Portland

Last week we gave some friends a ride to the airport which is an hour away and since we were right in Portland we decided to make a day out of it!

Eating breakfast at Sherri's-- Oregon's version of Village Inn, only not as good.

After buying some new furniture at Ikea, we went to Powell's City of Books.

And of course, several people from Greenpeace were on every corner getting ready to pounce on anyone that walked within 10 feet of them.

(But we hate the planet so we avoided them nicely)

Anyway...

We had told our friend who manages Powell's that we were coming and look what we found when we got there!!

So of course we had to get a picture!

What's that? You see some weird green blob behind me?
Oops.
Ok, ok, we may or may not have been standing in front of a green screen inside the store

But Powell's City of Books was SO cool!!
It is the largest independent new and used book store in the world and is filled with 5 floors of these bookshelves.
Oh, and it takes up a WHOLE city block.
So cool.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and bought a few cheap books to add to our library.
After Powell's we went to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
It's mostly set up for kids but they had some cool stuff, including but not limited to:

Astronaut head shots

The 3rd most complete T-Rex named Samson.

And also an exhibit of baby development at every stage of pregnancy.
It was like Body Worlds but only with fetuses.
It was very cool and kinda creepy.
We ended up spending 4 hours at OMSI and still didn't get to see and do everything.
It was a cool place, but is probably a lot more fun with kids.

Japanese and Rose Gardens

Portland is called "The City of Roses" for a reason.

They have roses everywhere...

especially at the International Rose Test Garden.

We went there last week and they were in full bloom!

There were so many colors, sizes, varieties and fun names.

We love love love all the green up here.

my favorite:

If you happen to be a flower enthusiast and want to see ALL our pictures from the rose test garden, you can see them here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/loweheather1/InternationalRoseTestGarden?feat=directlink

The rose test garden is in Washington Park which has several other things to do and see, so we also went to the Japanese Garden while we were there.

It was very pretty and peaceful, but not worth $9.50 a person!

(luckily we got in for free)

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Heat + humidity - air conditioning = sweaty boys and girls.

Until recently the weather has been perfect here.

Then it decided to get all high and mighty and make us sweat it out.

Now, compared to Utah, the temps aren't that high...

low 90's and high 80's...

but it's unbelievable what humidity does to the heat.

Plus lack of air conditioning means no relief! 

This is a common sight in our place.*

A cold treat (ice cream or popsicles or plain old ice), a big fan blowing, and a spray bottle for spritzing is mandatory.

Also required: 2 showers a day-one in the morning and one before bed, minimal clothing, as little movement as possible, staying up late to feel some cool air.

Building our new coffee table and bookshelf inside the other day? 

Bad, bad idea.

Cooking?

Brutal.

Getting off the leather couch while being sweaty and sticky?

Painful.

*like our matching striped seat and leather couch?

Yeah, us too.

Seaside

So back in April, when it started to warm up and the end of Chris' first year was in sight, we made a list of everything we wanted to do in Oregon and surrounding areas.
The list originally had 25 things on it but it has grown a little since then.
Since coming back to Oregon, we have been working on crossing things off our list.

Our first choice off the list was the beach.
We live about an hour from the coast and the drive out there is filled with trees and is gorgeous!

We decided to go to Seaside since we had never been there before and have heard good things about it.

When we first pulled into town, it was super foggy and we thought our day was ruined but luckily the fog left after not too long so we were able to enjoy the beach.

We stayed in our hoodies for a while because the wind made it pretty chilly.

The water is so cold it hurts to be in it until your legs and feet go numb.
Chris got really brave (or crazy?) and took his hoodie off and got in all the way up to his neck.
Then we did what all beach-goers do, laid out on our towels and warmed up!
It was by far the warmest day we've ever had at the beach and we loved it.
After we got bored at the beach, we walked around the cute town of Seaside and visited a lot of little shops with lots of random stuff.

This store had 170 different flavors of salt water taffy.

It was crazy!

We loved Seaside and will definitely be going back!

Utah Pics

Since 2 months worth of activities is really hard to remember and post about...here are a few pictures instead.

They definitely don't cover everything, but here are a few snippets of our long trip.

My mom's reaction when we surprised her for Mother's Day!

(unfortunately taken on my crappy phone)

So excited :)

Tried my hand at edible arrangements for Mother's Day

My brother-in-law and niece on Memorial Day
(love that she holds onto his ears)

Visited the flooded Murray Park.

After many fun years on what we called "The Ghetto Blaster" we said goodbye.

(only after welcoming our decade newer, not so ghetto, new boat)

crazy Utah weather

The girls and Grandpa

My turn

Crik is always the favorite Uncle
(love the way she is looking at him)

My brother graduating as a Correctional Officer

Cut 7 inches off this long mane (and love it)

Had some really great times boating

My other brother put a human life jacket on his dog so she could swim with him out on the lake worry free.
It was so cute and quite hilarious.

All my sores falling off after getting better from H, F&M
Mouse over for a super gross close-up.

Twinners.
(entranced with Stuart Little 2)

Spent the night with Savannah while my sister and her husband celebrated their anniversary somewhere and we had WAY too much fun.

Getting her (and Chris) to bed was not so easy.

Having fun while she brushed her teeth.

Bed head much?
Right after she woke up.

We had such a great time in Utah, and miss everyone already.
It is hard to love two different places SO much that are so far away from each other.
It breaks your heart no matter where you are leaving, but it is so exciting to go to whichever place you are going.
It is always so bittersweet!

Hiking

After recovering from H, F&M (hand, foot and mouth disease) we decided to take advantage of the warm weather and working limbs. (and voices)

We decided to hike to Red Pine Lake up Little Cottonwood.

And this is what we got when we neared the top:

Snow, really? In July?

Pretty bizarre feeling to be in a t-shirt and shorts and comfortably walking around in on snow.

(I wish that's what winter was really like)

We tried hiking on it for a while until it started getting too soft and we starting slipping, sliding and falling through with most steps.

So we didn't actually make it to the top (darn) but we still saw some very pretty views.

The next day we still had hiking fever so we went up Ferguson Canyon.

It felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie with all the crazy huge rocks and cool scenery.

We prefer having hiking fever to H, F&M disease any day!