good luck!!!

dearest n-pickle,
good luck tomorrow night! i hope your body is doing well, and hope you enjoy yourself in the saint-saens performance! i'll be thinking of you!
xox,
asil

anniversaries & birthdays

happy anniversary to my mom & dad (which was yesterday), and happy birthday ace (today)!

tomorrow, happy birthday to dad-in-law, and on saturday, happy birthday to c, mom of l! lots of birthdays in july...

yesterday i went berry picking again, and got more raspberries. i only had an hour to pick, with all the other errands, between my teaching. i want to make a berry crisp or coffee cake to take with us camping this weekend. i'm nervous about camping... i'm worried about bringing enough healthy food & keeping it from breaking/spoiling, and worried about sleeping at night & my nightly trips to the can. also worried about bears, as they're out in droves this season (supposedly) due to a bad berry crop. we're camping with friends at paulina lake, which is near sunriver & bend in central oregon. i've really been looking forward to it the whole summer, as it's one of my favorite places to camp, but i'm just getting a little nervous. i'm so tired, and there's all the grocery shopping & packing to be done...

i didn't get any pictures, but last night we were invited over to friend p & a's house in southeast portland for a bbq to celebrate our friend u being in town for a visit. it was great to see the symphony friends, and there was lots of great food, including an amazing tres leches cake. my contribution was a caprese salad... nice to have an excuse to buy fresh mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes. today, in my semi-comatose state, is a day of teaching, laundry, grocery shopping, & planning, and i'm going to try out the prenatal dvd for the first time. i hope i don't hurt myself!

mr. commuter

j just got a new road bike. he's been biking to work frequently, but had been using his mountain bike, which slowed him down considerably. now he's one of the cool kids, & can easily keep up with his friends! isn't he such a cutie???!

this week is going well, but i'm so tired these days. i don't know if it's just from a busy weekend, or because i'm in the 3rd trimester now... i wake up so tired! and i still wake up about every 2 hours to pee. i think the baby is starting to take up more stomach room, as i can't eat quite as much comfortably as before. i'm still really hungry, but am finding i have to manage how much i eat at one time. it's easy to push it too far, and then i feel sick... :(

i took the kids in for their yearly checkup visit with the vet. poor things - they had no idea what was coming when i put them in their pet carriers all sleepy & early in the morning. all is well, except for the fact that they're really FAT and need to lose weight. they refuse to exercise, so we're beginning to limit their food intake slowly. i hope it helps. they slept the whole rest of monday & all of tuesday, probably not feeling too hot from the vaccinations.

dad-in-law's b'day

on sunday morning, j & i made blueberry pancakes with berries we picked friday night (while grilling) from our backyard, before going to church. afterwards, we headed to pf changs for lunch with j's family, to celebrate his dad's birthday. his dad's birthday is actually tomorrow, but he'll be out of town for a race, so we celebrated last weekend. j's brother b & his wife c were there, along with their adorable son j (the new nephew!). he's really getting big & strong!
after lunch, i tried my first prenatal yoga class. yoga isn't my "thing," but i've been feeling so sore that i thought i should try it out, to see if it helps with the pregnancy aches and pains. there were only two of us there, besides the instructor. i was really sore the next day, but i don't think it was enough to really injure me. i purchased a group of 5 more classes, so i'll try it at least 5 more times. it only meets once a week. i also borrowed a dvd of prenatal yoga from a friend, to use during the week. i think i need to do something besides the walking i've been doing. i haven't been swimming much because the lap schedule changed to early early morning, which isn't so convenient for me. after yoga, i got busy cooking dinner. my dad & brother came over to help j move the rest of the big furniture around, to accommodate the nursery. the moving part went really fast, and it was nice to have more time with my brother. i was really tired by the end of the weekend!!!

hiking

my brother was up here last weekend, visiting from san francisco, and so saturday was a flurry of activity. j went climbing at beacon rock, and we all went hiking in the gorge. first we stopped & hiked to bridal veil falls (see first pic). then we drove to horsetail falls & oneonta gorge to do the triple falls hike. in the 2nd pic you can see the fam in front of horsetail falls (i think...), and then a pic of my dad & me (plus baby bump) in front of triple falls in the bottom two pictures. the hike was a lot for me to do. i felt fine, but my heart rate kept going really fast, faster than felt safe, so i kept having to slow myself down. it was weird. anyway, it took a long time because i was so slow, so when i got back, i had a bit of time to take a shower & pick up j before heading over to my parents' house for dinner. a fun, but long, day!

