Portland and Boise

I decided last minute to take the kids, well 6 of them, to Portland.  Those kids had a full week off of school and we were going up to Boise for the second half of it already.  So I thought we might as well go a little further and spend the start of our vacation in Portland.  We have been tossing around the idea of possibly moving to Portland so I thought we should check it out in that light and see if we might like living there.  (The jury is still out on that idea right now.)  Celeste had school, Andy had basketball practices, and Steve had work, so they stayed back  until they met us in Idaho on Thanksgiving.  

We arrived in Portland after a scary 12 hr drive in nasty weather.  

On Sunday we decided to go to two Churches.  We never really experienced a different Church together.  Nor did we know much about any other churches.  And as we were far from home and not close to a Mormon building, we thought this would be interesting.  We attended first, a Catholic mass at a famous placed called The Grotto.  It was beautiful and pretty fascinating.  We found it to be very interesting.   Lets be clear-- we were NOT investigating these Churches.  We took part in their Communion.  Which is their version of the Sacrament.  I thought it was neat to experience this.  So we all walked up there as our row filed to the front to partake.  The Priest gave a few of us the bread, or these small thin wafers.  He also quickly blessed Charity, Sam, Jonah and Hana.  Then I took the crystal goblet from the nun for the water.  At least I thought it was water.  It appeared colorless. But one taste made it clear, this was wine!  Never before have I tasted any form of alcohol.  I was shocked.  So I held it in my mouth and rushed out of the cathedral to spit it out.  Oops!!!

After that, we went to some born again Christian  church.  Walking in you could hear the rock music blaring songs of Jesus.  What a contrast to anything we've seen!  We got the fit of the giggles.  But it was awesome.  After the song, the preacher started explaining why raising your hands to God was good.  He explained it was a symbol of submission to the Lord.  I looked over and saw Sam doing this.

I about died.  He was totally into it!

They invited everyone to a potluck dinner that night.  I thought, "free dinner!"  So we went back for dinner.  It was fun!  Everyone was very friendly and never asked us why the heck we were there or who we were, other than our names. 

They played a little turkey game to commemorate Thanksgiving.  Jonah volunteered to be the turkey.

On Monday we went to the zoo in Portland.  It was so green and pretty.

Becca was taking lots of photos.

Charity and Sam were thrilled to get to pet a lizard.

After the zoo we went to the children's museum.  The kids loved it.

The kids put on a play there that was so funny!

They had a face painting station.  Charity thought she wanted her face painted green.  But after seeing the finished product, she was not so pleased.

On Tuesday we drove around and explored areas to possibly live and even toured four homes.

On Wednesday we drove to Boise.

We went out to eat at Black Bear Diner with mom and dad Bishop.  But unfortunately I neglected to get any other photos the rest of our time in Boise.  Dang!  We had a great time and a nice Thanksgiving there with Steve's family.