Mt. Bachelor

Cody's family loves skiing, especially his dad and sister. They usually make it out to Bend/Sunriver at least once a year, sometimes more. I didn't know if I would be able to go (because of interviews etc) but it worked out last minute that I got to go with. We left the 19th and were gone until the 23rd. I didn't totally love going for 5 days and getting back right  before Christmas but they had to wait for Cody's sister to get back from college so it's when it worked out. We stayed in a town a little outside Bend called Redmond (Oregon) in a "chalet" which really just means house that you rent for your vacation. It's in part of a neighborhood but a majority of the houses are rented out to vacationers. We had a few problems with the house we stayed in but mostly we loved it. There was a hot tub on the deck which we used frequently but the two "queen beds" it said it had were hardly queens and with a stuffy nosed husband, me being smushed next to him in a full size bed left me quite sleepless a couple of the nights.

Now let's get things straight, I am not a skier. I went snowboarding once in Idaho when I was in middle school and I went two years ago with Cody's family and was terrified the whole time and had a lot of falls. I mostly went because I didn't want to be husband-less for five days. If I had my choice I'd be okay with not skiing again. Now on the other hand, Cody's family are all skiers. Cody and his sister have been skiing since they were about 3 and his dad is really good.To be a good skier you either need to have been taught young, have a great deal of fearlessness and/or have a fixing for an adrenaline rush. I have none of these things.

For the most part I had a good time though. I really just want to go at my own pace and take it easy. Maybe if I was younger I would be more of a daring person. The first day I had a bad start. I got boots that were a half size too small. I was trying not to complain and knew the boots should be quite "snug" but once we got to the top of the bunny hill I knew something was wrong seeing as my feet were tingling and loosing sensation by the minute. After many breaks and stops down the bunny hill I got a bigger size and things were a lot better. But one of the things that makes skiing harder is being stressed out and that's what I was a majority of the time. I wore my (very out of shape) muscles out very fast by "plowing" or doing the pizza slice down steep parts (everything seems steep to me) and I even wore out my arms and cramped my hands up pretty good from death gripping my poles. The first day at the mountain was a pretty blizzardy day. There were winds at the top of the mountain that were as high as 80 mph so a lot of the lifts were closed, which made absolutely no difference to me but I knew Cody's dad and sister didn't have as good of time as they wanted. I tried out an easy run called Marshmallow (it's like it's teasing you really) which led to a second lodge where we had lunch. But at that point I had just worn my muscles out completely that I said I was okay with just heading back to the main lodge as my last go for the day. Cody's mom isn't too adventurous either and so she stuck with me while Cody and his dad and sister went out for some harder runs. They're goals for skiing are vastly different from mine. They want to get in as much skiing as they possibly can and challenge themselves while my goal is quite simple really: don't die. It was about an hour until the mountain closed so Julie (Cody's mom) and I decided to head back to the main lodge. There were a couple falls but my best fall of the trip came when we were about 50 yards from the main lodge. We could see it and our fatigued muscles yearned to be sitting down again. Julie wanted to go straight down to the lodge but I thought that it was deep powder that way and I didn't want to get stuck so I chose for us to cut across to the right where we could see the bunny hill and go down the way I was comfortable and familiar with. Well we started going and soon realized that both paths were just deep powder. Julie was thinking nice "light" thoughts and made it to the bunny hill just fine, I on the other hand found myself sinking further and further down until I hit a small slope and just plopped right down face first in thigh deep powder. Falling with big ol long skis on his difficult enough but I somehow managed to fall where both of my legs were out turned in opposite directions (see picture below).

 

I yelled to Julie that I was in an awkward position which was starting to hurt and she told me to pop my skis off and just walk over to her. Easier said than done. I finally managed to pop off the skis and after taking about 5 or 6 breaks to make it the 10 yards to her, trudging through waist deep powder, managed to make it to Julie, get my skis back on and then make it down the last 40 yards to the main lodge. It was quite ridiculous but gave Julie a good laugh.. so I guess it was worth it?

