Thanksgiving 2010

This past Thanksgiving was fun. I took B home to meet the fam and it was a great day. There was snow on the ground, which was fun for riding my brother's ATV in the neighborhood. Angie- Your food was AMAZING!!! Thanks for such a perfect day!


Megan's official Turkey Hat!

Carrie and Mathew

Cutie Pie!

Mom and Megan

Bill and Christian talking techy stuff.

My bro carving the turkey.

My sis-in-law Ang and I.

DE-LISH!


Will and his Pumpkin Pie!

on the water

I uploaded these photos a very long time ago! Bill bought a boat with his buddy Joe, and we took it out on the Columbia in North Portland. It was a cold, wet, rainy day, but fun! When the sun comes out, there will be crabbing and fishing! Looking forward to it!

Pics from that day(which was ages ago!!!)

first day off

Monday morning... not a vacation day or holiday and I'm at home. It feels really strange! I started to try and think about things that stress me out, almost like I was making up for stress that I usually experience right now, and then I decided I didn't want to be preoccupied with useless stressful thoughts. I want to experience this day! I hate it when I'm at work and all I want to do is wish the day by, so I can go home. What is that about? I think that will be a new goal. Striving to work a job for the rest of my life that doesn't feel like work...... Working less will be an experience for me. I have been working overtime every week for the last year! Who knew this adjustment would be like this? I bet it gets easier next week. I look forward to finding out.

I was going to celebrate this day with snowboarding, but apparently homeownership had other plans. Bill and I spent the entire weekend working on straightening the garage. I will post pictures soon, but basically the old girl was leaning and on her way down. The most amazing thing (which I'll blog about later), is that my neighbors saw us working on this and all came together to help us complete this crazy job. I felt so much love from all these guys yesterday. It was the equivalent of 80 years of experience, consulting and working as a team with Bill and I to get ol' Bessy straightened.

I'm super excited about the whole thing. I mean the garage itself will be a shop, but there are plans for a kayak building area and ceramics studio off to the side. Of course, this is WAY down the road, but the thought of having MY OWN CERAMICS studio makes me speechless.

Here's a teaser photo of the old girl: (ha! and my old man!)


Luckily, both B and I have the next 3 Mondays off. We will snowboard then. I WILL enjoy today though. Going to fit in a run, and end the day watching the Ducks hopefully win the National Championship. I'm feeling the football these days with the Seahawks amazing game on Saturday.

Happy Monday all!

I can see the light....

This week was a big one for me! I had my last day at my Alzheimer's day program job yesterday and it still doesn't feel real. It was strange to wrap things up there and think about how my life has changed while working there these past 4 years. I can say I was definitely ready for the change, but will miss seeing my clients and friends regularly. I also started teaching 3 new classes this week, while also keeping my 20 hours at the county. Working too much(60+ hours) is totally overrated!!!

My new schedule will start next week with a full day of snowboarding on Monday! I will also have time to exercise and eat right again.... catch up on my blogging....and finally use some of the art supplies my boyfriend bought me for Christmas.... and take my dog for a W-A-L-K.... and on an on....

**sigh**

Life is good!

ps. nice spelling Fred Meyer!

busy day...

As always, I'm trying to stay on top of my blogging, but my life has just been too full of work, fun times and when I have time, sleep.

This is a day from early in November. It started out with Bill drilling a hole in my foundation. I'm so darn stubborn and really insist on having a full size washer/dryer in the basement. After renting a really big drill, Bill was nice enough to do the dirty work. I consider myself to be a fairly strong lady, but I couldn't even hold this thing up. It took at least 45 minutes of drilling and Mr. Bill persistently pushed on, while I was second guessing my decision to voluntarily make a hole in the foundation of my home. It worked out though and since drilling the whole, the plumbing has been updated and a wall has been framed. What did I do to deserve such skilled help?

Here are some pics from the ordeal...





I should also mention that after the hole was drilled, Bill voluntarily went into the crawl space to connect the dryer piping. THIS IS MY WORST NIGHTMARE PEOPLE!!! The thought of all the creepy crawly things that were down there makes me cringe and cry at the same time.

Success!!

After working on the house for hours, we had a pre Thanksgiving dinner at Desiree's house followed by kareoke in North Portland. Des is a cook for sure. She made a fantastic meal with all the fixins!




Had to include a dramatic cheesy photo.

It was a good day!

RoxxyRiley!!

Temoya and Roxxy came up for the weekend and they stopped by the house for a visit. It is always great to see these two. Roxy is growing up so fast and she is pretty much one of the cutest kids I have ever seen. We made a quick run for sushi, since Temojai doesn't have many options in good ol' Oakridge.

My god she is cute!

Oh no! the chopsticks got her nose!

Roxxy eats a lemon-

Mom and daughter-

Beth trying to entertain Roxxy... and Temoya too!

Roxy is pooped!

Breefly in PDX for a visit

Bree and I have been friends since 1999. We met at Washington State University (Go Cougs!). Bree is a reslifer. She is an advocate. She is just an all-around awesome person.

She was in Portland for a conference in higher education. I was so happy to have her as a house guest. We had an opportunity to hang out, catch up and see some Portland night life. We also managed to spend some time at the floatclub before she left town.

Good times.


Bree hanging out in my house.

Silly Beth charging forward in the duck boat.

Betty giving kayaking a go.

This is the duckboat. It is this tiny boat that is supposedly good for sneaking up on Ducks. It is fun to pass by a 50' yacht in this little boat. The big-wig yacht folks love to laugh at this cozy little floating platform, adorned with a broken white plastic lawn chair. I love it.

a little bit of kayak fun....

One last pic before Bree drove back to Seattle. Thanks for the visit Bree! It was a ton of fun!