Time Out For Women

I just recently went to Portland to go to Time Out For Women and had such a great time.  Seriously- it was one of the best trips I've been on in a while.  It was such a nice break.
It all started out with TOFW- but got better from there.  I drove to Athena's Thursday night.  I got there so late and felt so bad- but she was just so sweet.  I have loved living close to Athena.  We got up Friday morning and went running.  Can I just say that Portland is beautiful. It has trees!!! With leaves, and moss!  Ugh, Hermiston is such a, um, dry place.  Anyways, so Athena and I went running in a beautiful park,  and I fell in love with Portland.   We had a great time- I pushed her to run hard, and we ended up just laughing so much. 

 After running we got ready for the day and headed off to World Market for some much needed shopping.  I love that place.  It's like Heaven on earth to me.  I could buy everything in that store.  Darren told me I should get a job there.  Maybe I will someday. After shopping we headed back to Athena's for lunch.  Ellie was so cute playing with Nyeli. And Nyeli was so cute playing with Luke.

Then Athena took her kids to a baby sitter and we headed off to dinner at a really fun Moroccan restaurant called Marrakesh.  The ceilings are all draped fabrics so you get the feeling your sitting in a huge tent.  The tables are really low and you get to sit on these cool couches or poofs.   Then, you eat dinner with your hands.  It was so much fun and the food was really good!  The servers are all in moroccan outfits.  The fabrics were so pretty- and the wood working on the tables were beautiful.  The atmosphere was really fun. And it was actually very affordable.  If you ever go to Portland I would highly recommend it.  Luke was great during dinner and slept on the couch practically the whole time. Athena liked it so much she said she was going to bring Ben back.
 Darren and DL were coming to Portland later that night and going to eat here too.  We couldn't go with them so we went earlier and missed them by a couple of hours.  I was sad we missed them but we had to get to our conference!

Of course the conference was good.  Once again- not as good as Education Week, but well, nothing is.  There were a lot of women from Hermiston there. Here's a picture of all of us, and a bunch of pictures of Ellie, Athena and me.

 Ellie's little buddies were there for Time Out For Girls, and they had the. best. time.  Like seriously!!! It was Ellie and Lydia and Abby. 

Ellie with John Bytheway!!!! Oh my gosh she was so excited to meet him!! She was being hilarious!  She wrote a whole paper about meeting him- I'll have to post it.  Paul has a picture of John Bytheway signed and hanging in his room. Lol.  I am so glad my kids have positive role models to look up to.  Isn't Ellie cute in that hat? I love having a girl. We are best friends:)

That was pretty much the conference.  Darren came over to Portland with our friend Dr. Laury (DL) and we met up and stayed in a fun hotel.  We hung out after the conference and had a great time. I'll post about it tomorrow.