hancock

last friday, i had a pedicure (thanks, mom!) with my mom, lunch with my parents, and had a haircut later on the same day! so much pampering! my hair is shorter now, just at the shoulders, and it feels healthier. it had been a long time since the last trim...
despite being free from teaching, it was still a pretty busy day. went grocery shopping for the weekend. j & i saw "hancock" early that evening, before grilling dinner. the movie was ok... nowhere near as good as iron man, but still watchable. we still have 5-6 free passes left (per person) to use before the baby comes, so on my list is wall-e & the new batman movie.
it's been a long time since we touched our netflix movies - we need to get watchin! (we've just been a little occupied with getting the house ready for this whole baby thing...)

more picking...

sunday night, for whatever reason, i didn't sleep very well, and was up awake in the middle of the night for four hours, so i slept in late until about 10. i don't usually have any teaching on mondays, so i decided to go pick raspberries, as the ones in our neighbors' yard (that overhang the fence) are ripe. it took me awhile to get organized & up and ready, so i don't think i reached the orchard until high noon. it was really hot out that day, and it took me two hours to fill the two buckets i had. i think it's near the beginning of the season, and it took a bit of searching to find properly ripe berries. anyway, i picked around 12 pounds, & spent the rest of the day washing & freezing them. i was so so sore the next day, so i think it'll be a while before i pick again. i still need to get blueberries, and it would be nice to have lots of peaches or nectarines...
i LOVE summer fruit!
the rest of the week has been pretty uneventful. i've just been busy with teaching, and trying to get the rest of the house set up for the nursery. i tried out the chocolate chip cookie recipe last night, the one that was recently published in the new york times. the cookies turned out really well, but they're huge! 3.5 ounces of cookie dough per cookie - looked like a lacrosse sized ball of dough, but the texture is great. the key is letting the dough sit for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator before cooking, along with sprinkling each cookie with sea salt before baking.

today i have no students, and it will be a pampering day...

weekend chores

on saturday, my mom & i went cherry picking in hood river, as it was the annual "cherry days" weekend. we picked for a couple hours in the morning at alice's orchards, which has dwarf cherry trees that made for easy easy picking. no ladders were required. we each got two buckets full. the pitting took me forever... i think about five hours to wash, pit, and slice each cherry in half. j went climbing in the columbia gorge on the washington state side with friends at ozone, a relatively new climbing area, for the whole day. when he got back, he started working on installing the shelves, but had trouble with the stud finders. for whatever reason, they weren't functioning, so finding where to drill took a long time. the project spilled into the next day, after a leisurely brunch with my parents & cousins s & d from seattle (who were in town via their bikes via STP, the annual seattle to portland bike ride) and required a second trip to home depot (and actually a third, with which jeff took the opportunity to try out a friend's road bike he's thinking of purchasing). we were more organized for the second trip, armed with an actual list, and purchased lots of things (and actually returned a bunch of items that had been sitting in the garage) for small projects around the house. (i can't wait to have the touch dimmer switch for the dining room - it will just be the highlight of the whole summer!!!) the shelves are now in place, and i think i like the setup even better than before. it's easier to access the filing cabinet & printer, and there's less clutter in the kitchen.

...

last friday, j & i went out to dinner at bleu, the restaurant at the western culinary institute, to celebrate our anniversary. you get a 5 course meal for just $25 per person. the only drawback is that the students are the wait staff, & the chefs, and some aspects of the dining experience might be a little lacking in polish. overall, the food was good, and of course we enjoyed the evening. however, my potatoes were barely cooked, and the waitstaff rushed us through every course, asking to remove our plates while one of us was still eating. our reservation was at 6:30, and we were out of there within an hour! we did have comment cards, so we each detailed our observations, and hopefully the students will learn...
anyhoo, being finished so early, i decided we should get an early start on the weekend's chores. we had gotten a bottle of wine at dinner, and as i can (or choose to) drink just 6 oz, j had polished off the rest, so i easily convinced him in his nicely buzzed state to go to home depot to purchase materials for the new kitchen shelves. we needed to move a filing cabinet into the kitchen, which meant that our old shelving unit had to go in the garage, and we had no place for all my cookbooks (at least with easy access), so we decided to install a couple shelves. there's no place like home depot on a friday night - life has gotten SO exciting!

prego.

this is my new pregnancy pillow. i've been having a lot of pain & discomfort sleeping, so i thought i'd give this one a try, as it was recommended by a friend. it came a couple of days ago. i've tried it for two nights, but last night just ended up throwing it on the floor & opting for normal pillows. i'm going to try it this way tonight, using my normal tempurpedic pillow at the top.... perhaps i need to be further along in the pregnancy for it to help. j isn't happy about the pillow - he's jealous. he calls it my new hubby. silly j...

