July update

Okay so I have been just awful at updating this lately. We've been busy trying to get out there and meet people and enjoy the amazing weather so the past month has just flown by! It's hard to believe the fall tax season is almost here and Victor is almost 30!!

Here's a quick recap of our July since my last post in the beginning of July.

A few weeks ago I went to Portland Meadows with some people from work. We dressed up like we were going to the Kentucky Derby and had a great time. There were even a few other twenty somethings dressed up as ridiculously as we were so that was fun. Here are some pictures from that night.

These are my bets - I had no idea what I was doing and didn't win anything

Did I mention it was $1 beer night? :)

 Peanut Butter also had her first bath in the new house. She was not very happy about it!

Our neighbor has been putting in some kind of concrete path that we can't quite figure out. Its been a multi-week project that has the dogs quite upset. But it looks like hopefully they will be done soon? Can't wait to see what the end product looks like.

Then a few weekends ago we had a pretty eventful Saturday. We started the day off with hitting the driving range. I am somewhat determined to re-learn to play golf and not be totally embarrassed. This was day one at the driving range but I've been back a few times and even went to a Ladie's Night clinic. This week I have a networking event at a driving range that should be interesting!

After the range we went in search of some lunch and ended up at a street fair on Mississippi Avenue. This is a street in Southeast Portland that we are big fans of. We've been to a few restaurants on that street a few times and decided to check out the street fair and see what it was all about. It was crazy! 

We got there towards the end of it and it was still totally packed. All these booths are local photographers, crafters, etc. and then there were also food carts and other booths for local businesses.

This is a booth we saw that was selling a traditional cheese bread you find in Brazil. We went back twice because Victor liked them so much. But I couldn't get him to try to talk to the girls at the booth in Portuguese :) I think they might be selling these in some stores in town, but they will never compare to Rosa's homemade!

So we finally got some food from some trucks and it was AMAZING! I had a korean pork belly wrap that was to die for. It didn't last long enough to take a picture of :)

Victor got this catfish po boy that was awesome. My first reaction was fish from a food truck in 80+ degree weather? Gross. But it was the best catfish we had ever had. Now we don't eat a ton of catfish, but after living in the south, I thought what we had there was as good as catfish could probably get. WRONG. This was awesome. Here's Victor digging in...

We will have to go back to these trucks at some point!

After the food trucks we went to see the Timbers play the LA Galaxy in soccer. It was my first time at Jeld-Wen field and it was so much fun! Plus we got to see Beckham score a few pretty stellar goals. Here are some pics

Here's Beckham in his pink shoes

Letting out the green flares after we scored a goal

Us in our Timbers gear :)

Beckham again :) 

So even though the Timbers lost it was still a great game to see. That was a pretty big day for us so we spent most of Sunday recuperating and catching up around the house :)

Last weekend we went over to the Oregon Brewers Festival downtown to check that out. I swear there is something cool going on every weekend here, its pretty overwhelming! The Brewers Festival was awesome. I can't even tell you how many different beers and brewers they have there, but you just have to buy a mug and then each 3 oz. taster is $1. You can go from beer to beer and taste them all if you wanted to! This was really cool and we got to taste some awesome beers from local brewers that we never would have tasted otherwise. I think if we go again next year we'll be a little more prepared and probably go with a group of people.

So we've been enjoying the amazing weather here as much as possible. The other night we tried to hang out of the porch and I was so cold I had to wear a blanket around my shoulders. This week it has warmed up quite a bit and was in the 90's this weekend. 

On Friday I had a volunteer day for work at a non profit in Portland. After volunteering all day we had a company picnic and barbecue. Victor got to go to that and meet some of my coworkers for the first time which was awesome. After a long day we just came home and crashed on Friday night.

Last night we met one of our good friends from college who is a native Oregonian for dinner in the Pearl District. It was warm, but not as warm as it is in Texas or North Carolina! Look, we are both wearing long sleeves :) We went out to eat at a place called the Jamison which is on Jamison Square. It was really fun and great to catch up. Today we slept in and went to the Oregon Air Show in Hillsboro. I'll post some pictures from that and how our house is shaping up sometime this week... I promise :)

Have a great week!

tasha

480-something stairs

Well we conquered the stairs! It only took us about 45 minutes but it was a great workout!

At the back of our neighborhood there is a path that goes down Mt. Scott and supposedly has almost 500 steps. As soon as we heard about it we knew we had to do it. So last Sunday afternoon we loaded up the CamelBack and went in search of the path. We found it pretty easily and it really didn't take as long as we thought it would. I also thought it was easier than I had prepared myself for, but I usually prepare for the worst and prefer to be happily surprised. Here are some pictures from the quick adventure!

The start of the path... its' deceiving!

Victor is not happy I'm taking his picture while he's trying to get his hike on.

On a side note, the neighborhood you see in this picture is one that we also looked at when looking for a house. It is below our current neighborhood on Mt. Scott. But the homes we looked at were foreclosures and we just didn't feel like we were up for that adventure. This neighborhood is one street that zig zags down the mountainy and has all these houses stacked on top of each other. So each one has a really great view of the valley, but it also looks directly into the all the houses below. Also, since this part is so steep there aren't any backyards. Pretty sure PB&J are happy with our decision!

