I can't believe it's been so long since I last made an entry. We have been soooo busy lately, one more week until we have a bit of a slow down. Until then, here are some pictures from our last weekend. We were in Seattle for the Livestrong Challenge and decided to take in a Mariner game while we were there. We came home exhausted, but had a good weekend.

The highs and lows of the Portland area

Yesterday Josh and I took advantage of the sun and each took half days at work. Which for him means getting off at 10:30, and 11:00 for me. We ate lunch and headed to Multnomah Falls for the day. We have been there before but never really exploring the area together. We took the advice of a couple of my co-workers and did the scenic drive. We ended up seeing some beautiful places on the way to Multnomah Falls including Horsetail Falls, my favorite. Eventually we made our way to the main event. We decided to walk up to the bridge, not having been up there in years. I forgot how beautiful it is up there. From there we decided to keep hiking up, and see how far we could go. We didn't plan on hiking yesterday, I was in jeans, and we had no water, but off we went. It took us a while (well it took me a while, while Josh waited) but we made it up to the top. It was the most perfect 75 degree Oregon day and we had quite the view from the top.

After quickly making our way back down we got some ice cream and sat outside and relaxed before heading on our way.

We kept on the scenic drive and headed up to Crown Point and just took in the day. It was beautiful.

After heading back to the Portland area we decided to head downtown since the Rose Festival started and it was free for opening day. First we decided to treat ourselves to a nice sit down dinner and headed to McCormick and Schmick's for some wonderful salmon dishes. then we wondered into the festival watched people play games, ride the rides, and Josh attempted to win me a prize at the basketball game, knowing fair well it's a rip off... 5 bucks was all we spent, with no luck. The prize we were going for was a giant stuffed banana... who wouldn't want that, come on now! As we headed back to the car at the Smartpark we had a bit of a scare... we were just about to pass Buffalo Wild Wings on 4th when the police showed up and were going after an obviously drunk bald man, while a customer at BWW tried to hold him. Just then the man that was trying to hold him for the cops, came running back to his table and yelled "he's got a gun!"... our hearts skipped a beat. We're not sure what happened but there were no shots fired, we climbed up the stairs of our parking garage and peered over the edge from inside to see 2 men arrested being thoroughly searched... nothing happened but definitely not settling on a sunny Friday downtown. We saw the sunset as we drove home and quickly sat down from exhaustion. It was overall a great day

Pacific City Beach trip

Yesterday Josh and I headed to Pacific City for the day with 5 of our friends to celebreate Ryan's birthday as well as the return of the sun!

Headin up the hill

View from part way up the hill

The end of a beautiufl day

Excuse me, what is your poo policy?

Yesterday we took advantage of the weather and headed to the coast for the day. We went directly to Seaside, taking advantage of the Nike outlet as well as a couple other before heading to Cannon Beach for lunch at Mo's, always gotta hit up Mo's. The weather was beautiful the whole tide there and mostly clear all afternoon.

After lunch we headed to Oswald West National Park to take the trail to Short Sands beach, the trail itself was very nice. It was absolutely gorgeous, the cove made the wind die down a bit and there weren't too many people, mostly just surfers. We walked the length of the beach and just sat and enjoyed where we were. We were on no schedule so it was nice to just sit in the sun on the beach.



Once we decided to finally get up we headed back to Cannon beach to go out to Haystack Rock. The tide was out so out we went and climbed right on the rock. Neither one of us could remember the last time we actually stepped foot on Haystack itself. As we climbed up to where the sign says "do not pass" or whatever it says we just stopped and a bunch of seagulls flew overhead, Josh freaked and said it was time to get off the rock before we got hit. We got back down onto the smaller rocks that surround it and hopped from one to the next until we couldn't go any further without getting in the ocean (which we were not wanting to do). We stayed on one rock for quite a while as I waited to get a picture that I wanted, waiting for the crazy tourists to get out of the shot, but they kept going and going, I figure they were the type of people you see on the news that get stuck on the rocks and don't know how to get back. Anyway, they never got out of the shot entirely so we decided to just head back after a couple different pictures. Just then you could hear the torpedo sounds and see the droppings headed across the water towards us... I picture a scene from Pearl Harbor (or any other war movie for that matter) where they just drop one after another through the air... Then I hear Josh... "is that shit?" Yep, I said, there's some about a centimeter from my shoe. "No," he says, "on my back"... yep, right on the back of his jacket. Of course I brought 2 sweatshirts and two jackets, Josh brought the one he was wearing. We decided once you get pooed on the day is over.

We were planning on staying for the sunset but the clouds had moved in so much it wasn't going to be much of one anyway. And rather than asking what a resturants poo policy is for dinner we would just head home, stopping at Camp 18 for dinner (leaving the jacket in the car) and came home after a mostly perfect day at the beach.

Spring is here!

I took a half day of work today and ran some errands on the way home. I bought some flowers and planted them in some pots I got from my mom's moving give-aways. I hope they live. The backyard looked good more than a year ago after Josh and I completely re-did the entire thing... now not so much. Weeds keep coming back, the construction workers trampled the flowers, laid fence slats on the them, and then that whole truck stuck in our yard incident. (In case you hadn't heard, this last winter at 5 am we were woken up to a cop pounding on our front door to tell us that someone slid out on the street behind our house and went up over the curb, stopping in our yard, on the flower beds, and taking out 2 fence panels)

Lining our porch

Needless to say, I've given up on our backyard... no one can see it anyway. The planters I did today will be on the front porch where we can get our HOA's money worth and let them water them. Either way, I like the flowers.

Taking Advantage of the Sun

Over the past month it seems spring has really kicked in here in the great northwest. Josh and I are really tying to take advantage of sunny days when they start showing up so that when the summer gets here and it's too hot to do anything outside we can know we took advantage while we could! We've gone for walks, had lots of bbq's, hit up the Saturday Market, and just last week went to the Japanese Gardens after being inspired by friends. It was a beaufitul 80 degree day, Josh and I met there after work and wondered around enjoying the beautiufl gardens. Here are some pictures I took.

Josh barely made it through

Such a nice day!

We're online!

Hello to all our friends and family out there. A few of our friends have blogs and we really like it so thought we would create one for ourselves. Amy hopes to update it fairly regularly so stay tuned as we get used to this. We hope to use it to let people know what we're up to and post pictures of our adventures. We hope you enjoy!