Seattle Baby!

This past weekend I headed South to the good ole city of Seattle to meet up with some of my best friends from high school (and one college pal). It had been so long since we had all gotten together and we decided to take advantage of the fact that two of the girls live in Seattle. We had a blast together. Catching up, shopping, eating, being tourists and of course...drinking!

Alexa and Kari - as we begin our shopping extravaganza!

All the girls at Pikes Place Market
I was like a giddy little kid as I had never been so close to the space needle before :)

We drove up to a view point, what an amazing view!

This is us, the bests from High school (me, Jess, Megan & Kari)

and with Alexa (college buddy)
Later that night we headed out on the town...we went to 2 different restaurants in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, oh we had such a great time!

maybe we had a little "too" much fun ;)

Overall it was a great weekend with the girls catching up, laughing and just being together :)

Mount Washington - March 16-18, 2007

Remember the free ski getaway we won from the radio? This past weekend we cashed it in and went skiing on Mount Washington. I can hardly begin to describe the great time we had. I think the fact that we didn’t have to pay for it made the trip that much more enjoyable. We caught the 3pm ferry from Horseshoe Bay on Friday and pulled into Nanaimo close to 2 hours later. We stopped at the grocery store after unloading from the ferry to stock up for the weekend and then off we went to find us a mountain. It was about an hours drive until we finally saw the turn off to Mt. Washington to our great relief. We feared we had been going the wrong way as we could not see any mountains and there was not a drop of snow anywhere to be found. Once we took the turn off it was about 20 more minutes of driving straight up hill. We finally saw snow and the beautiful mountain. We were very happy about our nice hotel room, which included a full kitchen, a fireplace, a separate bedroom and nice view. We bundled up and decided to go take a little walk around to see what the grounds held. The mountain was two steps out of the hotels front door and we were excited about the idea of skiing out of our hotel room the following day. The next morning we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit before hitting the slopes, but then spent the majority of the day skiing. I wasn’t sure how I would do because I haven’t skied in quite a while. But after a few runs I got the hang of it again and enjoyed every second of it. Such a great, intense, freeing feeling you get coming down that mountain with the wind in your face and the huge mountain at your back. We had a blast and were surprisingly not too sore the next day. That evening we hit the pub for dinner where we had the favorite burger and beer. Derek ordered a green beer since it just so happened to be St Patrick’s Day. The next day we hung out on the mountain a little bit, ate a beaver tail, and said goodbye. We did a little shopping in Nanaimo and then caught the ferry home. All in all we had an amazing, much needed little holiday. Enjoy the pics!

Mount Washington - March 16-18, 2007

Girls weekend Getaway!

This past weekend, myself and 5 other girls took a little retreat and had a girls weekend getaway. We were able to escape our everyday lives and our studying husbands for a nice peaceful weekend on the Sunshine Coast. Friday afternoon 3 of us drove to Horseshoe Bay and took about a 45 minute ferry ride to Langdale and then drove another hour to Pender Harbour. We arrived at Rosewoods (a guest house of a Regent Alum couple who allow groups to come to their property for a retreat and for a very small amount of money) around 3:30 and were so excited for what our weekend would hold. We walked the grounds a bit and just relaxed and waited for the other girls to arrive. They finally got there around 8:30 and we had a late supper and then just enjoyed a wonderful weekend together. We ate nonstop, enjoyed a soak in the hot tub, watched a movie, had fun conversation and just enjoyed the time. Click below to view the pictures!

February 16-18, 2007 - Girls Getaway

Christmas pics and highlights

A few higlights from our Holiday in Oregon include:
-seeing LOTS of good friends
-staying with Dave and Majell
-gettinng a whole new bathroom set for Christmas (unexpectedly)
-watching Taladega Nights, In Good Company, Oceans 12, Pursuit of Happyness and The Holiday
-Deschutes Brewery tour
-hours and hours spent at Backporch
-Our awesome Christmas gift from Dave and Majell "Free drinks for the time you are visiting"
-Beginning my New York scrapbook
-3 Christmas celebrations!

Feel free to look through the album of pictures

Christmas Holiday 2006

Home at last! Happy New Year!

