Happy Birthday Marie and Rebecca

The whole gang went down to Portland, Oregon for the long weekend to celebrate Marie and Rebecca's birthday.

Friday afternoon Mardi and I drove down to Portland stopping into Vancouver to visit Mardi's cousins Jason, Maggie, Jennifer, Jeff and Little Maggie. Thanks guys. Great to finally meet you.

A benefit of visiting Portland is there is no sales tax. So spending most of the weekend shopping downtown was easily justified. It's surprisingly fun to watch Marie and Mardi shop. Saturday night we had drinks at a bar called 750ml and dinner at a really cool restaurant called Blue Hour. Thanks Hank for the great choice of restaurant. The rest of the evening we spent at Aura a night club near that huge book store. The barman there really liked me. These sort of things always happen to me. I was buying a round of drinks which came to around $35. I handed him what I thought was two $20 notes but I in fact handed him a $100 and a $20 and promptly told him, keep the change. When last call came around I went to get that last beer and the barman told me it was on him. I remember bragging to Henry the barman game a free drink. From now on I am going to get the change back and then tip. I blame the bloody "same size, same colour" currency. That's right I spelt colour with a "u".

Sunday morning Mardi and I looked after Shy's two girls Tom and Danni while he and Grace were pampered at the day spa. The girls help me shop for jeans and t-shirts at Diesel. That afternoon some of the more crazy members of the gang jumped out of a perfectly functioning airplane for shits ang giggles. I have no desire to skydive.

Sunday night we spent the night at Mardis' grandma's place in Vancouver. Very funny watching old videos of Mardi as a little kid. As soon as we arrived at my parents place in Australia out came the naked baby photos.

The Birthday Girls. Happy Birthday lots of love Mardi and Dion aka Mion.	Dee Dee and Babs having a fab time.
Tom and Grace gettin' funky.	My lovely fiance and I.
Tom and Danni out shopping with Mardi and I.