon. We love the part of the drive that goes along the Columbia River. It is such beautiful scenery.

We thought of Jacob and Laurie as we drove by Hood River. We remembered helping them move there in the middle of a huge snow storm in their earlier years of marriage. 

We arrived at our hotel in Portland and enjoyed looking out over the water from our window.

It wasn't long until I realized I had left a pile of my clothes in a drawer back in the hotel in Nampa. YIKES!!!

Funny story about that is the fact that Glen usually immediately unpacks his clothes once we get in a hotel and I rarely unpack--especially when it is a one-night stay.

This time he told me he was not going to unpack his clothes in the Nampa hotel. I decided I was going to put my stack of clothes in the drawer so I could have easier access to my stuff at the bottom of the suitcase.

The next morning, there was enough stuff left in my suitcase that I didn't even notice my missing clothes, although I did have the thought that it was a lot easier to zip my suitcase that day than it was the day before...

I called the Nampa hotel and had them mail my clothes to Mark and Michelle's house in Yakima where we would be over the weekend. Until then--I had a choice of two shirts to wear.

We stopped at a mall where I actually found 3 inexpensive dresses that I could wear to church on Sunday if my package of clothes didn't catch up to me. I ended up returning one dress after the fact, but the other two are now hanging in my closet.

We were excited to have dinner at Claim Jumper. It is a restaurant we have enjoyed and were sad when the restaurant closed in Temecula. So this was a treat for us to find this one still in business.

Note my jacket. I wore it when I ate and zipped it clear up to my chin to protect my shirt from getting food drips. Can't be having that when I only had that shirt and a t-shirt to last me possibly the rest of our trip.

We took a nice stroll around Clackamas Town Center. It had a fun, romantic feel to it as the sun was setting that evening.

The next morning we took a walk along the water's edge to check out our surroundings.

We found a whole different kind of neighborhood than what we are used to seeing.

 I think I will stick to living in a house on land rather than on water.

That day we decided to go tour Pittock Mansion.

It is a 46-room home situated on 46-acres of land. It was finished being built in 1914 as a private home for London-born Oregonian publisher Henry Pittock and his wife Georgiana.

The home had such luxuries as a central vacuum system, intercoms, indirect lighting, an elevator and a walk-in refrigerator.

The Pittocks really only enjoyed living in the home for 4 years together until Georgiana's death at the age of 72. Henry died the next year at the age of 84. 

 

 This is the back set of stairs which the servants used.

This is the stairs used by the tradesmen and delivery men.

This large bathroom was Henry's.

Georgiana loved gardening. The view out of each of the windows was beautiful.

  

 This small bathroom was Georgiana's.

 The back of the mansion had an excellent view of the city.

The Gate Lodge sits next to what was the original gated roadway leading up to Pittock Mansion. It is the home where the Pittocks' chauffeur and wife lived.

There were trails all around the mansion, but since it had been raining, we opted out of exploring the trails.

Instead, we made our way to Portland to see the Lan Su Chinese Garden. 

Since we had found parking in the town, we decided to find a restaurant in the area so we wouldn't have to find parking somewhere else. We Googled to see our food options and set off down the street.

Pretty soon we were in the red "X" district and I was getting nervous. After our nerve-wracking experience the day before with Glen almost getting killed (okay, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't a pleasant experience), I was very leery walking down this street. 

One would think we had reached Rock Bottom walking to this restaurant, but no! Rock bottom was reached on our way walking back to the car. Our food at this restaurant was very delicious, so that was a plus.

Keep in mind we had to go back the same way we came. Only this time it should have been rated XXX!!

A very crazy woman was in the middle of the street beating a plant in the median with her water bottle and screaming at the top of her lungs. Unfortunately that was the crosswalk we had to cross to get to where we needed to go. As we approached the median, she directed her rage at Glen.

We were finally able to veer around her and as we were crossing the other intersection, she started undressing as she was screaming at the top of her lungs at all the traffic going by.

Let's just say I was EXTREMELY relieved to get back safely to our car!

In all our walking, we saw some food trailers lined up on one street.

This one caught my eye as I thought about Glen and the French Toast Connection he has with his grandchildren. Too bad it was all locked up for the day, otherwise we might have had to give it a try to make a comparison taste test.