The second day was much better. Julie and I hung around the lodge for a bit in the morning while the others were the first ones out on the slopes. The weather was GORGEOUS! Mostly blue skies and no wind/snow hitting you in the face as you tried to get up and down the mountain. I just hung around the easy slope to try and build my confidence and technique while stinkin' little kids ran circles around me going backwards and never falling. It was so much more relaxing. My hands didn't hurt from death gripping the poles and I didn't burn my legs out in the first hour by doing the "pizza". Dare say I enjoyed myself?

Now for some pictures: 

(I had fun with photoshop on these. For the real life color ones check my facebook)

12.12.12

For my birthday I was pretty stoked because of all my birthdays it was definitely the most epic. Not only was it 12/12/12 but I was also turning 24!! It seemed to good to be true. I got many well wishes and got taken out to dinner a lot (which is the best present, really). We thought we were going to go see a newborn baby elephant that was recently born at our Oregon Zoo but the baby isn't public viewing ready so I think we'll save that for Cody's birthday next month. But my dad had sent me an email about a new aquarium that was opening in Portland! I thought that it was in the beginning stages but upon reading the email it said that it was opening the 15th and the week leading up to it was open to season pass members. The email was for 50% off season passes and so I got my birthday wheels turning and told Cody that would be an awesome present from his parents for my birthday.
So instead of a zoo birthday I got the next best thing: an Aquarium birthday!!

There is another aquarium, the Oregon Coast Aquarium close to us but it is 3 hours away so we don't get out there that much. But this aquarium is only an hour from our house! It doesn't compare to the OCA in size or glamour (or money spent into equipping with things like killer whales per se) but this aquarium is definitely worth a visit. Whoever had the idea for how this aquarium was going to be set up had the right idea. Nearly every room has large tanks full of fish that you are actually encouraged to pet! There's other fish and marine life in private tanks to look at but the best part by far was getting to interact with the animals. Usually aquariums would have touching tanks full of star fish and anemones and the like but really we can go to the beach and get the same experience. So I was ecstatic at all the opportunities to get something far beyond that. 

yellow pufferfish

the iguana keeper said this guy was pretty much just like dog, just hanging out

a morray eel that I think was trying to smile at us?

The coolest room was just a giant tank about waist level full of tropical fish, bat rays, sting rays and SHARKS that you could touch and FEED. You can buy either fish food or ray and shark food. Naturally we opted for the rays and sharks. 

shark and ray bait

the bat rays were smaller and they're fins would glide up and down (like a bat flying)

There were big bamboo sharks but they were shy and stayed towards the middle. There were other smaller sharks that would swim around but by far the cutest things in the tank were little baby bonnet sharks. 

isn't he just the cutest?!!

They are kind of like hammer head sharks but they're head is shaped different. We couldn't pet the little guys because they said they were still getting acclimated. But we touched a lot of the big ol' sting rays and bat rays (they're the smaller ones). And I wouldn't leave without touching a shark. They're staff was so friendly and were constantly making sure we (personally) were getting a good experience. The best part is that we get to go back as many times as we want and I'm super stoked because they had a room saying Puffins were coming soon and a room all ready for some river otters which we overheard a staff member saying that they own the otters but they were stuck in Minnesota. If I had kids I would take them there in a heart beat. If Rose gets better in a car seat I'll try and convince Megan to bring her little ones because I know if Olive ever got to go there we would never hear the end of all her exciting experiences!

this is the only fish that wouldn't bolt the second you touch him

these are "mermaid purses"; they're eggs laid by the bamboo sharks which they've cut upon and sealed up again with some see-through material so you could see the tiny breathing embryos. And apparently all of them have been hatching albino

 The last part of the aquarium was a Lorikeet room. They have a larger version at the Oregon Zoo but these lorikeets were about a thousand times friendlier. At the zoo you have to work to get one to fly onto your hand to get them to drink the nectar in the cup. Here they literally flock to you. As soon as they see that cup in your hand they are on your shoulders, head, arms, back. They're everywhere.

 

Cody doesn't care for them to land on him so he was the designated picture taker. But I wasn't joking about how friendly these birds are, pretty soon Cody had one climbing up his pants! It was hillarious.

