Rose Gardens

D's mom was visiting this weekend, so we took some time and took her to the Portland Rose Gardens. The weather was beautiful! We had a great time and of course the gardens are gorgeous.

Here are some pictures that you might enjoy.

I LOVE this color....if there was a wedding in my future,
my colors would be black, white and this color ;)

Of course I love, love, love hydrangeas so we had to take pictures of them. It was amazing

D and his mom

I love this picture, maybe my favorite one so far!
(even with my cheesy smile and D's distracted look)

Thoughts

Of course, I have nothing better to blog about, so I resort once again to numbering my thoughts:

1. D and I are having JM and KW over for dinner tonight. We're having cheese stuffed manicotti, roasted potatoes, garlic bread and candied cashew and pear salad. Hope it all turns out okay. They will be going back to school on Thursday and I am super sad about it. I have LOVED having them here. We have fun together. But only one more year of KW being away for school. She is completing her 5th year in Portland! Yay!

2. We have a friend coming over for dinner tomorrow night too.

3. I got to spend so much time with family and Megan this weekend, it was so fun. Megan was so happy the whole time and being so funny and silly. I don't think it is possible for us to love her anymore than we do! She is really something else and always brings so much joy.

4. Work is tedious. So I am daydreaming today of decorating for Christmas, going Christmas shopping, listening to Christmas music, making pumpkin pie and carving pumpkins. Weird I know.

5. I already know what I am getting S and K for their birthdays in January, and I'm feeling good about being so ahead of the game!:)

6. I bought part of Megan's B-day present last week and just found the other part a couple days ago and I'm pretty excited about it. It's cute and fun.

7. I have several blogs that I stalk on a regular basis, people I don't even know. But for whatever reason, I find them intriguing and entertaining. The creepy part is that a couple of them have popped up in some recent dreams I've had.....what is wrong with me?

8. I have started praying for ways to be involved in ministry and outreach outside the church. I will still be involved in church, but I am thinking about things like the Tualatin Food Pantry, which I already am involved in. Do you know what I mean? I want to be involved and help support some good organizations. Maybe a cancer foundation, or a rescue shelter or missions organization. Any ideas?

9. Mom, Dad, Jon, Kelly and Megan went to the new house on Sunday and were able to walk around and see it inside for the first time. It was fun to show it to them. I love it and can't help but to daydream about all the events and memories that will take place in those walls. Oh and they officially have the "sold" sign up on it and seeing that made me cry. I'm a dork.

10. I'm super hungry and think that I am going to take an early lunch....

Cute pictures from the day

My not so candid, candid picture

Last night D and I went out to Josh and Kristie's to play with Megan, but mostly so Kristie could help me with a project (because she is way more creative than she will ever give herself credit for).

I think Megan was fascinated with D. It was pretty cute. She even tried to say his name!!
At one point she brought him a book and plopped herself down on his lap, which is Megan language for READ ME A BOOK! :)

I was trying to be as discreet at possible and snap a candid picture, but Megan saw the camera and she knew exactly what to do. There was absolutely no prompting the baby to smile in this picture. She is such a little ham, and she is smiling so big, that this kind of looks like her evil smile. We love you Megan.

We Still Remember

The moment the world changed, I was still tucked safely in bed. The phone rang and from the urgency in my Dad's voice telling me to turn on the TV, I knew something was terribly wrong. However, I would have never imagined the scene I was about to see. Obviously, this must be some awful accident, but that hope was short lived. I will never forget the feeling of shock that we lived with for the first few hours of September 11, 2001. The shock that quickly changed into horror, fear, anger and unimaginable heartbreak.

I was driving to school and remember the exact spot on the road I was when with agony and pain in his voice the radio announcer began shouting that the second tower was collapsing. I remember watching TV and seeing the news anchors sob in silence unable to formulate words to describe the images they were seeing. I remember the nightmares I had following that Tuesday morning, I remember jumping at the sound of jets patrolling the skies. I remember pleading with God for his intervention, and I remember the mental picture of the Lord weeping with us at the devastation of man's free will that is so frequently used for evil.

Do you still remember the unity that came from this catastrophe? I remember almost every car with flags, ribbons and stickers proudly displaying their love of the USA. I remember how perfect strangers were now friendly and talked in line at the grocery store. And perhaps the most memorable was watching the news when politicians put all their agendas, opinions, political party affiliations and differences aside as they joined hands and began to sing "God Bless America."

Here we are seven years later. Today in New York City moments of silence were held at 8:46, 9:03, and 9:59 and 10:29 — the times when two hijacked jets slammed into the trade center buildings and the twin towers fell. Names of the victims were read and family members were allowed down to ground zero to mourn and remember their lost loved ones who were stolen so violently from them.

"Today marks the seventh anniversary of the day our world was broken," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the start of the ceremony, calling Sept. 11, 2001, a "day that began like any other and ended as none ever has."

Today. services were also held to remember the victims of hijacked planes in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon the new memorial was dedicated where President Bush was in attendance. The memorial consists of 184 benches each engraved with the name of someone who lost their life in a single moment on 9/11/01.

Please take time to remember the people who were lost on that tragic day seven years ago. Hug the people you love and tell them how much they mean to you. Take time to care for others in remembrance of those who are no longer with us and out of the unity that was birthed in our nation on September 11, 2001. Thank the heros in your life that you know, the police officers, firefighter and service men and woman. They serve selflessly, but a little appreciation goes a long way.

