The New Year in Portland

For New Years we were able to take a quick trip to Portland to see Jessica and Adam...

And their sweet new kitten Meeka...

Jessica gave us a great Christmas present.  A book about Oregon with pages all clipped with suggestions for what we can do when we come to visit.  We got started right away....

A dinner cruise down the Willamette River (a couple even got engaged on the cruise--we called it, but probably won't be invited to the wedding)



A visit to Pittock Mansion

The requisite stop at voodoo doughnuts for a voodoo doughnut.  



Dinner at Marrakesh, a fun Moroccan restaurant where you sit on the floor--not too old for that yet!



And lastly, pictures with the umbrella man in Pioneer Square with some Hot Chocolate from Starbucks!

Fun times--can't wait to go back!

Thank you Hawaii and husband

Steve and I have been married for 25 years; and for our anniversary Steve gave me a trip to Hawaii--Maui to be exact.  It served a dual purpose, since for the first time in 22 of those years we would have no children in our house for Christmas--Steve knew that wasn't going to go well for me, so it was a good plan to get me out of the house and to the island paradise of Hawaii!

I couldn't believe I would be looking out of my room and seeing this every day!

For 8 glorious days I laid by the pool, slept in the sun, ate yummy food, took in the beautiful scenery, and on occassion walked on the beach...that's about it...I loved every minute of the inactivity.



Perhaps my favorite place at the resort was the serenity pool.  It gave rise to my word for 2012--serenity. 

 We did take a quick trip up the volcano our first morning there.  We had to get up at 3:30 to see the sun rise and it was 37 degrees!  My Hawaii wardrobe didn't prepare me for the freezing temperature but the sunrise was beautiful.  It reminded me of sunrises in Ecuador.

We also took a day and drove the road to Hana--amazing!

We would have seen more glorious waterfalls such as this.....

Had I been wearing the appropriate footwear and not had my feet bathed in non-washable mud oozing between my toes..

we stopped and had the "original banana bread"  delicous!

By the way, this wasn't the car we drove--but I seriously would love to drive this car!



Thank you for a most lovely vacation

blogs and rain boots

So this morning I did a lot of work  and finished my seminary lesson fast, so I decided to reward myself with a little blog reading time :) before I sat down to study for finals :(.  During my blog reading extravaganza I stumbled upon this:


I thought to myself, self I think I'll see about getting me a pair of those fine rain boots. When I looked them up it said you could only buy them on line. I decided I'd think about it, you know all the indecision--what size to buy, would they really be cute, do I really need rain boots with a pink bird on the side, when will I wear them, where will I store them...?

Then I decided what the heck, live dangerously. And I bought myself those fine boots. And a pair of boot liners to boot (hehe). Now I'll be happy and dry in Portland on New Year's. Oh and by the way--free shipping and a discount for using my target card. It was meant to be.

Thank you http://www.practicalparalegalism.com/ for the suggestion!