the hunt

As soon as we were able to see the beautiful green mountains thick with pine trees from the plane I got emotional. "This is Portland. This is where we're moving our family." Those thoughts kept running through my mind. I wasn't unhappy about it. I wasn't exactly happy either. I was just feeling it.

I knew that this house hunting trip wouldn't be fun. We had a job to do and only a couple days to do it. Find a place to live. Find a place where our kids would play and be happy. Find a place that felt good to us. Find a place that was close enough to school. Find a place that was in our budget. Find a place that had the whole package. It was a huge task, and we really didn't know much about the Portland area to even know where we wanted to look. The pressure was heavy and the stress was high.

But things looked promising when we drove out of the airport in this baby:

Goldie. Please know that that she was really, really gold. Like bright gold. She's in the shade here, so she's a little muted, but can you imagine how much Brian liked driving along the streets of Oregon in this little thing? It made for some funny conversations and lots of joking for us.

Going over all the houses we saw would be really long and boring. I will say by the end of day two out of two and a half, we hadn't found anything that had everything we were looking for. We were frustrated. So we skipped dinner and decided to just drive around the areas we liked and see what we could find. After several hours, just as it was getting dark and just before I was about to die of starvation, we found it. And lucky for us the owner answered her phone and was there in a few minutes to show it.

We were so relieved to have found something. And we were happy because this gave us a few hours the next day to have a little fun.

The first thing on the agenda: VooDoo Doughnuts. Brian and I saw this place on the Food Network and when he got a glimpse of the maple bar piled with bacon he knew we had to go. So we did! Um, I don't really know what to say about the place. It was a dumpy little place with some creepy decor and a line out the door. I told Brian that we'd never go back with the kids. Ever. It's no place for children.

The doughnuts, however, were pretty delicious.

Bacon maple bar. Brian said it was all that the hoped it would be.

I chose a sweet little white cake doughnut- one of my faves- and it was so good.

This is how we felt after eating four of the five doughnuts we bought. I was convinced we should get a dozen and bring home the leftovers, but it turns out five was way too many. We felt gross, but it was still fun to go to such a fun little spot in downtown Portland.

Thanks to Scott and Traci and their cute kids for hosting us.

And here's a little taste of our new place. This is right in front of our new little townhome. The view is just incredible.

We feel really lucky to have this little spot in Oregon.