stranded...

At this very moment in time on Monday afternoon I am sitting at a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon. That's right, Portland. As you well now we flew down to Oregon last Wednesday to then drive to Eugene and spend American Thanksgiving with my family (more details and pictures on that to come at another time). Anyway, we drove back to Portland and planned to fly out around 4ish on Sunday. That was quickly changed when we checked out flight status online Sunday morning and noticed our flight had been canceled. Apparently it has been dumping snow in Vancouver and they can't keep the runways clear. We were a little bummed cause we were ready to get home but thought it would be fun to stay another day. We rebooked the flight for today at 1:30 to only find out this morning that yet again our flight was canceled. Derek and I spent a long time trying to decide if we should just rent a car and get home. However since all of the I-5 in Northern Washington is covered with snow as well we decided driving might not be the safest route. We are scheduled to fly out tomorrow morning at 9:20am and have decided that if it is once again canceled then we will rent ourselves a nice SUV and get home! We are sad to be missing the snow in Vancouver but from the looks and sound of it, I think it will be around at least another few days.
The funny and ironic thing about all of this is that we had originally said we were not going to come for Thanksgiving because of the time and energy it took to drive down to Oregon, that is when my sisters bought us plane tickets. But if we would have just driven in the first place we would have been home yesterday. Oh man! Derek has a lot of school work to do and that has been difficult to accomplish but we are trying to make the best of the situation and we have been enjoying time with Derek's sister and her family. And last night we got to go out to McMenamins with Dan and Amanda.
One day soon we will be home in Vancouver again only to come back to Oregon in less than 3 weeks.

Baby Shower fun!!!

On Sunday my friend Grace and I threw a baby shower for our dear friend, Jess. Grace and I had a blast coming up with fun ideas and planning, planning, planning! We were so giddy and had so much fun with it all. The shower went great and Jess is now stocked up for baby! Take a look at the pictures.

Derek and I leave tonight to go to Oregon for American Thanksgiving. We have been blessed by my big sisters with plane tickets from Vancouver to Portland. We are looking forward to it. One more hour of work and then I get to go home and get to the airport! Lots of Thanksgiving pictures to come. Happy Thanksgiving!!!

(with this new web album thing, I think I am going to phase out my Photo Blog. It will still be there but will be more of an archive--FYI).

November 19th, 2006 - Jess's Baby Shower

Yucky icky Vancouver water!

I was going to post a blog about the "happenings" with our water here in Vancouver (for all you non-Vancouver folk who do not know about this already) but instead I will let you read one of my friends Blogs who has already done the work for me :) Thanks Grace!
Go here and read about it. And yes, feel very very sorry for us :(

Update: Read the latest article in Vancouver Sun written today

Last night Derek and I went to the Real Canadian Superstore to go grocery shopping. It was, surprisingly, an okay trip as the store was pretty empty and the check-out lines were short. As we were unloading our cart at the check-out stand I noticed something on the floor that was purple. As I got closer I realized it was a folded up $10 bill (canadian-hence the purple). I awkwardly picked it up, not knowing what to do, held it up to the cashier and said "uh, someone dropped this", his response was "well, you can keep it!". You would think my reaction to this would be "Alright!! Ten bucks! How shall I spend it?!?!" but for some reason I felt strangely guilty, like I had just taken candy away from a kid. I looked around at everyone to see if I could notice anyone with a "I lost ten dollars" look on their face and slowly slipped the bill into my pocket. It is now in my wallet where it will be safe and sound from my husbands recent out-of-control spending habits ;)

Now this is Vancouver!

Our fall got off to a bit of a late start this year as we didn't see much rain until last week. This is quite unusual for Vancouver where we are used to rain for at least 9 months out of the year. And though we got some rain last week, I would have to say that as of today, I can confirm that fall is officially here to stay! It is POURING outside right now, there is standing water everywhere and the wind is crazy howling. I was beginning to get concerned with all the blue skies and sunshine we were experiencing but now I can rest easy. This is the Vancouver we all know and love. Welcome back friend :)

The Departed

Last night Derek and I went to see The Departed in the movie theatre. Which, first of all, is a huge deal because we NEVER go see movies in the theatre, it is so gosh darn expensive up here. We weren't neccesarily dying to see this movie, but we were in need of a good date and it sounded like a fun thing to do on a cold fall night. It was a good movie, an action, quite violent, but with Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson in a Martin Scorsese film, you can't go wrong. It was a pretty long movie and about 2 hours into it the sound went out. No sound whatsoever for probably 5-10 minutes. This was annoying and awkward and it was near the end, so it wasn't a good time for the sound to go. But it did come back on and we watched the end in full sound. After the movie though we noticed people who were in our theatre lining up and we thought "reimbursement?", we of course got right in line and got two free movie passes!! All because the sound went out for 5 minutes. So eventhough we weren't too happy to pay $12 each for a movie, it's like we got a 2 for 1 and it was totally worth it!
The movie was good, a lot of swearing, a bit long, a bit violent, but very good, I would recommend it if you are into that type of movie. Although I am sad to say that Mr. Scorsese will probably not be earning his oscar on this one either.