Christmas weekend, Saturday

Last weekend my brother, Mike, flew in from New England during his winter break at the University of New Hampshire. We got to spend a fair amount of time together during his four-day visit.

We started Saturday with a visit to Beverly McGhee, my hairdresser, to drop off her Christmas present: peanut butter balls. From there, it was to Francis Restaurant in North Portland with Mom and Mike. (Biscuits and Gravy is the best!) When we got to Mom's house we shared the exciting news about our adoption plans with my brother. After giving plenty of time to talk about it, we headed to Pittock Mansion.

Unfortunately, the website has a better view than we ever saw that afternoon. The place was crawling with all types of last-minute holiday sightseers. At first we parked nearly a mile away but then decided against taking the tour. It was probably the best decision: the wait for the 25-minute tour would have been more than an hour. All said, the problem with the citywide Chrismas tradition of visiting the Mansion is that it's citywide.

Since we were up in the West Hills, we settled for a drive around Washington Park. Though it was probably not the best place to get in the Christmas spirit, we stopped at Portland's new Holocaust Memorial.

We finished out the evening with a trip down Peacock Lane, Portland's traditionally most-festive street.