A Year of Dating - April

In April us suburban folks braved the city. Both Michael and I haven't spent much time in the downtown of any city (minus the fact that Michael served pretty much his whole mission in downtown areas in Korea) - so when it comes to traveling any big city we're pretty intimidated. Mostly it's trying to find parking...and the one-way streets - they completely throw me off! And I don't know if this is the norm in big cities, but in downtown Portland there are lanes that only the public transit buses are allowed in. Not like I don't have enough to think about (Don't hit the pedestrians or the crazies. Don't go the wrong way on a one-way street. Where the heck am I going? Where can I park? I've never used a parking meter before...), but then I have to worry about which lane I'm allowed to drive in on that one-way street?! It's just a bit overload. Not to mention that I stick out like a sore thumb. Anyway, long rant cut short: we braved the city for some downtown fun. I was so proud of us.
Powell Books is a fairly well known used book store. It's huge...takes up a whole city block, with their 2nd location for all their textbook-like books across the street.

We perused the store - all the different rooms are color coded by genre. It's seriously like a maze in there, and it doesn't help if you're colorblind. ;)

After picking up a couple fun reads for myself and a Curious George book for Caden, we sauntered out onto the city streets in search of some grub. Back in Provo we loved The Pita Pit. We've really missed having one nearby (and Chilis, and Kneeders, and Zupas, and Macaroni Grill...guess we like to eat out), but low and behold there was one not two blocks from the book store! We enjoyed our pitas like the good old days as we sat in the store front and people watched (even better in Portland...you REALLY never know what you're gonna get). 

We meandered the city streets for a bit longer and ended up at this little gelato shop for dessert! 

Then we headed home to the little muchkin to deliver the beloved Curious George book. It was a low-key date, but then again, that's what you do when you're due any day!

Easter

Easter was good, low-key fun with our little family this year. Caden woke us up cheerily Easter morning with this little face!

 Then Daddy and Caden got their egg hunt on while mom snapped a few pictures. 

 

 Checking out his spoils...not really sure why we're doing all this instead of just eating breakfast like any other morning.

 Enjoying his eggs full of cheerios, raisins, Quaker Oatmeal Squares, fishy crackers...and I may have slipped in an egg or two of Lucky Charms. He was in heaven when he found those!

The Easter Bunny also left Caden a new book that plays primary songs! His favorite is now "I Hope They Call Me On A Mission" - which we play over, and over, and over, and over...while jumping on the couch of course.  Here's a video of him checking it out and enjoying his treats. 

And that about sums up our Easter celebrations as far as a 17 month old is concerned! We enjoyed church that day, watched "Jesus Returns" with Caden after church (Sadly, it's not nearly as well made as the original Living Scripture movies, in my opinion at least.), and had a nice little dinner. It was nice to have a low-key day to reflect on Jesus's resurrection and what that means for us - I'm very grateful for that knowledge!