The stars aligned and we all had the day off today, so we decided it was high time for a family adventure!

(I standardly don’t work on Fridays as it’s typically my “how did this house get like this AGAIN and why is there no food in the fridge and time to whip this place back into shape” day. The Husband gets every other Friday off because he works for a non-profit. And the kids were off today for their first day off in what I’m calling “No-School November.”

[Seems as though Portland Public Schools is doubling down on their “classroom time doth not an education guarantee” gamble and are requiring our kids’ presence for about half the days this month. Since The Boy is currently watching movies in two of his classes, I’m not even sure that the half he IS present is making that much of a difference.])

Anywho, we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and headed out into the Columbia River Gorge to check out a cute little town called Hood River.

Of course, this being Oregon, we had to stop en route for a quick hike and one of the ubiquitous waterfalls.

We’ve taken to calling them “Nature Walks” because for some reason the “H” word makes them both start whining and complaining, although once they get out there, they usually come around.

(How can you NOT smile when you’re surrounded by a glowing forest?)

It was a super easy “nature walk” since it was only about a mile and it was paved. Look at that leaf! It’s bigger than my head! Along the way, The Boy astonished me with a detailed geology lesson of exactly how the gorge was created and The Girl answered The Husband’s brain stumpers before I’d even started figuring out whether the red ball or the blue ball cost a dollar, so maybe that school is teaching them something after all.

Hood River was great! Shockingly (or not, given the places we tend to visit), it’s littered with breweries, so we quenched our nature-walk-produced thirst with some brews for both grownups and munchkins.

There was also some pretty amazing wood-fired pizza!

Then we strolled around downtown and did a little bit of shopping. The Husband bought a rocket (the model kind), The Boy got the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, The Girl got a mini notebook and pen, and I scored an awesome vintage picture/thermometer combo at Goodwill and a new family game.

We rounded up all this awesomeness with a mini-nature walk down by the river.

And, bless his heart, an immediate cracking open of the latest book in a beloved series.

Forced family fun for the win!