Hockey

Last night we went to a hockey game with a couple friends. It was awesome.

While I may not enjoy playing many sports, I do like watching live events.  So when friends of ours from church asked us if we wanted to go to a Portland Winterhawks game, we said yes. My husband had never been to a hockey game and I hadn’t been to one since I was eighteen or nineteen. The game was awesome. Of course, it helped that the Winterhawks dominated the game and won and that there was a huge fight that put seven players in the penalty box, one of whom was sent out of the game completely.

Now I’ve never really understood the rules of hockey to quite get how the game worked, but our friend was kind enough to explain the rules pretty simply and it certainly helped with why players would be moving the puck around in the fashion they were. Thanks, now I know some of the rules of hockey. Will I remember them? Doubtful, but we’ll see. My mind works in mysterious ways. Perhaps I should tell my brain to store it in the Random-Facts-To-Pull-Out-Of-My-Ass-During-Dinner-Parties file.

Night Out on the Town

Last night we saw The Lion King. It was one of the coolest shows I’ve ever seen… seriously.

So with the absence of my partner’s niece and nephew because, according to their father, their religion prevents them from swimming and seeing black people and puppets on stage because it is sinful and they won’t receive the keys to heaven, we instead took my second cousins who are really like nieces to us. As much as I love my partner’s niece and nephew, I’m really glad we took my cousins, and they seemed to have a great time too.

The evening started out with the girls not having any idea what we were doing, that is, until my partner gave them a huge clue in the form of the soundtrack to The Lion King. That seemed to be a giveaway, but they quickly turned the tables on us and said they weren’t going to tell us where we were going, but that they knew.

After boarding the MAX, Portland’s mass-transit train, into downtown, we arrived at the restaurant we made our reservations at and ate arguably the most food we’ve eaten downtown and it was so super delicious too. Out of the six of us myself and my partner’s sister were the only ones to finish our meals. While Tree’s is only open Monday through Friday, I highly recommend them, and highly recommend the Chicken and Avocado Club sandwich that half of our table ordered and we all ate some of. Two people could easily share this meal, it’s that big. We ordered a piece of chocolate cake for dessert to split between the six of us and they cut a fairly large, probably double-sized piece for us. Originally the plan was for each of us to have a bite to get our chocolate fix, but this cake was big enough for us all to have three bites each and still had half leftover, which the girls quickly devoured.

Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as dinner was over we all used the restroom and walked to the Keller Auditorium for the play where we arrived about fifteen minutes early for the show; just enough time to find our seats and check out the orchestra warming up. And once the show started we were all glued to the stage. Needless to say, we all had a good time and the girls were able to pick out some souvenirs with their own money and then went back to get a couple things for their three-year-old twin sisters because they are sweet and thoughtful like that.

It was obvious the girls were tired, as we all were, while taking the train back to our cars, but I think they had a good time, as we all did. Again, while it is sad we couldn’t take my partner’s niece and nephew, we were able to take a couple of other kids, and watching them react to the play was amazing. Makes me wish we had some of our own.