Utah Bound

A few weeks ago I found an amazing deal on Southwest on tickets to Utah.  I was debating on what would be best and turns out my family couldn't wait until April for us to come for a visit so my parents generously paid our way to come and hang out for a week and a half.  Porter was fantastic on his flight.  As usual he slept most of the flight.  He has been so funny with my family.  We went to lunch right after getting picked up from the airport and he kept staring at my mom.  When we were done eating, she went to get him out of the high chair and he dove for her face and started giving her giant, open mouthed, slobbery kisses over and over again. We figured that he has been so used to seeing my family on skype and hearing their voices on speaker phone that eventually he put them together and was super excited to be with family.  He did the same thing with Auntie Em, as seen in the picture below.  He had fun playing on top of Uncle Sye and surprising Grandma Speth again. My mom was also super excited and well prepared to get Porter more interested in real food too.  It if fun watching him give her the trouble he has given me, but it is much cuter than when you are the one trying to get the kid to realize that real food is pretty neat.

Winter at the Coast

 Free weekend! Always a happy thing when JD passes his exam and we can go play.  I wanted to celebrate getting to be home with our cute little guy more and so this weekend we decided to head to Indian Beach, one of our favorite gems on the Oregon Coast.  It has a light house, great tide pools, sandy beaches, and is a little more secluded.  It was a little bit chilly but not too horrible.  We were able to check out the pools and listen to the waves.  I love living so close to the ocean and being able to go as often as we do. Also notice that Porter is sitting up on his own unassisted? That is his fun trick that I worked on like crazy so that we could do his 6 month photos with Auntie Allie sitting up.  He loves being able to look around, but still flops over when he gets excited.

See Ya Later MBC

I am officially no longer physically working at Murray Business Center.  Laura threw a get together with a few of my coworkers to say "see ya later" at Red Robin.  I have mixed feeling about all this change taking place.  I am sad to say goodbye to so many neat people.  I truly feel very blessed to have been placed in Providence Health Plan, to have been able to work as a coordinator and to have met so many amazing people and made so many friends. I will miss seeing them everyday, our walks, our meetings, and the hands on work that I have been apart of during such an interesting time in health care. I am also relieved that I don't have to worry about having a sitter for Porter after going through 3 since November, and that I can be the one taking care of him all the time, though I have been super grateful for Whitney, Julie, and Chantal who have loved him and watched him while I was at work. Working from home will be an interesting new chapter, but one that I still can't believe I will have the opportunity to do.  While I won't be seeing these amazing friends face to face every day anymore, I will still be working with them and that makes this change all the better.

The Great Portland Shutdown of 2014

 

So last year we didn't have snow all winter long, ok maybe a slight storm where there was enough to dust the car and made my 3 mile commute to work 45 minutes instead of 15, but nothing huge. When it does snow here, the city shuts down.  Part of it is the fact that people have no clue how to drive in snow. There are also factors of they don't have snow equipment, they refuse to use salt because it is 'bad for the environment' and use sand instead which they then have to drive a machine 3 MPH for the next week to sweep back up to recycle and use for the next storm-don't ask that is just Portland, and Portland is very hilly so when the initial snow hits and melts it turns to ice then the snow piles on top of that and it can be pretty treacherous at the bottom of hills, especially if you aren't familiar with driving in snowy conditions. 

What we are experiencing is a rather large storm even by Utah standards, we got about a foot in 14 hours or so, more over night, and more is in the forcast to come. JD's school was cancelled and they are having their test on Monday instead of Friday-which is a bummer since it was supposed to be a free weekend.  My work was cancelled Thursday, and we were sent home early on Friday.  Saturday JD taught people how to clear snow off their cars-we saw one individual with a metal BBQ spatula trying to scrape off his car before JD ran out to stop him and grab our ice scraper/brush to help him, not before he scratched his car up a bit I am sure.  There was also a lady trying to 'salt' the sidewalks for her neighbors which was very nice, but she was using blue Morton's table salt to do this. JD walked to our nearby grocery store to get a few food items that didn't require cooking in case the power went out with the freezing rain that was expected Saturday night.  

Church was cancelled on Sunday.  We invited the missionaries over since they live in our same apartment complex to eat with us and then we watched the Thomas S Monson biography film on LDS.org for our 'churchy' lesson. It has just been an interesting and fun weekend.  I have liked being home with my boys and spending time together.  We have been bundled up and exploring the snow packed roads and watching funny people all weekend.

This is 185th Street, a busy road that always has a car on it, completely snowpacked.

We watched people hiking up and down 185th throughout the day, I am glad we live at the bottom because it is a pretty big and steep hill.

Kathleen's Shower

The great snow storm of 2014 has kind of shut down the city of Portland and all surrounding areas, despite this, a few brave individuals still made it to work. My amazing friend and coworker is having a baby and we threw her a work shower today-so sad that so many couldn't be there, but it was still fun. I still had fun organizing, decorating, wrapping, and buying all the fun gifts with the donated money from coworkers. I am super excited for Kathleen and John and can't wait to find out if they are having a boy or a girl in March! 

The whole feeling of work is kind of like when the power goes out when you are in elementary school.  You are still at school and doing school things but it is still special and fun.  About an hour after we were done eating and opening her presents they sent us home because the snow was coming down again.  It is kind of a funny situation having grown up in Utah where it has to be pretty bad to make a city shut down, or to even have a snow day for school.

First Food

Well Porter's first experience with real food was interesting as in not so successful.  We mixed some rice cereal with fresh milk and while he was willing to give it a try, he kept looking at his mom like 'why aren't you just feeding me like we have been all along, that has been working just fine?'  By the end of the session he was having more fun chewing on the bowl and trying to put his fingers inside it.  We will try again another day.....though probably not super soon.