Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Weekend fun!

     Blake's mom, Karin, came into town Saturday morning.  We had a great weekend of fun, movies, and too much good food!  It rained all day Saturday.  We had hoped to be able to take Karin to visit the Chinese and Japanese gardens, but it was not a good idea with the rain.  
     We stopped for brunch at La Provence, our favorite french restaurant in Lake Oswego.
Lemon tart pastry from La Provence.  So yummy!

  We spent part of the afternoon driving around looking at the ginormous houses around the lake, taking in the beautiful scenery as we drove (sorry for no pictures of that).  For dinner, we went to a really nice Argentine restaurant in Portland called El Goucho.  The servers wear bow ties and it was really fancy.  After leaving the restaurant, we got soaked walking back to our car.  It was crazy driving on the freeway with the downpour, the car hydroplaning half the time. We went under an overpass and our windshield got pounded by the waterfall coming from above.  As the lucky driver that night, it rattled my nerves a bit.

     Blake's family has a taco night tradition with his grandpa's famous mexican rice.  He wants us to start having our own taco night with pork chile verde and grandpa Bob's rice.  Karin graced us with her cooking skills and made that dinner for us on Sunday.  It was delish and definitely something Blake wants once a week, however with the amount of leftovers we have from it, we'll be eating it every day for a week. :)
    Sunday evening we carved pumpkins!  It just wouldn't be right to let Halloween pass by without carving a pumpkin.  We've done it religiously for years.

Blake carving out his awesome Frankenstein
 Karin's creepy screaming face.
 My trio of Jack-o-lanterns.
 Blake's finished Frankenstein


     We are now officially ready for Halloween!  Especially with the giant bag of candy Karin got us.  :)

It rained all weekend, and finally let up on Monday - when Karin had to leave - of course.  That didn't stop us from having some fun though.

Well....til next time.


Monday, October 15, 2012

The rain rain rain came down down down

It begins!  The rain is here.  We got over an inch in the first day it rained last week.  My naturally curly hair is frizzing out like nobody's business.  I think I would love rain much more if it were like this: Bambi  - with a full orchestra and choir, and glorious sunshine after the tempest.  haha.
However, this is what its really like: Pooh

Blake got to help out with a preparedness fair for the community at our church on Saturday.  He manned the financial preparedness station where he used his brains and financial savy to educate and answer questions.  He also gave a talk in church yesterday on the word of wisdom.  I thoroughly enjoyed his talk.  He is an excellent speaker and was told that he sounds so wise for his age.

Nothing else new to report. So here are some pictures.

   I whipped up these lovelies last week.

                                                                  
  Honey-badger face at the dog park....
                                                         
 ....enjoying the last sunny day.  She HATES the rain.  I need to get her a rain coat because she gets soaked when we go out.

 This is what we see when we walk out our door. 
                                                     
 And then up the stairs. (I love the red leaves everywhere)
                                                     
         Here's our apartment from the the front.  Don't get too excited; we only occupy the little hobbit hole on the bottom.  We only have 3 windows in our whole apartment!
 
       Right now, the trees are beautiful!
 
                                 The path to our apartment.

                                                         
Welp...til next time.        

Who's getting excited for Christmas????                       
animals,cartoons,Christmas,holidays,reindeer,Rudolph,special occasions

Monday, October 1, 2012

Date Night!

I may not be a marriage expert, but I have a firm belief that most couples need to have fun together as often as possible to stay sane and happy.  Its so easy to get stuck in the monotony of a routine and forget what its like to go out and play together. 
On Saturday, we took the night off from homework and chores to have some fun.  A friend recommended a french restaurant nearby called La Provence, so we decided to try it out.  The prices were surprisingly reasonable so we endulged in some fabulous french food including Shrimp linguini, Chicken cordon bleu, chocolate cake, and a french cookie fondu.  The service was great and the food was soooo gooood!  Nothing like having a great dining experience with my sweetheart.
I had been dying to go to the movies.  Not to see any movie in particular, but just to go see a movie.  In Boise, we would go see a movie at the cheap theater almost once a week.  We have yet to find a cheap theater around here.  We've been in Oregon for over a month and still haven't gone to the movies!  I think I was having withdrawals, haha.  We headed over to the theater and got tickets for the Bourne Legacy that didn't start for another hour and a half.  We walked around the Bridgeport plaza - kind of like an outlet mall, but a lot of higher end stores.  It was nice to walk around in the cool fall air before our movie started. 
Blake has a secret love affair with old school shoot 'em up arcade games, and he had a hunch he might find some at the theater.  Sure enough......   he found them.
We spent a good portion of our time in the game room.  I get a kick out of watching Blake turn into a kid with such intensity playing these games.  I guess he has to take advantage of them when he can since we don't have any kind of gaming systems at home.
 

After some good times playing games, we watched the movie.  I was thoroughly entertained by the Bourne Legacy.  No one would have guessed that Jeremy Renner is a makeup artist when he's not acting - multi talented for sure.
It was a great date night, and I can't wait til our next one!  I will be sure to bring our actual camera next time so we don't have to rely on the camera phone :)