This was an unusual week since we the first half in Portland, and came home in time for the weekend. A little backwards compared to usual, but it was really fun and a nice change of pace! I will post my best pictures from Portland on here, and then do another post with our Saturday adventures at Smith.
Pat had to go to Portland on Tuesday to work on stands for the MLS All Star game (which took place Wednesday), so I decided to tag along with him. I went to work in the morning, and then headed home and we immediately left for PDX. The drive was a total pain for some reason. Seriously, no idea why there were so many people on the road on a Tuesday afternoon. Once we finally made it in to town we checked in to the Hotel Deluxe, which I had always wanted to check out. It was really cute and our room was quite spacious. We settled in and then walked to Providence Park to meet up with the Timbers team (who would be running the MLS event) and get our credentials for the next day. The amount of branding all over Portland for the event was pretty incredible too. Signage everywhere you looked, including on the sidewalk!
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| [[ the hotel. mls branding everywhere! ]] |
Before leaving for Portland I had gotten in touch with my friend Megan's boyfriend to try and set up a little surprise meeting since I missed her birthday the week before, so after we were done we headed downtown to surprise her. We went to The Yardhouse where they were already having drinks (sneaky, sneaky) and I sort of just slid into the booth next to her without her knowing it was me. She was so excited that she cried, and told me she hated me for surprisingly her, naturally. I loved it! We spent some time with the two of them before some of our other friends came out for dinner. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel and checked out the Driftwood Room, which is the hotel lounge specializing in classic cocktails. I don't remember exactly what I got, but it was "from the garden" and amazing. Then we walked the few feet to the elevator and went up to bed.
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| [[ surprising megan, followed by silly pictures. ]] |
The next morning we both worked from the hotel room before checking out and grabbing some breakfast at Kornblatt's (bagels and lox, obviously). After eating we went to the stadium and I wandered around for a while before hopping on the Max to meet up with my friend Francisco at his sweet new workspace. It was pretty amazing, and I am definitely jealous of their set up! He gave me the tour and then we went a grabbed a coffee for a bit before he had to get back to work and I had to get back downtown for the game, so we said our goodbyes and I hopped back on the Max.
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| [[ jewish breakfast. portland views from the mac. ]] |
Once I got downtown again it was madness all around the stadium. Doors weren't for another hour or two but there were people already lining up everywhere. Lucky for me, I had my credentials, so I got right in and got to spend a little time exploring with Pat before everything was on total lock down.
Since I had actually watched a ton of World Cup this year (thanks to Pat) I was kind of excited to see a bunch of the key US and German players in the match. During the game Pat was running around working, so I posted up in a corner with a good vantage point (since I didn't have a real ticket) and took a ton of pictures. In the end MLS won and my feet were killing me.
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| [[ at the mls all star game: fireworks over providence park. presentation. my vantage point. gooooaaaallll. ]] |
After the game we met a few people at Lompoc Brewery, including Megan and Dion, and then headed to my mom's place where we worked the next day. Thursday evening I finished up my work and drove over to the retirement home where my grandparents now live to visit with my Grandpa. It was really great to see him and have some one on one time after letting way too much time go past. After a while my mom came by, and then the three of us went in to the Memory Care portion of the home to see my Grandma. One day in the nearish future I will actually devote a post to this subject, but the specifics do not belong in a "My Week" post, so I will leave it at that for now.
When we were finished visiting, me and my mom met the boys at a BBQ joint for dinner and then me and Pat headed back over the pass for home.
Over the weekend we tried to take it pretty easy in anticipation of our engagement photos, which we took on Sunday evening. We stayed in and relaxed Friday night since we were both tired from the trip to Portland. On Saturday we went to Smith Rock to scope out locations for the shoot, and then ran a bunch of errands before Pat's parents came over for dinner. Sunday we spent getting ready and then at Smith getting our pictures taken. I will post much more on this later, as well as some of the images from our location scouting trip Saturday.
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| [[ scouting for shooting locations at smith. ]] |
