Winter Wonderland

This is going to be a photo blog. Just random pictures from my apartment building, my parents' house and my grandma's house. I think I was 8 the last time we had this much snow in Portland. It is pretty to look at and not holding me back! I have the chains on my car and I'm ready to drive at a moments notice (which is good since I'm on call until Tuesday morning.)

Anyhow, here's the photos of snow... and it continues to snow, so we now have more than what these pictures show.


View from the family room in the apartment.














The icy footprints I left after my trek to the grocery store.














Some accumulation on the ledge out front.











A snow drift built up against the back door, but now it's not so much a drift as the level of snow is only approx. 3in below this level.






Just a dusting on the trees at Grandma's house















A Japanese maple in Mom and Dad's front yard.













A lone rose plant looking very cold.














A cozy winter scene. It's too cold to sit out there on that bench, but in the summer it's a great shady spot to cool off!







Christmas cookies anyone? What else is a girl to do? I made some 7 layer bars and those little cookies with pecans in them that melt in your mouth and have powered sugar on top (that is what I call them anyhow). I got tired before I made it to the sugar cookies, but those are next on the list.







Look who came to visit! I got dressed up for the picture, I hope you can tell...










Me and Papa by the tree. This picture requires a special note about "The Sack." For those of you that don't know, it's a rectangle of fleece with sleeves and wholes in the bottom to pop your feet out. Hideous, and wonderfully warm and comfy when your apartment refuses to get warm. I cannot believe I'm posting this picture, it's self incriminating and embarrassing.



Anyhow, there you have it. The highlights from my part of the world during this Severe Weather and Arctic Blast of 2008!

Conquering Tire Chains!!!

So, Portland got an "Arctic Blast" (Thank you newschannel 8, that one is pretty good as far as corny headlines go). Our 2 inches of snow have successfully thrown the city into turmoil and sent folks like me scampering to Les Schwab to buy myself some chains for the car. I was hoping that just the act of buying them would mean I didn't have to actually use them. But alas, heart surgery must continue in the city despite the weather conditions, and so I must safely and bravely travel to work at 0'dark thiry Monday morning (normal time is 5:20, but I think I'll leave more like 4:50). Since the weather doesn't appear to be rising above freezing all week, I guess I need those tire chains I just bought.

I can honestly say I have NEVER put on chains before, but those ones you don't even have to drive on are quite spiffy to put on! Even me, with no prior experience in blizzard like conditions, managed to get them on in like 8 minutes. Steve was on hand for "advice" but I wanted to learn how to do them myself, so he just stood by and watched keeping his pants dry and his hands warm. In the end I am thankful I know I can put on my own chains and don't need to depend on anyone's help! YAY FOR ME!

Ok, so here's the good part. Here is the proof that I put on my own chains. I HIGHLY recommend these chains. They are SOOOO easy to put on! Thanks Les Schwab!

Here are just some pretty pictures from the morning when things were fairly calm.


































We look kinda pitiful here, but it was COLD with wind in your face!



It is always important to read the directions! The ones I got are printed on a sheet of plastic so you can kneel on it instead of the snow:) Fantastic! I love this, well thought out tire chain people.







I'm getting there.












My hands are getting numb and I can't feel my knees at this point.









I've gone on a test run and the chains loosened up a bit, like they are supposed to. Then you just have to hop out and tighten them up and you are ready to go! So easy even I can do it :) But given the option I'd still be happy to let someone else out in the cold to put them on for me:)






YAY! Success! I'm so proud of myself! Now we just have to see if I make it to work safely in the morning. Hopefully I won't have pictures of a damaged car in my next post ;)

Christmas Decoration Extravaganza!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Chrissy and I are SO excited for Christmas this year, and we took advantage of my day off to go on an adventure and decorate for the holidays. It turned into an all day affair, but the results (and mess we made to get the results) were well worth it! We had such a fun day and here are pictures of our hard work:)

We started out shopping for just a few more ornaments here and there, but didn't have much luck. It's a good thing our tree is kind of a mini so it doesn't look too bare. The first decision we had to make was should we just go to a lot? OR do we go on an adventure and cut the tree down ourselves!?! We decided on adventure. I had been out to Helvetia with my family to get a tree a few years prior and that isn't too far away, so we headed in that direction. Sadly, the lot I had been to before was CLOSED! But there was another one just down the street, with a sign up a rough (ok not really, it was paved but not really with loose gravel on top) road that was a dead end and the sign wasn't clear if they were open or not. But Chrissy made me drive, and good thing we did because it was GORGEOUS there and the people were SO nice to us:)


We got a little chuckle from the cute old man that was there to greet us when we said we were interested in cutting down our own tree. Needless to say, we continued on our mission and followed the sign that said "to trees". It was a great selection, really no ugly trees in sight, but this is the tree that won our hearts, and then we chopped it down.


















I will spare you all the details of how hard we worked to get all of our decorations up and looking marvelous. It is safe to say we were glad there were no engineering minds near by to critique the method of our ways! In the end, you will see our work paid off! Here are the highlights of the little Christmas scenes that are here and there in our apartment.




















Here we have the tree with a flash, the tree and garland trying to give you an idea of the warm glow in a photo but not quite getting it, and my new nativity from mom that is similar to the one I grew up with. I LOVE IT! And it fits perfect right on the center of the hearth over our fireplace.





All of this is lovely in our little family room
but it is so fun to have up! I couldn't help myself and the Christmas cheer extends into our dining room. It's really not hard to have a huge Christmas impact with decorations when you live in such a small space:) Sorry if these are too dark...
Well there you have it! Hope you all are having a Merry Christmas so far! Now that I'm decorated, I have to start shopping. I don't wanna! Christmas shoppers aren't happy people :( Well I hope to see some or most of you during Christmas time, but if it doesn't happen, I hope you are all doing well!

