Biff is happy that he gets to be an indoor cat on a day like today; we have been having on and off torrential downpours with a strong wind from the south making it especially nasty out.
Biff is watching it pour outside with a smug look on his face since he doesn't have to be out there
Rain in the city means snow in the mountains which is where we are heading this weekend to visit our friends John, Marci, and Rowan. I managed to get the car top cargo box on this morning in the 20 minutes it wasn’t raining so I am super pleased with that. Now the skis have a place to be packed on Friday for our trek up to Trout Lake, WA.
Dave and I started a tradition when we first started dating of going for a bike ride to look at the holiday lights. This year we continued that tradition with a trip over to the Portland International Raceway (PIR) Holiday Lights Show. Portland is having unseasonably cold weather right now; yesterday reached a high of 30 degrees with a strong wind making it feel even chillier.
Thankfully, since meeting Dave, I have acquired a fair number of warm clothes to keep up with his winter sports activities. I nearly wore every one of them yesterday; I tallied 3 pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two wool shirts, down vest, gortex jacket, two pairs of gloves, neck warmer, and hat. Dave chose to wear a similar make up of clothes but only wore one wool shirt and his down jacket which seemed to suit him well. Only our toes got cold; I think because our shoes couldn’t possibly accommodate 3 pairs of socks and our little tootsie toes.
Getting suited up!
Ready to ride to the lights
We decorated our bikes with twinkle lights and put on extra wheel lights so we were feeling very festive ourselves. Normally the race track is open to cars to drive around but they secured one day for bikes only. Dave and I were both surprised at the number of kids out there on a night so cold – it was great to see people bundle up and support the bike-only night and show their holiday cheer with friends and family. The track was fantastically decorated; our favorite was the “three french hens” which looked like three giant chickens standing on the Eiffel Tower.
Festive bikes
"Go Blue!"...someone shouted out while riding by
Dave put together a video; a mash-up of videos from both our cameras for you to enjoy. There were some pictures taken but it was risky to keep a hand outside the glove for too long so there aren’t as many as I’m sure we would normally take
… make good neighbors, right? Today we finished building our fence, on the south side of our house. Trimming the persimmon tree last month opened up the south side of the house – lots of light, but not much texture anymore. So we built the fence, with the blessing of our neighbor Hillary that lives to the south of us. Here’s some shots of the fence construction in-progress:
Building the fence. Looking SW, at Hillary's house.
Looking NW, at our house.
Break time before putting up the horizontal slats:
Biff takes it easy after a tough day.
We finished the fence this afternoon. Uncharacteristically cold weather in Portland (30F and 20 mph winds) made for fast work!
Our new fence(s)! Looking SE, towards Hillary's house.
Morgan did a great job designing and positioning the new fences, Dave did a great job measuring twice and cutting once.
It’s a blue moon this month! Two full moons in one month, that is. And that only happens once in a blue moon. We watched last night’s big full moon rise over Josh and Lana’s place across the street, with Matt and Emily’s place next door looking very festive:
Moonrise over Josh and Lana's ...
Dave then saw that very same moon setting over the Fremont bridge during his ride into work this morning:
As Morgan mentioned in the previous post, we hosted Turkey Day dinner at our place. Six people, including Dave’s two nephews, came over to visit early in the afternoon before heading off for less tasty dinners . Later, by 5pm-ish, the gang of ten was assembled and ready to eat. And eat we did!
Dinner was yummy, the conversation was lively, and we had much to laugh about and be thankful for. We seated ten comfortably, maybe a bit cozy. But the old house held up well, and there were no floods in the basement despite the consistent rain throughout the day.
All of that, and we didn’t manage to take one photo! Arrgh – unbelievable. Too busy cooking, talking, drinking, and eating, I guess. Here’s a post-dinner photo of the placemats that Morgan made, which turned out great. They fit the mood just right, and it was nice to have something homemade on the table besides just the dinner.
Holiday festivities continued on Friday. Morgan and I rode Rosie, our Schwinn tandem, downtown to meet Morgan’s mom Linda for the tree lighting ceremony. Pioneer Courthouse Square was packed – a big turnout, helped in part I’m sure by the nice weather. We persisted through the cheesy R&B band that ‘warmed up’ the crowd, and oooh’d and aaah’d as the huge douglas fir was lit up. Check out this video:
After that, we had a drink and shared nachos at the Tugboat Brewpub, one of Dave’s favorites. Then the three of us rode back across the Hawthorne Bridge, Linda enjoying her newly tuned bike with snazzy wheel lights. Check out those pink fenders!
