Camping

Mirav posted some of our exploits this morning. I will try to get us caught up. I have been out of town traveling for work most of the last two weeks. The weekend before I headed up to Seattle, we decided to head out to Spruce Run to go camping. Spruce Run is about 3/4 of the way to the coast from Portland, about an hour and 15 minutes from us.

We all drove up Friday after work, so by the time we got to the campground it was already pretty late. We had some trouble finding a campground. When we finally got one, we got our tents up and started a fire. 

Steve serenaded us all night with late 90's hits. He hasn't learned any new songs since then. 

There was only 4 of us the first night. We all huddled around the fire chatting and eating marshmallows. Nick makes some strong drinks. By the end of the night, no one was feeling very good. 

I got up the next morning and headed out to the river. Probably hard to see, but I snapped a quick picture of a deer on the other bank before it took off. Gotta love nature

Morning camping coffee was pretty great

Camping bacon, also awesome

The morning of the second day, we took a little field trip to get some more wood. We went around the corner  and up the hill to find a lake the was close by. This was the view from the top

The lake was really nice. Lots of old logs floating around. 

Our campground had a little path that lead about 30 feet down to the Nahalem river. The river, as seen in the deer photo above, was about 50 feet across and probably 5 feet deep in the middle. The edges of the river were only a couple feet deep and very rocky and was home to a ton of crawdads. The activity in the afternoon on the second day was crawdad fishing. Me, Steve and Nick grabbed some tongs and jumped in the river. This is Steve getting ready to catch some crawdads

This is a picture of our crawdad bucket. It was full by the time we were done. It was surprisingly easy to catch them. When you see one, you reach in with some tongs and grab it as fast as you can. We caught almost 50 of them in just a couple hours. 

The afternoon of the second day we picked up some extra people. Kim and Lindsey came up for the day and brought some dogs. The dogs had a blast in the river. Mike also made it up the second day and spent the night. Here's a picture of the girls. It's a rare photo of Mirav with her kindle. 

Picture of the guys getting ready to boil our catch of the day

Steve being Steve

This is what a crawdad looks like. They are gross little creatures. Since I caught them, I joined in on eating them. Turns out they aren't bad after all. 

The second night was uneventful. Some beer drinking, hotdog eating and fire watching. The next morning we packed up our stuff and headed home. It was nice to get outdoors for a while. Hopefully we can do it again soon before the rain heads back in. 

Samara and Felicia Visit

For forth of July weekend, we had 2 very special visitors.  Unfortunately, they don't read the blog, so they will never know we think they're special. :)

Samara was traveling for work and was in Seattle and decided it would be fun to come visit.  Felicia has been wanting to visit as well, and this seemed like as good of time as any.  Samara came down on the train and then Felicia came in on a very late flight on Friday.  We have no pictures to prove this.

On Saturday, Eric went into work for a few hours and Samara, Felicia and I slept in.  After several hours, we finally made it out the door.  We missed the bus into downtown by about a minute and decided to walk instead.  We stopped to get coffee (duh) and then walked the nearly 2 miles into downtown (I gave them incorrect information and said it was only about a mile.  Clearly, I am an idiot).  Once in downtown, Eric met us and we walked to get some food, as we were now starving from our long trek.  We all got things from different food carts and then sat to enjoy.

For some reason, Felicia is very paranoid that she has food stuck in her teeth.  From here, we walked around downtown a bit eventually ending at Nordstroms so Felicia could buy a sweater that she already has in ever single color.  At least she didn't have to pay sales tax.  From there, we headed to Tiffany's to get some ideas for jewelry for the wedding.  After all this walking, we need to go home to rest.  Unfortunately we didn't rest for very long.  Instead, we headed out to have dinner at the very delicious Toro Bravo.

They have delicious sangria.  This is why we drank 2 pitchers and not because we are lushes.

The food came out one by one and all dishes were super tasty.

This is Felicia showing you how tasty the dishes were.

Once again, the food in teeth ritual.

We did manage to get once decent picture.
After dinner, we headed out to get some ice cream for dessert.  We headed to Ruby Jewel.

Instead of eating it, Felicia decided to wear it.  It was still delicious.  On the way home, we stopped at TJ's to pick up some Asti.  This was consumed while playing a Wii dancing game where we all looked ridiculous.  It was still very fun (ra ra rasputin).

Ta'ami was being his normal self and wanted to play toys without actually giving them up.  Felicia fell for his evil tricks.
The following day, after a good nights sleep, we had brunch at Irving Street Kitchen.

It was very tasty.  They had coffee that was as thick as tar and we were jittery afterwards.  We drove around, showing them different areas of Portland, and eventually ended up here.

It's the Up! house!  PSU is doing construction around this house and apparently they attached balloons.  We thought it was hilarious.  Lots of other people did too since we weren't the only people taking pictures.  Afterwards we went to the rose garden.  Since the sun had finally come out, we were not the only people with this idea.  It was impossible to find a parking spot near the garden so we took a hike.

Once in the garden, it was a lovely day.  We met and made friends with a puppy named Apple.  Samara and I also managed to take one decent picture.

Since it ended up being a rather warm day, we went and had Hawaiian food for lunch and then enjoyed some shave ice.

That evening, Samara and I made rugelach and relaxed.  We had a pretty busy weekend.

The following day, we slept in and then went to HUB for lunch.  We got a seat on the patio and enjoyed a beautiful day.  That evening we went to a BBQ at Mike and Molly's.

Afterwards, we took Samara and Lesh to the airport.  It was sad to see them go but we had a very fun weekend!

The Family Visits

Well it's been quite a while since Eric and I have posted.  Our apologies.  As you saw, we were quite ill for a while.  And now it's summer and we've been out and about.

A little over a month ago, my mom came to visit and then Eric's mom and grandma came as well.  The only evidence we have of my mom visiting is this picture of her helping us with out 'Save the Dates'.

After my mom left, Kathy and Joanne came to visit after a week long cruise to Alaska.  They took the train down from Seattle and then we went about showing them the joys of Portland.  For their first morning, we had breakfast at Jam.

After breakfast we headed out to the rose garden and showed them 'our' bench.

After that, we took the shuttle up to the Japanese Gardens.

I don't remember what we did the rest of the day (it was too long ago).  The next day we enjoyed breakfast at the house and some relaxing with the pups.

Kathy got to reunite with Pickles, who missed her terribly.  She also got to meet Grandma for the first time.

Afterwards, we tried to go to VooDoo donuts.  The place was insane and they only had one person working the register.

We didn't wait around.  Instead we parked near the mall and took the Max into downtown.

We walked around downtown and the Pearl, ate at the food carts, and just enjoyed a cloudy but still enjoyable day.  That night we went to Kennedy School for dinner and root beers.  Overall it was a very exciting (ok not so exciting, but still fun) trip and we're glad they came!