Happy Halloween!

This weekend we were visited by our niece, Brandon, who lives up in Washington. She didn't have school on Friday and was able to come visit from Thursday to Saturday evening. She spent Friday with me at school participating in all the fun kindergarten Halloween activities. At the end of the day I asked her what she thought about it. Her reply was, "Those kids are SO naughty!" So insightful! Friday afternoon was spent buying candy to hand out to all the trick-or-treaters and carving a jack-o-lantern to place in the driveway to let people know we had candy! Brandon dressed up as Cleopatra, she loves anything Egyptian! She was quite a hit, everyone she visited felt honored to have the ancient Egyptian queen on their doorstep.
Saturday morning we woke up and took a lovely walk through the park and to the donut shop! What a treat I got when I found my donut was fresh out of the oven! YUM! Well worth the walk in the rain! The rest of the day was spent around the house and in the hot tub but all too soon the time came to take Brandon to be picked up by her Nana. Hard to tell who had more fun!! Hope your Halloween was "Spook"tacular!

Cozy fires are hard to beat!

The weather is changing and we are taking advantage! The leaves are changing and painting a backdrop of bright orange, red and yellow. It's beautiful! The cool evenings have been spent sitting by cozy fires sipping hot apple cider and cocoa. I love the tastes, sights and smells of fall. We are enjoying the opportunity to experience the seasons change. The trees are in the front yard of a home down the street from ours, they are so beautiful! The last one is our front yard. We spent hours outside raking, blowing and cleaning out the gutters only to have twice as many leaves fall throughout the week! I think we might leave it until the weather gets drier....so sometime around mid-May we'll clean it up! ;)

C's 30th Birthday!

C turned 30 today! Earlier in the summer we had a birthday celebration with friends and family so this weekend was pretty low key. Janet and Grandma Gail flew up from California and spent the weekend with us. We had a wonderful weekend walking around the neighborhood and taking Grandma to the park and the mall. The weather was beautiful all weekend and at night C kept us cozy with a warm fire. Janet made C's favorite birthday treats, peanut butter squares and a pizza cookie and we had his birthday dinner at P.F. Chang's which turned out to be much better than we thought it would be. His day was happy and I think he is looking forward to "many more!" Happy 30th Birthday!!

My New Kindle

I got this for my birthday and couldn't be more excited about it. Thank you Tara!

Enjoying our new home

We are now officially Oregonians. We have our new Oregon drivers licenses, new Oregon license plates and we are registered to vote in the state of Oregon. That should prevent us from future hand gestures as we drive "California Style" on the freeway. I can't even begin to describe the difficulty in slowing all the way down to 55 mph while driving to work! We do take the speed limit more seriously up here being that the fines are the 8th highest in the country and the highway patrol are out in force. It has been 2 1/2 months since making our sojourn to the north. C is slowly aclimating into the Portland office and T continues to press on teaching a classroom full of kindergartners at her new school. We love being home in the evenings and on the weekends and have spent a lot of time enjoying our yard, hot tub and new couches! These photos are some we found and wanted to post from various activities around the house. One of the photos is of a little toad that hopped out to explore his new surroundings after T cut down a fence full of ivy. He had been stuck to the side of fence and seemed to feel a little too exposed once the ivy was gone.. He was a cute little guy so we couldn't resist the photo op. The tomatoes are ones that came from our garden. They have been delicious, but we don't think we'll get many more. The roses in our rose garden are absolutely beautiful and so fragrant as well. T loves clipping them and putting them in bud faces around the house. The other photos is of C enjoying lunch out on the back deck one sunny Sabbath afternoon.

New Couches!!

Time to celebrate!! Our first big furniture purchase has finally arrived in the form of brand new couches!! We are thrilled and have spent quite a bit of time enjoying them already! The circle couch is called a "Cuddler" but I affectionately refer to it as the "Snuggle couch." Enjoy the video!

Visitors!!

We love having visitors!! We had long been anticipating a visit from Kirk and Lindsey and the day finally arrived! T picked them up from the airport and introduced them to Portland by night. The following day, they were able to pick up C who was just arriving back from San Francisco. T had to work so the three of them spent the day touring a little bit, running errands and assisting in the delivery of our new Snuggler couch (which we LOVE!!). Friday was spent hanging out around the neighborhood. T took Friday off and we had a wonderful day just enjoying the weather and company. We made it to downtown Portland for lunch at a wonderful restaurant near Powell's Books. Saturday found us on an adventure attempting to reach a hidden waterfall near Multnomah Falls. We started off on a trail which soon led us to a creek. We, of course, couldn't stop there, so we decided to take off our socks and shoes and go wading. Mind you, the outside temp was barely 60 and the water temp was so cold it made our legs tingle, but on we pushed. K and C were very brave (or crazy!!) and continued on all the way to the waterfall. Lindsey and T, however, decided to call it quits and make our way back. Eventually we thawed out and enjoyed our lunch at the picnic area by Multnomah Falls. That evening we made it over to Whole Foods, a wonderful gourmet grocery store that has incredible samples on the weekends! Afterwards, we relaxed in the hot tub and made the most delicious tacos (and not so delicious brownies...) Unfortunately, Sunday came all too soon which meant K and L had to head home. BUT, we are really looking forward to the next visit!!! We love you guys!