And here we go down the mountain!

And back up! There had to be at least five of these long stretches of stairs.

And afterwards! Victor said he was too tired to smile... I think we was kidding :)

In other exciting news some guys showed up this week and planted a tree in our front yard completely unannounced. These trees are all planted periodically throughout the neighborhood so it makes sense that they would plant one in our yard. We just thought we might get a heads up first! This is also a view of the house across the street from ours that is being built. It's almost done and hopefully it sells quickly! There are only three houses left in our neighborhood for sale, and no more empty lots to build on. I will be really happy when they finally landscape across the street and finish out the sidewalk. Hopefully that is coming in the next week or two.

Anyway, hope y'all are having a great week! Can't wait for the weekend!

tasha

4th of July

I don't know what everyone was complaining about, I thought it was really nice to have a day off in the middle of the week. But I'm only in my third week of work and couldn't take any time off anyway for the holiday, so I guess I'm on my own.

Our 4th of July was pretty low key but that's exactly how I like it! We got up in the morning and made our first real attempt at hiking. Real equipment, shoes and everything! We had to make a slight detour on the way out though because we forgot to get a forest pass, but after picking one up we were on our way. We drove east towards Mt. hood and hiked near Eagle Creek. The trail we were on stretches for 6 miles but the first three are supposed to be the best. So we stuck to that. We didn't track exactly how far we went but it took us over two hours with no too much elevation change.




Again there were tons of people with kids and dogs on this trail. I would never take either on this one as the path gets pretty narrow at times with at least a 50 ft. drop and no safety rail. But that didn't seem to phase a lot of other people! I guess we're still newbies!




This is early on in the hike before the sweatband came out :)










At the point where we turned around there was a little "beach" type area where a lot of people were hanging out. It was a really nice day!







This is Punch Bowl Falls. It's pretty amazing, and a great place to swim. It was way too cold for us southerners but plenty of other people were swimming and jumping off rocks into the deep water.



After hiking we grabbed some food at Char Burger near the Bridge of the Gods. It was a local dive but exactly what we needed.

Later on in the day we had a neighborhood party. I think we were the only people there under 30 and without kids but we ended up meeting a lot of neighbors. So overall it was a good thing we went. There are actually a few people in our neighborhood that moved here from Texas! So that was really nice to find out. It's hard to find people here that can really relate to the differences between here and Dallas. It is a lot of little things, but those little things add up to a completely different lifestyle.

But anyway, I digress... One of the major differences between Oregon and Dallas are the 4th of July fireworks. Usually there is a burn ban in Texas during the summer and the fireworks aren't such a huge deal. We would go to one of the places around town that was setting of fireworks to see the show but people weren't really shooting them off in their backyard much. Let's just say we are not fans of 4th of July in OR. people have been setting them off everyday for a week. They started the weekend before and are still going off this weekend! The dogs are really not happy. At first they were barking and hiding under the bed. Peanut Butter was shaking at some points. On Wednesday night the fireworks were still going until about 2am. By now I think they are so exhausted they are just ignoring it but they still spooked them a little when they went off this afternoon.

Our house is southeast of the city and from our window we look out on the southern suburbs and can also see downtown. So Wednesday night there was a symphony of fireworks going off in every direction. I've never seen anything like it. It was also weird because since we are up on a mountain, the fireworks being set off were going off right about at our eye level or below us. So we were actually looking down on most of the fireworks. These pictures are terrible but it might give you and idea.







This weekend we are trying to get the last of the boxes out of the house and gets some things organized. Tomorrow we are going to find a trail from our house down to Sunnyside Road which is a really busy street near us. The trail supposedly has over 400 stairs to get down our 800 ft. mountain. We are going to a) find it b) go down it and then c) make it back up!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Tasha

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Portland, Oregon

Alepp in Oregon

Last weekend our good friend Alex was in town for a family vacation and we got to spend some time together. We did a few things we had done before and a few new things. Overall it was a super fun weekend that went by way too fast! Here are some pictures from the weekend. I didn't retouch or enhance any of these. Partly out of laziness but mostly because it was a beautiful weekend. It was overcast but the colors of everything we saw were just amazing!




Saturday morning we got up and made breakfast. I have to say I miss our slumber parties from a few years ago!

Here's a picture of uncle Alex with Peanut Butter and Jelly.




I got out my fancy camera and took some pictures of the succulents in my craft room. Love them!







So then we went out to Washington park and went to the Japanese gardens and Rose garden. Here are some of my favorite pictures. Again, no retouching or enhancing!






































Awesome view of the city from up where the Japanese gardens are.




Not sure what this pose is :)

And here are some favorites from the rose garden.
















That's Alex down at the bottom and V "crushing" him.

It took me a couple days to recover from all the fun, and victor was gone almost all week. So this weekend we are just relaxing and trying to get into a rhythm. V will be here all week so I am very thankful for that! Tomorrow should be a beautiful day.

Have a great weekend!

Tasha

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Happy valley, Oregon