4/4/2010 Portland OR -- last day already!

Easter sunrise out my window at Dain and Sara's. And yes, that's Mount Hood in the far distance. You know it's going to be a great day when you can see Mount Hood in the morning.

Early Easter service at The Village church where Dain and Sara attend. There's a small live orchestra on the left and a big choir on the right. We opened with The Hallelujah Chorus and Jesus Christ is Risen Today. It was the Easter Hit Parade as far as I was concerned.

Sadly, 43 hours can whip by awfully quickly. It was an awesome Easter but waaaaaaaay too short. Suddenly, I'm already in Midway Airport in Chicago changing planes on the way back to Boston. Gotta teach 3 classes on Monday.

This is my favorite food to get at Midway for breakfast at a cute little Greek food stand.

But this time I went for a Potbelly sandwich.

I got into Logan Airport a little after midnight and sat in the terminal until 5:30am when I went outside to wait for the 5:50 Concord bus to Portland. It was a 2-hour bus ride in a very nice bus with free wifi. I liked that part. :-) I found my car in the Portland bus station parking lot (thank you, Grace!!), drove to Farmington, took a shower, and had a very long day teaching three classes from noon to 7:30pm. A long day but some awesome memories of Easter 2010.

4/3/2010 Portland OR

In a spontaneous decision that even surprised me, I decided that since I was already on the west coast (I was in San Diego for a conference), I should just scoot up to Oregon and spend Easter there. I was only there for 43 hours, but it was a blast! I arrived on Friday late afternoon. We went to the grocery store and cooked dinner at Dain and Sara's house. Karen gave us her grilled asparagus recipe over the phone. It was delicious.

Saturday, we went into the city on the MAX rail (after a U-turn trip back to the house). We went to the mall and waited in line to see the iPad . . . 'cuz you gotta go the first day, right?!

Look! They even have a cart of free treats for those of us waiting in line for our turn.

At last we got our hands on the iPad. Of course, the photo of me is perfectly framed 'cuz you-know-who took it. I get all the good breaks. ;-)

We had a blast and we were glad we got to see it and touch it and feel it, but neither of us bought one that day nor did we really have the desire. Between our MacBook laptops and our iPhones, we're set. . . . for now.

Here you go Dr. Mari! Moonstruck is a chocolate shop in town (they have outlets at the airport, too). Those are little chocolate cows in the photo so of course the theme is "moooooonstruck".