belly pic

this is now just barely a full 26 weeks prego.

whistler '08

we purchased this canadian booty with our remaining canadian money. chocolate tastes better in canada, which is why we got the kit-kats. p & n claimed canadian oreos taste better, too, but we did a taste test, and i don't think they're as good as the newman's organics line. p said old dutch potato chips are amazing, so we got a couple bags to try, and of course i had to get a bunch of coffee crisps...

whistler '08

early in the drive home, we encountered completely stopped traffic (it lasted 2o minutes!!!) due to olympic construction, so we took the opportunity to snap some scenic pics.

whistler '08

here are some hotel pics - one of the hotel, and two of the view from our room.

whistler '08

goofy pictures...

whistler '08

here are the kids in front of our favorite place - the gelato stand. we went every single day. i converted p & n to gelato fans. the gelato came in freshly made waffle cones, which made it all that much more delicious. actually, i only ate it because the baby asked for it... not my fault...

whistler '08

the desserts at araxi were tiny, and n & i were still craving more sweets, so we stopped in the rocky mountain chocolate shop & picked up a couple caramel apples. mine was called "avalanche," with caramel, white chocolate, rice crispies, tiny chocolate chips, & marshmallows. the baby loved it, & so did j!

whistler '08

here's everyone at dinner at araxi with their beverages of choice. i'm not in the picture because i didn't have a beverage because i can't have them right now.... :(

the food was fantastic, and the service was wonderful. our waiter was a trip...

whistler '08

before going to our one Really Nice Dinner of the vacation, and after warming up in the hot tub after getting caught in the rain, we played a round of taboo. p was taking the game a bit too seriously, and j & i kept making fun of him. j had fun buzzing him...

whistler '08

on the 4th of july, j & p went climbing in squamish, while n & i hung out. in my pregnant state, i wasn't really capable of taking advantage of much that whistler had to offer - i felt pretty worthless. we just took it easy, browsing the shops in the village & hanging out at the pool. the next day - saturday- was rainy, so the guys hung out with us in town. we wandered up to the upper village and found this mini golf course. i realized i need golf lessons. we barely finished the course before it started raining hard.

whistler '08

we were meeting our friends p & n up in whistler, but they weren't going to arrive until well into the evening, so we had fun exploring the village in whistler, took a dip in the pool, napped for awhile, & headed out for dinner. we were both craving poutine (canadian dish - french fries with gravy & cheese curds), so we found a place with outdoor seating right in front of the end of the mountain biking trail. this is a video of the end of it - look for the bikers on the dirt hills. the ones in this video weren't going very high, but some of them were quite fantastic to watch. i missed it, but j saw someone do a total back flip off a large jump. whistler in the summer is a mountain biking mecca. lots of young people. fun to watch!

whistler '08

so, we didn't actually end up leaving quite at 6:30am... it was more like 7:20, but still pretty respectable. we hit a little traffic in seattle, and then getting through vancouver took forever. there is no real highway that gets through the city - you're forced to drive right through downtown. they're doing a lot of construction to prepare for the winter olympics in 2010, and it just took forever. it was also slow getting past squamish & up to whistler. the whole trip took 8 hours. i drove the whole way from portland to just a bit past vancouver, then grumpily passed the wheel to j. i should've done it a long time before, but it just seemed like time would go faster if i were driving. i got really sore in the car, but my mood improved after we stopped at a gas station & j got a me a coffee crisp candy bar. a couple of bites wiped my frown away!
we stayed at the westin hotel - it was pretty luxurious.

a's 30th birthday

last wednesday, we were invited over to our friends a & k's house for a birthday bbq honoring a's 30th birthday. happy birthday, a!
when we got home, we had a flurry of packing & preparing to do for our trip to whistler. we were planning on leaving around 6:30am...

birthday #1!

last last sunday, we went to our friends' house for their daughter l's first birthday. they went all out, with a clown, picture perfect decorations, and color coordinated outfits. i swear, c is martha stewart herself - the place was perfectly decorated! it was lots of fun, but it was a really really hot day, and i ended up wilting a little & having to leave early. (not before enjoying the cake & ice cream, though! i wish i could've eaten more - it was sooo good!!) in the pictures (especially if you click on them), you can see l & her mom with their matching shoes, jolly molly the clown, the first cake & candle, and our friend s who was a good sport for jolly molly's face painting.

vacay.

we're on vacation in whistler, bc through monday. havin' a good time!