Maybe We're Just Not Yard People

Hi!

I decided maybe I would try to update this thing each week with what we've been up to. Mainly for selfish reasons I suppose, It's hard for me to remember what I did yesterday half the time, let alone what I did a year ago! I'm always impressed at people that can tell these really vivid stories from their childhood. I feel like every so often someone just shoots me up with versed and erases my memory :)

Anyhoo, I digress. Daniel and I began our week in a very self-gratifying way at the Patagonia sale. Let's just say that we may have a slight problem and/or are definitely outfitted for quite a while in the down jacket/vest department. The term "we have to get it, it's such a good deal" goes a long way in our family!

We decided to do the whole Valentine's Day thing on Tuesday night as we were both going to be working. While I don't totally buy into the whole Hallmark holiday, Dan and I have been working really hard to do a date night each week, and I guess, truly, valentine's day is the mother of all holidays for a date night. I have to give Daniel kudos, it was his turn to plan and he did an amazing job. We started off the evening at Portland City Grill for happy hour. For those of you who don't know the PCG is on the 30th floor of the US Bank tower (I think) in downtown PDX. The bar area has a killer happy hour menu and panoramic windows so that you can see all of Portland. Oh, and did I mention the live piano music too? It's really a great place, both for dates and for friends. The only caveat is that at times elbows need to be thrown in order to get prime seating....it is not uncommon to see shifty-eyed people trolling around trying to gauge how close you are to being done with your dinner so that they can snag your table. But we were there early enough that life was great and it was good times. Then we went to a restaurant called 23rd and Hoyt, which oddly enough is on 23rd and Hoyt. All I have to say is that their Spanish coffee was to die for. They use Stumptown coffee (which is the best coffee I have ever had, hands down, roasted fresh every week in PDX) and it was soooo good. The food was good too, but the drink was the highlight for sure. Finally, we went to Fenouile for desert. I had never been but it's this really cool French restaurant right by Jameson Park. We had the Maison Glace (Ice cream for those of you who were smart and took Spanish rather than French in high school; beautiful language, but have I ever used it? No.). It was quite tasty, I'm excited to go back there and try dinner sometime.

Then work, because well....you gotta do that sometimes. Which brought us to Friday...which started out with "operation plant roses". They were sent bareroot and needed to be placed in soil by day 5 and I'll bet you'll never guess what day Friday was. So I hauled myself out of bed much earlier than my body wanted (I worked Thursday night) and started digging. Our soil has a lot of clay in it so digging holes for four plants turned out to be pretty much an all afternoon affair. Daniel was awesome and earns a "best husband ever" award for pretending to care about something that I'm 100% sure he didn't give a rats a$$ about. Perhaps it's his punishment for working all weekend this last fall when my family and I planted trees and landscaped.

I think after almost two years of marriage he's beginning to learn that if his wife says "I'm overwhelmed" it behooves him to take action prior to the meltdown actually occuring. Needless to say, the roses are in the ground and look good, or as good as they can look at this point in time. I'm excited to see the fruits of our labor this spring! I think the quote of the day was by Daniel about three hours in when he said "maybe we're just not yard people". I think it's quite true. Reuben however is a "yard dog" or atleast a very attentive helper and was very pleased that we too finally shared in his joy of digging and getting dirty.

Reuben, the proud owner of a pile of dirt, would like to think that he created this himself...but don't tell him that he mostly just got in the way :-) Can anyone say brown-noser?

Then off to the shower and to my 25th birthday dinner at the Siam Society (my actual birthday is on Sunday).! It was a great time with wonderful friends and great food and drinks. What a turnout too, ~23 people I believe. It's times like this that I am reminded how blessed I am to have such amazing friends and family! I'm mad that I forgot to take some pics! Thank you all so much for coming!!! It was great to see you all, I only wish I had more time to catch up with each one of you. Perhaps we should have followed through on Leslie's idea of a speed dating type seating arrangement where after five minutes everyone shifted one to the right :-) Like usual after these types of things, Daniel and I left talking about how we have such a crazy group of friends, laughing about funny and loving stories of each one of you, and thinking "man, we really need to spend more time with all of these people"! It's because of all of you that I think we're staying in Portland for quite a long time :-)

So that was our week in blogformat. Tomorrow it's off to Three Fingers in Washington for some hopefully successful alpine climbing. It's the first in a long while due to avalanche danger being so bad, I'm excited to get out and use the ol' crampons again! Stay tuned for a report on our trip.....

~Elisif