Cake

I didn't used to like to bake, but in recent months I have discovered it can be fun and creative :) Thanks to a great family recipe that goes back I'm sure for MANY generations (Good 'ol Duncan Hines), it is very easy. Ok, so maybe it isn't my family recipe for sure, but their mixes make delicious treats!

So here is a cake I made for Perfusionist week at work. Our Perfusionists are the people that run the heart/lung bypass machine during open heart surgery. It has a bag of AB+ Red Blood Cells that are hanging on an IV pole, ready to be infused. However, I took a little heat for using that as decoration on their cake, because they pride themselves in not having to transfuse units of blood to patients during surgery. Well, my excuse was it was easier than trying to pump icing onto a cake that would look like their machines. So here is my cake and a picture of the machine I determined was too difficult for my artistic skills.



















The next cake attempt was a birthday cake for Steve for his birthday. He likes airplanes so I made him an airplane cake! It has a bi-plane flying in the air on it:)




So another thing that will make this post interesting is the fact that I don't know how to rotate the picture so you can look at it like a normal person. But it's there nonetheless!

Ok, that is it for now.

Trip to California!

I can't believe I actually DID take a mini vacation this summer, but it slipped my mind. Maybe because I didn't actually take any time off work, instead I squeezed in the trip on one of my 4 day weekends I get occasionally at work. Anyhow, it was a really fun time FULL of talking and laughing and girl time.
It was a trip my sister and I went on to celebrate her birthday in June and act like big kids during a very long day at Disneyland. Sadly, we decided to only bring one camera with us around Disney, and it wasn't mine, so I don't have any pictures of us in the park, but I'll work on getting them from my sister soon.

We left on a Thursday night after a full day of work and arrived in LA around 11pm. Brooke picked us up in the airport and we didn't stop talking until 2am and I forced everyone to go to bed, because A) I had been up since 5am Thursday and B) We were getting up at 7am Friday to go to Disneyland!

Like I said, I'll work on getting pictures from the park from Lisa and get them posted. We spent all day in Disney and used the long lines to continue the non-stop gab fest. I have to say it was my best Disney experience to date. Going with someone that lives 20min away from the park, let me tell ya, they know how to work the system of those fast-pass thingys and when to go on which rides. AND if you go to the park anytime soon, it is SO worth paying for a locker to keep your junk in and only carry the minimal amount of belongings with you. Ok, enough about something I have no pictures of.

When we weren't at Disney, we were relaxing in the sun, getting SO burned (we all peeled for weeks afterwards... hello skin cancer) and yes, continued to talk.

Here is a lovely photo of Brooke all dressed up to walk the, oh 20-30 feet or so it takes to get to the beach outside her cute little house. She lives in Long Beach right across from the Naples area in CA... I hope that information is correct.









Brooke's family room. So wonderfully patriotic with red, white, and blue color scheme. It's very fitting.











Here are Lisa and Brooke bathing in the wonderful rays of California sun. This is where we all got burned to a crisp. Aloe and Advil were our best friends for the rest of the trip and several days after as well. We were all so mad at ourselves for being so stupid. It is obvious we were pasty white... my excuse is I just wanted some color so I didn't look so sickly and ghostly white. I don't get much sun exposure from inside the OR.




If you look really closely, you can see the lifeguards that are in the background. Totally reminded me of Baywatch, but funny thing, they didn't go running across the beach in slow motion with their orange floating devices while we were there. Oh well.






So we also had a day full of shopping and food adventures. Brooke took us out to Indian food for dinner one night and Greek food, where Sammy joined us, the next night. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and it all went by way to quickly. We were exhausted by the end of it all, and at risk of Brooke hating me for years to come, I have to post this pic to show just how tired we all were...

Old Happenings, New Post

Hello Friends! Aren't you SO proud of me?! I have a blog :)

So life is pretty uneventful right now. I'm busy working in the CVOR at St. Vincent's and mostly loving it. There is rumor about me getting to learn how to scrub in on cases soon, but in the mean time I'm working to learn as much as I can from the Circulating role. I am also having fun finding cute material and making my own scrub caps for work.
I was going to be brave and model one for you as well... but I look like a cancer patient with them on. So this is a picture of them on the floor. I made the green, pink, turquoise/brown, and purple ones... the other two are store bought and I have plenty more in my locker at work.



This seems a bit strange to be blogging about myself!

Well since I'm low man on the seniority list at work, I haven't really taken any recent vacations which would give me the opportunity to take new pictures... so I'm going to post some old ones of fun times!
This is a picture from Summer of 2007 when I went camping with various members of my family at Big Lake... SO pretty!

Here is one of Mom and Dad and Me and Steve at the end of the week... looking fantastic in my opinion!


Steve and I on a canoe ride.

The grownups in the "kitchen" working on some breakfast. (Aunt Judy, Mom, Dad, Uncle Rick). Obviously cooking breakfast becomes an event to watch when enjoying the wilderness:)

I am pretty sure this is Aunt Judy (although it could possibly be Joan, Judy's twin sister) with my 2nd cousin? (is that what the daughter of my cousin becomes?) Stella... enjoying some s'mores around the campfire.

This is me "fishing" with Stella's fishing pole. You catch a fish EVERY time and EVERY time it looks like the same fish on the end of your pole! I'm not very successful when I try real fishing, so this was pretty exciting!

Pretty exciting stuff, huh? Well in the process of creating this post, I have come across more pictures for more posts and vacations I took more recently that slipped my mind! Stay tuned :)