Such the good birthday.

Merry Christmas from a Baby Elephant

Cody loves baby elephants. Like LOVES them.
Like when our Oregon Zoo got a new baby elephant a couple weeks ago all he talked about was going and meeting her and playing soccer with her and becoming best friends with her.

So in messing around and figuring out the ins and outs of my new drawing tablet I made this.

Enjoy

First Christmas

Welp it's happened again. December has come all too quickly. No matter how slow the rest of the year goes November seems to happen in a blink and then BAM! it's December. This year we've already got a couple of traditions going and I simply love each one of them.

1. Christmas Change

 

This is something Cody actually came up with himself and since we started dating I was let in on the fun. The rules are simple: Find some kind of container that for the whole year you deposit your spare change in (this is mostly pocket change). Then on the first of December count said change. You have from the 1st to the 31st of the month to spend said change. But this change must not be used in any way responsible (bills, groceries etc). Some things we spend Christmas change on: Sonic limeades during Happy Hour, Fast Food treats, Big Al's (a local bowling alley/arcade), etc etc. We've taken to separating out the pennies and using them whenever we come across a charity bell ringer outside of a store. At the end of the month, the money you haven't spent goes to the first charity bell ringer you find. It's that simple! I mostly make Cody pay the cashier because I know some cashiers hate when kids show up with a bunch of change they have to count. But people mostly have a good attitude, some even find it amusing. At least we still have quarters.. it gets really bad when you're counting out dollars in dimes and nickels..
This years loot: $125... and we've been enjoying every penny!

2. Treebeard

 

Cody had the amazing idea that instead of going down and cutting down a tree, or getting a fake tree (which Cody wanted but I forbade it) that we look into getting a live Christmas tree that after the season is over you plant in your backyard! I love love loved this idea and his mom told us they had them at Fred Meyer's. So this is the new member of our family, Treebeard. He's wearing a sea turtle ornament we got in Hawaii on our Honeymoon. Hopefully planting him goes well and for years to come we'll get to take pictures next to our very first Christmas tree!

3. DIY Decorations With My Mom

My mom came to me last month and asked if I wanted to make Thanksgiving decorations for my house. I enthusiastically said yes! It went so well that we found some fun little crafts we could do together for Christmas. The funny thing is my mom has a huge storage of crafting supplies that whatever project (yes, mostly all from Pinterest) we choose she just happens to have everything we need! It's awesome!
This year we made Popsicle stick snowflakes:

Christmas Trees made from String:

and some Santa Buckets.. I've included the steps on how to make your very own one of these cute little guys. The other two projects' tutorials you can find on my DIY Pinterest Board

and wa-lah! Put it all together and you get another piece of Christmas to decorate your house with!

Mine is on the left, Mom's is on the right

I've also impressed myself with ordering my Christmas cards that I plan to send out by the end of the week. In other news I've been very busy in the world of job searching. I'm so blessed that my dad ran into one of our friends from church that's in a different ward. She works for an unemployment company called WorkSource. It's government ran and has these awesome workshops about identifying your skills & abilities, resumes and interviewing. She's been my personal job coach and has been an absolute life saver. Being able to work with her instead of some stranger has helped make this whole process SO much better. She's even taught some workshops and being hilarious she definitely made the three hours of each workshop go by so much faster. Somebody in my parent's ward told my mom that her credit union was hiring so I dropped off an application last Monday and went in today to take a couple of evaluations and I'll find out Wednesday if I get to the next round. Then the first day going to WorkSource Jennifer got me hooked up with another employee who's finding a pool of candidates to work at a new Grocery Outlet which I interview for tomorrow. The ironic thing is my nanny family's house, the credit union and this grocery outlet are all located on the SAME ROAD about half an hour from our house... I really wish there could've been something closer but man something wants me to work over there!
There's really no discouragement around. I feel hopeful that I'll find something that I'll enjoy doing and will be a good fit. I really do hope the credit union job works out though ;)

oh yeah and it's my birthday in TWO DAYS!!!
look out for a birthday post cause we have great things planned!