Put a Bird on It! Part 1.

We are just back from a road trip that kicked off with Brandon greeting us girls at Portland International Airport with hugs and a large pink box of Voodoo doughnuts. Paige tried a few bites but wasn't that interested. Brandon and I gobbled down our apple fritter and blueberry cake doughnuts though. It was funny to see those pink boxes throughout the day in the hands of other tourists as we wandered around Portland.

We dropped our luggage off at the Hotel Vintage Plaza, wrangled the double stroller into position and set off on foot to Stumptown Coffee. Stumptown was good, but I think I like Blue Bottle Coffee better, in case anyone cares about that sort of thing. Coffees in hand and one diaper change later, we wandered into what turned out to be the Portland Saturday Market at North Waterfront Park along the Willamette River.

Fueled by Greek food, rose-petal Rogue beer (in honor of the Rose Festival), and milk, Brandon and Paige danced to the live music for almost 30 minutes. Yes, it was very cute.

And then we ambled along Waterfront Park, which had a carnival.

Mostly the sky looked like this:

In fact, the weather was rainy and cold until we reached Northern California. But we soldiered on. Paige never once complained about being cold and I think is very warm blooded.

Once we got our fill of gawking at crafts, carnival rides, the river, and the milieu of oddly tattooed/pierced people, we walked back to the plazas closer to our hotel, starting with Pioneer Square. The Festival of Flowers was being commemorated by a flower pot installation of medallion patterns on the square.

And then we went to Directors Park, which was hands down Paige's favorite. She didn't stop playing in the fountain even after it started raining. The fountain was really cool - I wish we had something like this in San Diego. I know that children wade at the fountain in Balboa Park, but this fountain was specifically designed for little ones to play in.

We ended the day on a high note - a long nap and the Starlight Parade! We lucked out because it turns out that our hotel was on the parade route and had set out chairs for the event. The parade started very late, almost at 9:00, so we only lasted until about 10:00 with our little ones. But we saw some awesome marching bands and floats. Paige got all sorts of swag and smiles from the people in the parade. I just realized that I have mostly been talking about Paige, but all day people said "ah, what a cute, bright-eyed girl!" to Jules. She was content to nap and look around from her stroller and be held by her mommy and daddy.