Studio Ghibli Film Festival

Cory knew that the kids really enjoyed movies by Studio Ghibli and found that OMSI was hosting a film festival, so we all bought tickets for a few movies and made a day out of it.  The first movie we watched was "Kiki's Delivery Service."  Everyone liked it, but I thought it was kind of boring and actually fell asleep in the middle.  But the festival was still really fun with the showing in the huge IMAX theater and lots of people all dressed up.

After the movie, we went out to a late lunch / early dinner at Wolf's Head Burger House which I had heard good things about.  It was kind of a crappy looking food cart, but dang, the burgers were amazing!  After eating, we went to a nearby record store and did some browsing/buying.  Then headed over to Powell's in Beaverton which we'd never been to before since we were in the neighborhood.

After some shopping, we headed back into Portland for a beer at Grand Fir Brewing which also had been on my list.  Unfortunately, we ended up behind a train which stopped on the tracks and cut us off for about half an hour!  So by the time we got to the brewery, we only had time for one beer, but that was fine.  After the beer, we headed back to OMSI for our second movie, called "Grave of the Fireflies."  This movie was actually pretty amazing; one of the best movies I've ever seen.  I mean, the topic is horrible, but the message was powerful and I've never seen that topic (post-war Japan) picked up as a storyline before.