We are hosting Thanksgiving this year, thankfully in our new house which can comfortably fit 10 people! I decided to go the “old fashioned” route this year and actually mail invitations. My favorite part of the invite is that I found a use for one of the many sample paint jars we have from the living room paint project – they got to be used for the leaf print! Go me! Next up was to start sewing placemats for the dinner table. I bought a sewing machine last year and it is just now coming out for some action. I love it. I can’t post pictures of the finished product yet (A) because they aren’t done and (B) because I want to save that for the actual Thanksgiving day post! I can however give a sneak peak of the fabric. . . I know it isn’t the same. . .
Invitation with pressed leaf (address was blocked out for blog so it looks a bit weird)
Our friends Becky and Will threw a fantastic and very bloody halloween party. Huge zombie fans equals lots of blood apparently Dave and I went as Gomez and Morticia Addams (in case you couldn’t tell)
It was a noisy and active morning here at the house. After a summer of picking up rotting pears that were falling from our pear tree 30 feet off the ground we agreed to cut the pear tree down. Feels very wrong in our tree-hugging way of life but it will be replaced with many more fruit trees so I am making myself feel better knowing others will take its place. It was weird watching them cut it down limb by limb to nothing and all of its life went straight into the chipper. We did keep a huge piece (see the last picture) that we are going to have someone carve into a pear in honor of the trees life.
I can’t believe how light and open the backyard feels now. And the house is full of light with the removal of the pear tree and the much needed thinning of the persimmon tree.
I hope our neighbor forgives us; she was not happy about the pear being taken out. She didn’t pick up buckets full of rotting pears every day either.
Time to do some gardening! Lots of light and space, it is like a blank canvas here at 3967 and I can’t wait!
The view of the backyard before the tree murder
Down to the limbs
No more pear or black walnut, only sunshine!
Our house fills with light now that the persimmon has had its haircut
Today is our one month anniversary from our wedding day. Seems a bit surprising that it was only a month ago that we got married. We are both loving the married life and are enjoying the calm after all that craziness that happened prior to the wedding!
In honor of it being a month after our wedding day I uploaded all of the photos people have sent us from that weekend. That is right, all of them are up on the blog. So, let the dog out to pee, make yourself some tea, pull up a comfy seat and take a look through the photos as they interest you. I have organized them by “phase” so that it is easier to digest them all. I tried to organize the pictures themselves so that they were in the right order (since they came from so many people) but I just couldn’t do it, it was making me crazy and nobody wants that. Dave and I took a little honeymoon the weekend after our wedding so there are some bonus pictures from that once you are totally burned out on the wedding pictures.
Thank you so much to Gary, Rachael, Nancy, Roger (dad), Steve and any others that I missed — we are glad to have all of your pictures to share with everyone else.
As most of you can imagine (knowing us) there were extensive spreadsheets involved in finding a photographer for our wedding. After many hours of research and a couple of interviews Dave and I met with Jamie Bosworth. She was perfect! We even interviewed another person just because we felt like we “should” but not because we thought it was necessary — we knew she would be great for our wedding.
Jamie called the other day to let me know that the photos are up on her website and I could barely keep myself from running home (I was out on a walk with my mom and the dogs) but it was worth the wait. They turned out superbly and this is just the start. She blogs about 30 or so photos on her website and then in a couple more weeks all of the 400-some-odd pictures will go up on a website for 6 months for us to go through.
She captured the spirit of the day so well; it is full of color, smiles, laughter, and love. Thank you Jamie!
We spent part of our time in Colorado visiting with Ralph in Ouray. I had never been there, but Thor was right: Ouray is the most beautiful little town I've ever been to! It's like visiting a little village somewhere in the Alps. We rolled in on Wednesday night and spent Thursday climbing at the Ouray Ice Park. I was worried I wouldn't be able […]
. Later, by 5pm-ish, the gang of ten was assembled and ready to eat. And eat we did!
Today is our one month anniversary from our wedding day. Seems a bit surprising that it was only a month ago that we got married. We are both loving the married life and are enjoying the calm after all that craziness that happened prior to the wedding!
