Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, a birthday post is better late than never, right? But I should get some credit since it is exactly 1 month after my birthday. You know what that means......right? Only 11 months until my birthday!

I love my birthday. It is my favorite day of the year. Maybe even better than Christmas. I just think that July 20 is the best day! Anyway, I have always been blessed to have special birthdays. My parents always went over and above to make me feel special and make my day fun. Perhaps, this is why I do love my birthday so much?!

This year was special in a different way. I spent my whole birthday weekend with D, and he went through a lot of trouble to make it wonderfully special for me.

On Saturday morning, he gave me a card with two horses kissing on the front, and on the inside he explained that we would be spending the day at the beach in Pacific City and that he had arranged for us to take a 2 hour horseback ride along the beach. I was so excited. What a great idea! The weather was perfect, and it was so fun, relaxing and romantic. We ended up being the only people with the guides, so that was extra fun. My horse's name was Trigg and D's was Warrior something....I can't remember (that's what happens when you wait until one month later to blog about a special event). We even came to a part of the beach where a bunch of seals were laying on the sand. The whole experience was incredible and I love every minute of it! Such a thoughtful birthday surprise!

The rest of the weekend, we spent downtown. We got to do whatever I wanted. Which involved a lot of shopping, coffee and food. :) We ate lunch at Rock Bottom Brewery and dinner at Henry's...where we saw a woman completely naked walking around in her apartment. It was REALLY hot that weekend, but it was weird (and pretty funny)! Here's my love at RBB.

D also arranged for us to stay at Portland's White House. It was SO neat. I LOVE things like this. It was an old historic house built as a summer house for a wealthy family in 1910 or 1911. It looks like a miniature white house, huh?

The morning of my birthday, we woke up and had an incredible breakfast there at the white house and met some fun people who were traveling through Portland.

The whole weekend was perfect. I would not have changed anything. I felt very special and cared for.

Of course, on the evening of my birthday my parents had a birthday dinner with my sister's at their house. I am one very blessed person. I have an amazing D, amazing parents and amazing sisters. Thank you all for what you did to make me feel special on my birthday. This was definintely one I will never forget!

11 months til I turn 27....

knowing what's important

This last year has been full of self discovery for me. It has been one lesson after the other on life in general. How to love people, how to find the courage to trust, how to take other people's expectations with the grain of salt, how to know what is right for me and stick with it, how to go against the crowds to stand up for what you know is right.

But now it seems it's time for me to learn yet another lesson, but I am not sure what it is. I feel like I am at a cross-roads in my life. One I really don't like. Do I keep going and keep what is important to me, but not completely fulfilling me? Or do I veer and risk a lot of heartache and losing what is important to me to possibly gain fulfillment. Neither option seems appealing. I honestly don't know what is more important to me yet.

I have spent quite a lot of time by myself over the last few days. Reflecting, praying, asking for guidance....crying. I feel weary, discouraged, confused and quite frankly....terrified. But I do know God is here, he hears my prayers, he knows my heart...even when I can't explain it to anyone else, he notices my tears and hold them in his hand. Even in my despair, he meets me and gives me hope, he has plans for my future, he holds my head above the water and I always know that He is what is most important to me. In the scheme of eternity, everything else is just details.

Summer Vacation 2009

D and I spent almost a week in Lapine for vacation this year. His whole family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) were camping about 10 miles away, so we stayed at the house in Lapine and joined them on many occasions to have fun.

Of course, all my pictures are all out of order, because I just don't take the time anymore to put them in order.

This first pictures was of the day we came home. We stopped by D's brother's house and they weren't home yet, and we were attacked by their chickens. They were making weird not chicken noises and pecking my car! Weirdos!

One of the days we were there, D hiked to the top of the South Sister mountain with 16 other members of his family. He had a great time and was glad that he went. But boy, it was an all day event! We had to leave the house at 5:30 am to drop him off. I believe they got back to the campground where his family was staying at around 4 pm.

What did I do when he was on his all day trek you ask? Well, I came back to the house and went back to sleep for like 3 hours, and it was heavenly! Then I watched TV, took a bath, got a yummy coffee and set off on an adventure of my own! I drove into bend, and just explored. I parked downtown and walked around and went into a bunch of little neat stores. I loved it. I then found a place to get my nails done, and the people there made fun of my eyebrows and laughed at my and talked about me in Korean. Whatever. I was in serious need of a tweezing, but that still wasn't nice. :) I drove around some more and went into A LOT of cute stores and then I drove up to the top of Pilot Butte for a great 360 view of the city. I had a great time just doing whatever I wanted.

One of the nights, D and I went and got a treat at DQ and then drove to a look out point by Paulina Lake to watch the sunset, we got there just in time and it was incredible! One of the highlights of the trip for me.

The first day his family arrived in LaPine, we went to Paulina Falls and walked around. Here are a couple pictures of the falls, they were beautiful! Then we all had a picnic at the top, and it was a great time and the weather was great. Not too cold and not too hot!

We tried to go the the Lava Lands, but it was too busy and they weren't letting anyone else in, so we went to turn around when we saw a sign for bendham falls, so we decided to go find it. We walked along the river for about 1/2 mile and then came across this. The pictures seriously don't do it justice, it was COOL!

You can't tell from this picture, but I am basically on the edge of a big cliff. I was laughing, because it stressed D out! He thought I wasn't been very safe, and well, I was surprised I went out so far because it was freaky, but I just wanted to get a picture!

Those people down there were stressing both of us out! The water is moving SOOOO fast and it was SOOOO loud!

This might be the world's worst picture of me, but I just had to add it. I was being swarmed my bugs at the very moment this picture was being taken. And the crazy face I was making was the, "take the freakin' picture now!" face.

We both left Bendham falls with about 20+ HUMONGOUS bug bites. At one point, I was actually scared that I was allergic to something that bit me, because the bites on my arm got so big. It was, well...disgusting.

We also visited the expensive High Desert Museum. It was $15 each to get it, but it was fun. We ended up staying there for about 2 hours.

We also did a lot of relaxing, reading and movie watching while we were there. Oh yeah, we went and saw Julia and Julie during our vacation and loved it. It is a great movie.


And just like we always do when we are in LaPine, we ate tons of really good food. Sausage and cheese omelettes, homemade hashbrowns, steak, french toast and berries, shrimp fajitas, fajita quesadillas, etc. It was good!


We had a great time and even ended up staying an extra day.
We just didn't want the fun to end! It was a wonderful vacation 2009!

Next summer: Minnesota, here we come!