The City of Trees

Last Sunday night, I received a call from Shalis at around 5:00 pm asking me if I wanted to go to Portland with her and her mom in an hour.  It took me all of about ten seconds to realize that if didn't go with them, I would probably spend the next week eating lots of food and spending way to much time on the couch. As a result, my answer was a very quick and excited, "Yes!" You see, I've been on summer break from school for about four weeks and I'm kinda losing my mind. When Gabe and Nathan are at work, I pretty much just sit alone in slience for hours. I digress, back to the point.  I have always loved Oregon ever since I was little and my family would make trips up there every year to go visit my Grandparents. It's such a beautiful place and it's full of a bunch of tree huggers just like me.  

We spent most of our time in Portland, but we also branched out and saw the Oregon coast. I've made a list of our favorite things, seeing how I am quite fond of lists. It is the best way for me, a person who is by no means a writer, to organize my thoughts.

The frist place we visited was the Multomah Waterfall. It's absolutely beautiful, but to be honest, I think I was more intrigued by the awesome bridge in front of it than the actual falls.  Unfortunately, while I was walking down the stairs away from the falls, I kind of sprained my ankle, so pretty much the whole trip I was hobbling around like an old woman. 

Portland was our next stop and its such an amazing city with so many awesome things to see.  I loved all the bridges there and am quite upset I didn't get any pictures of them.  

The Pearl District was the place to be in Portland, where most of the cool shops are at.

Every trip to Downtown Portland, or anywhere for that matter, looked like this picture.  Shalis and I would program the address to our desired destination so we wouldn't get lost. Guess what? We still got lost, but I like to consider it more like..we were going on unplanned adventures.

 We found a Buffalo Exchange, which just so happens to be Shalis and I's favorite store, but sadly, there isn't one in Idaho.  We were pretty excited.

We also went to the biggest bookstore I have ever been to, Powells books.  This bookstore is a block long and is so ginormous that it has a map to help you navigate through the store. I was basically in heaven.

The Map.

Shalis reading up on dictators, so when she takes over Cuba, she will be prepared.

Portland has this amazing Donut shop called Voodoo Donuts. Now, I'm not the hugest fan of donuts but this place is the bomb diggity. I mean, every night there is a line outside this place like 40 people deep, its just that good.

And yes, that is bacon on her donut.

We visited the adorable little town of Newport when we visited the Oregon Coast.

Ate at Mo's and honestly this sign isn't kidding, "Everyday is a great day for Chowder," if its made at this place.  Hands down the best clam chowder I have ever tasted!

Learning how to blow glass was probably my favorite part of the trip other than the food.  It was just so awesome to learn how to manipulate glass into something. 

While at the coast we decided to visit the aquarium, which was pretty legit, I mean your weren't allowed to feed and pet the sharks like at the Boise aquarium, but they had Sea Otters.

Look at this cute little fellow enjoying his crab leg.

I also went to the Spa for the first time ever and I got the best pedicure ever on my jungle women feet. They warm up rocks and then message your legs with them. It might not sound that great, but let me tell you, it IS!!

Sadly the fun had to end sometime, sometime being Friday morning.  It was an awesome trip and a great way to end summer break and I am grateful to Shalis and her mom for letting me tag along. 

Mosquitoes and Marshmallows

Camping is one of Gabe and I's favorite outdoor activities, but we haven't really had the time to do it lately which is quite sad really.  Luckily, this weekend we got to end that trend. We went camping in the Sawtooth Mountains with Nathan and our favorite mountain man, James. None of us had 

ever been to this area before so it was quite an adventure for us.  One of the main things that attracted us to this specific camping area was that it had a supposed hot spring, in reality the hot spring looked pretty much like an oversized hot tub. I was pretty disappointed.  Fortunately, Sawtooth offered an amazing wilderness so I was satisfied. We spent most of our time there either eating, playing just about every sport you can think of, and geocaching.  Geocaching is something Gabe and I were introduced to by James, he's kinda an expert.  Anyways, geocaching is kinda like a world wide treasure hunt. People hide items all over  and then place their coordinates on the geocaching website for people to go find. Other than the numerous mosquito bites we received and a few unrealistic bear freak outs, the Sawtooth mountains treated us pretty great.

Lately....

Basically I have been terrible about blogging for the last four months.  Life has just been crazy for us and a lot of good and bad changes have been happening. Throw in Spring and Summer semester of school and the last few months add up to a big blur.  Finally, last week I finished summer school and caught my breath. I then realized how much I had been slacking on my blog.  I compiled a few pictures and placed them into a list of seven noteworthy events that have taken place since I last blogged. 

1. I went to Louisiana for the very first time in April for Gabe's cousin, Kaylyn's, wedding. Oh, I'm not sure if I  ever mentioned that Gabe is from Louisiana. Anyways, he is. 

I met pretty much his whole extended family while I was there and every single one of them was amazingly sweet, which made my trip pretty dang great.

2. I started volunteering at the Idaho Humane Society.  I absolutely love it!  I highly recommend doing it wherever you live. 

3. After Spring semester was over, we made our semi- annual trip to San Diego to visit our friends and family.  San Diego was great as usual and made us miss it tons, as always.

4. When we headed back to Boise, we had one more than we had left with.  Nathan, Gabe's little brother moved out to Boise to live with us.  Since he has moved in it's been super fun and he is a splendid roommate. 

5.Gabe and I celebrated our three year anniversary in June. Three years might not seem like that much time for most people but both of us were pretty dang excited about it.  We didn't do much because I had school and Gabe had work that night, but we had a lovely ice cream picnic in the park.

6. I headed back to San Diego again in June for my brother, Chris's, graduation from UC Riverside.

While I was there, we made a special trip to the La Brea Tar Pits, because I had been begging my family to take me for years. Let me tell you, it was all that I had dreamed of. The picture below is from the museum about the tar pits.  The items in the glass case in front of Chris are all wolf skulls they found in the tar pits. Pretty crazy! 

 7.  Lastly, I spent a whole week up at BYU Idaho with my bestest friend Shalis. She was still in school so I just went to class with her every day.  I guess I was having withdrawals from school or something. Ha. While I was up there, I also got to see a bunch of friends that I hadn't seen in a while and it was great to catch up with them.

Sadly, this is the only picture Shalis and I took all week. Ha. 

Welp, those were the most exciting events that happened to us in the past months. I'm going to try my hardest to keep up with my blog the rest of the summer so I don't have to play catch up again.