Note to Self:

Sugar free sugar cookies.....not so good.

But he still ate them. He's such a nice man. :)

Date Night for D

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had been planning on taking D on a date all for him. Well I did and it was so fun and he loved it (which was the point).

• Dinner at Thai Orchid (I discovered that I like Thai food, weird huh?)
• Hitting golf balls at Redtail Golf Center = 1 happy man
• Late showing of a guy flick (we are officially too old for the late show, both of us were fighting to stay awake). But the movie was good.

I really slacked on the picture department, but here are a couple we took before we left. You can't really tell but I was wearing a very cute outfit and was actually having a pretty good hair day.

We had fun!

All Ducked Up!

A post of few words:

• Really fun day
• Really hot day
• Yummy curly fries
• Amazing new scoreboard
• I love the Duck mascot, he's my favorite
• Ducks win
• Fun dinner with D's parents after game

30 Minutes to Baby Elephant

I had a super fun weekend! On Friday night after work I decided to drive down to LaPine to spend the night with mom and dad and theVanValkenburg's. D was planning on spending the night in Eugene with his parents before the big Duck game on Saturday night. So we packed up and jumped in the car. His parent's house is on the way to LaPine, so I dropped him off on the way.

I got to LaPine a little after 10pm and knocked on the door. Dad opened the door and just stared at me, it was pretty funny. They didn't know I was coming. The next morning I woke up and came out to the kitchen where Megan was sitting at the table, she looked at me and made her surprised face and said, "there she is!" It was WAY TOO cute.

We had a great day, just relaxed and hung out. Then made our way to Paulina Lake where J&K went bike riding. Mom, Dad, Megan and I walked around the waterfall and watched Megan be mesmerized by it. She kept saying, "Pretty" and "Tree." Cute.

And the best thing about Saturday is that Megan started saying my name, nonstop! I loved it! Just call me mami!! I love her.

About 9:15 D sent me a text and told me to start making my way back towards Pleasant Hill. So about 2 hours later I arrived and picked him up. There were a ton of people on the freeway coming home from the game. We didn't get home til about 2 am!!

Anyway, on Sunday D's parents brought his nephews up and we all went to the zoo. And we had SO MUCH FUN. We had a great time. His parents we extremely kind and accepting of me and his nephews loved me. I was so relieved and it really was just a great time. I had so much fun playing with the boys. They are great and so full of energy. Blake is 3 and Caden is 2. Blake stuck with me the whole day and was always holding my hand. If we got too far away from each other, she was start looking around and asking everyone, "Where's Tami? Where's Tami?!" It helped a lot to have the boys there since I feel way more in my element when there are kids around. I feel very comfortable and at ease just to play with them. I was so happy about the whole day. D's mom and I even drove to the zoo together by ourselves and it was very pleasant and fun. It was a step in the right direction and gave me some much needed encouragement.

Anyway, have you heard that the Portland zoo has a new baby elephant? It was only 8 days old when we went and the line to see him was long, took us 30 minutes, but not nearly as long as it had been the day before. Saturday was his first day in the public and apparently there were just thousands of people there. But here his is....


He was so stinkin' cute!! I almost cried when I saw him, it was just so sweet and he stuck very close to his mommy. And although he was born at 286 pounds, he was still much smaller than I thought he would be. And apparently he was big for a baby elephant. Anyway, if you get the chance to go....you must. It is so worth it.


Anyway here is a list of stuff that's in my head (this is always what I resort to when I have nothing else to blog about):

1. Stuff with DB & KB - I was very angry about it, but have had some progress is working it through. Not all the way to being okay with it, but doubt I ever will be.

2. D and I helped Dave pack up his office and move everything out on Monday morning and it was awful, terrible and so, so sad. But we brought them coffee and tried to be a distraction and make it at least some what tolerable for them.

3. I am going to youth group tonight. It's going to be sad.

4. I am taking D on a date on Friday night and I am so excited. He spends so much of his time doing things that I like to make me happy, so I want to return the favor. I am banking on the fact that he doesn't read his, so here's the plan. After work I am going to take him out for Thai food. He LOVES Thai food.....me, not so much. But this date is for HIM. Then we are going to swing by his house so he can pick up his golf clubs and I am going to take him to the driving range so he can hit a bucket of balls. After that off to Cold Stone, which I also don't care for, but he likes Cold Stone and not Baskin Robbins. And then, off to a movie. Which one? I'm not sure yet, haven't looked that far in advance. But I am so looking forward to it.

5. I am going to the Duck game on Saturday with D. So I went to the Duck store at the mall yesterday with Kelly and picked up a new shirt and a duck sticker to wear on my face. Yeah, I know, I will be cute. :)

6. It's the first day of school around here and I feel sad. It is really loud now again and all the fourth graders across my office look really depressed!

7. I've been working on this giant, very time consuming project all summer. And yesterday I inserted my jump drive into my laptop to covert it to a pdf and it was gone, yes that is right, it was GONE!!! I freaked out, and I cried and I am pretty sure I probably swore in my head.

8. I had the worst possible day at work yesterday. It was awful and I have the voicemail to prove it.