Portland, Oregon

The weekend after I got home from NC, Michael and I flew to Portland for his Marine Corps Ball. I also had to do some training to become a family readiness volunteer. This program is set up to get helpful info to marine wives. I have avoided this program like the plague up until this point. It used to be a gossip ring with several catty ladies. However, the Marine Corps realized this and revamped the whole program. The training was pretty good and I've already sent some info out to my two wives! haha! I've met most of the marine wives in Alaska now and they all seem pretty nice.

These were two of the lovely ladies that sold their souls to the devil too! Heehee...just kidding! Danielle (above) lives in Vancouver, WA and April (below) lives in Anchorage. We are all now family readiness volunteers!

We had a lot of free time in Portland which was super nice. We were supposed to hang out with April and Amy, but unfortunately, they had moved to southern California by the time we got to Portland. Michael and I explored downtown Portland with all of our free time. It's a really cool city.

It rains A LOT in Portland! We were walking around the city all morning and stopped to have lunch. Of course, it is a monsoon outside when we were ready to go! I was too cheap to get a taxi and Michael had to get back to to hotel for his training, so we ran throught the rain to get to a store to buy an umbrella! Hahaha! The line was full of umbrella buyers! Running through the city with an umbrella in the rain was actually a lot of fun and one of my best memories from this trip! :)

Here is a picture of us all dolled up at the ball! The ball was nice, but super small (especially compared to the previous balls we've been to). Also, there was a very different atmosphere at this recruiter's ball compared to the fleet's ball. People just didn't seem to take this as seriously. Michael and I were both very bothered and disgusted by the actions of some of the Marines. I told Michael that I would be fine with him going back to the fleet now. I don't want him to become a career recruiter and turn into one of the disrespectful people we saw at this ball.