Happy 2007 everyone! My Holiday has officially come to an end. No more lights, trees, presents, backporch coffee and no more Oregon. It was a great great trip but I must admit, a bit long. We are glad to be home to our own place with our own bed, our own shower and our own space. Today I went back to work and life is now officially back to normal for the most part. The last week or so in Oregon was great. Just as relaxing as ever mostly spent sipping coffee at Backporch. I got to see some old friends, went to a wedding and had 2 more Christmas extravaganzas with Derek's family!! I am very happy to report that our drive home was much more successful than the drive down. We did not hit any snow banks and though we were quite tense driving through the snow over the Mt Hood pass we made it through safe and sound. Below you will find a couple pics of our last days in Oregon. I will try and post the whole album in the next couple of days in case you want to see more of what we did during our break. I hope everyone had an amazing Holiday with family or friends or however you spent it. I am just so thankful for all of the friends we were able to see while in Oregon. Dave & Majell, Chris & Jenni (and Sam), our new friend Joe, Kari, Megan, Marc & Alexis, Shaun, Amber, Rachel and more...I love you all and appreciate your friendship so much.

Kari, Megan and I (just like old times) on top of Pilot Butte in Bend.

At Beth Colclough's wedding

Beth's wedding reception with Jessica and Allison (love you girls!).

opening my new sheets and down blanket from Derek's dad & step mom!!

Our adorable niece and nephew on Alex's new rocket! Aren't they the cutest?!

Christmas and more!

The past few days have been great. Full of friends, family and fun! A couple days before Christmas, Derek and I, along with my dad and a few of his friends went to a Deschutes Brewery tour and tasting. Which, by the way, is free and totally recommend it if you are ever in Bend.

This is beers number 3 and 4 :)

On Christmas eve my sister and her husband came into town at last. We went to a Christmas eve Candlelight service with the fam...

...and then out to Pine Tavern for a late dinner

Christmas morning arrived at last and the family gathered to open presents and spend the day together.


My wonderful husband got me the new iPod shuffle!!!! I am so excited about this. It is so cute and compact and perfect for anything.

The rest of Christmas day was spent with the fam. We hung out at home, went running with Annie, had a big Christmas feast around 2:00 then we all went to a movie. The kids saw Night at the Museum and the adults saw The Holiday. SO SO good. After the movies we had a gift exchange and Derek and I scored some great DVDs and a wine opener set. Exciting! Later that night as we gorged ourselves on dessert we played a fun game of Cranium that lasted way too long. But we had a blast.

Well, Christmas has come and gone, the rain has finally stopped falling, and the retail return lines are ridiculous. Exhale! Derek and I went shopping a lot of the day yesterday and last night we were treated to dinner at Zydeco by Dave and Majell. A splendid meal. Now I sit again at Backporch coffee just hanging out and waiting for the day to officially begin. I am meeting my friend Amber in about a half hour and then later today meeting with Megan and Kari. Oh how I love my friends :)

just hanging out in Bend

I can't say that a lot has been going on these past few days, cause nothing really has. It has been peaceful and restful and I won't lie...I am kind of bored. But I need to cherish these moments cause in a couple weeks when I am sitting back at my desk at work, I will miss this. The majority of our day has pretty much been spent at Backporch sipping coffee and hanging out with our friends. The place is such a social hang out. You stay there long enough and you are bound to run into at least 2 or 3 people you know. It's great. Today I was even let behind the counter to play a little bit. Good times. I am learning that when it comes to my job, I have it quite nice. Poor Dave and Majell work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. They come home at night and are just wiped out. They hardly have enough energy left to fix and eat dinner and then they are off to bed around 9:00 every night only yo get up and do it all over again. They need a break, big time. Such is the life of owning your own business I guess.

We have seen my family a handful of times and 2 nights ago Derek and I went to see Pursuit of Happyness, I highly recommend it. Oh man, it was SO SO good. Go see it!

Yesterday and today I got to get behind the counter of Backporch coffee and experience it from the other side. They put me to work and we had a good time. Although I was confused while counting out change to not see loonies and toonies! Tonight Majell is having a little birthday party with friends and I am very much looking forward to seeing old friends and eating dessert :) I have pumpkin cheesecake tarts in the oven as we speak.

The next few days will be filled with hanging with my mom (some movie watching, shopping and scrapbooking) and then the Christmas festivities will begin! It still doesn't feel like Christmas time and I am beginning to wonder if it will at all this year. But...Merry Christmas!