Hello, Autumn

There are still many more to go, but how great it is to have the trees different colors!

Sunday Mornings

JD loves sleeping in, and only gets to do it once in a while.  Today in order to avoid waking him, I drove up to Cooper Mountain and walked around.  The leaves are beautiful and all over the place.  It was so peaceful wandering around pine trees and freshly rained on fall colored trees.  I love fall!

Portland

We went downtown today.  Portland is a much different place during the 'off season' but still as quirky as ever.  On the agenda was: Powell's Bookstore, Athleta (yay!), Willamette River Walk, and walk around Pioneer Plaza and Square.  We are finally offically in fall here.  Some of the trees have changed to bright oranges, yellows, and reds, with many more who have yet to even start changing.  I wish the quieter weekends with JD would last longer.  We have been super busy between him studying and my new job training. 

Take that Chinese Food

Guess what I made, all by myself, and it turned out delicious?  That's right, ham fried rice people.  For  whatever reason, cooking any form of Chinese food is scary to me.  I won tonight though: Natalie 1: Chinese Food 0.  I made a ton of it so it was dinner and lunch for both of us.

The Barber

I cut JD's hair for the first time today.He had gone since the day before we moved here without getting it cut and he was getting a little shaggy.  I found a nice clipper set on Amazon and went at it.  Not going to lie, it was a little scary.  I think it was worse this time because his hair started out so long that it was a little crazy looking at the hair pile up in the garbage can and around his feet.  Good news: he isn't bald, it looks really good, and that hair cut technically paid for the clippers, so from here on out we are in the plus.

I love the TEMPLE!

This is about as close as you can get to taking a full picture of the Portland Temple, any other angle consists of a lot of trees or not being able to get far enough away to fit it in.  It is beautiful and I love it. 

Commuting

Morning commutes vary by a lot. Some days it is bright and sunny and others.....it isn't. The pictures on the right is the sun coming up from behind Mount Hood, the other depicts what morning in the clouds looks like.

Birthday & General Conference

I love when my birthday is on General Conference.  We used to have a cabin in Heber and every conference weekend the whole family would go to the cabin, watch conference, walk around the lake amidst yellow quaking aspens, and have delicious lunches and dinners around the conference schedule.  It wasn't too uncommon to have my birthday fall on such a wonderful weekend so the combination is always my favorite.  After a busy day of going to the beach and hiking, conference was wonderful.  We got to relax and listen to the words of living prophets.  What an amazing gift it is to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life.  It has been a happy, peaceful, birthday weekend to say the very least.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes through text, phone calls, facebook, and cards. We are also grateful to Tyler and Whitney Whiting who had us over for dinner twice this weekend.  It is nice to have 'new'ish friends (JD & Tyler served in India at the same time and know each other) here in Oregon.

Birthday on the Beach

Another block done means another weekend adventure for us!  This was a fantastic birthday weekend.  Today we went to Munson Creek Falls State Park followed by Cape Overlook State Park.  Cape Overlook was fun.  There were beached jelly fish so we had fun scooping them up with sand dollars and putting them back into the ocean.  It was so nice to enjoy a sun shiny day and be together after another long couple of weeks.  Before heading home we stopped by the Tillamook cheese factory.  Hopefully we have a few more weekends of sunshine before the rain comes.

Tualatin Hills Nature Park

I love the 'parks' here.  The pictures are from Tualatin Hills Nature Park, this 222 acre gem is about 2 minutes from where I work.  I love the mini forests that are all over the place.  I can hardly wait for them to start changing colors.

My Job Continued

This is my job in picture form.  I am the tech next to all the check marks.  I think long hours in a small room is making us a little loopy, that or the dry erase fumes.  Things are making a little more sense and I am starting to understand what is going on....a little bit.

Happy October!

Hello friends!  Guess what is exciting about today?  It is October!!!!  This is my favorite month and favorite time of year.  Oregon definitely has a different kind of fall.  Most of the leaves have yet to even start changing colors and when they do change, it is slowly, not all at once like in Utah.  Happy fall!  Happy October!  Happy season!

Trabajo

So I got a new job.....which means I am back to work.  I had orientation Monday and very crazy training the rest of this past week.  I work for Providence Health Care in their corporate pharmacy services division as a specialized tech.  The job is very different from anything I have ever experienced before.  Everyone I have talked to who has worked the job 2 years received 4 months of training.  One of the newer hires had a 6 week training because they were in a bind.  Me?  I get 2 weeks with a week of implementation.  They are short 5 techs, they hired 4 new people including me, but 3 won't start for another week and an existing coordinator just had a baby so they are needing help pretty quick.  Training involves 8 hours of learning new programs and policies.  I basically have 12 applications running on my screen at any given moment in time and all of them interrelate to each other, I am supposed to learn what each one has on it and how to use it and what I am allowed to say or do on each of them.  Thus far I am semi familiar with about 8 of them, have 4 different passwords to keep straight, and still have 4 to go.  I keep being told to not feel too pressured, that it takes about 6 months to know what you are doing and 2 years to understand why you are doing what you are doing.  Seeing as I probably don't have 2 years with them, it isn't the most helpful advice.  So that is the story of what I am doing for work.

Astoria

For this weekend's adventure we drove up to the Evergreen State and hit Astoria & Seaside in Oregon.  The coast has been socked in with a nasty marine layer all week so I was shocked when we got to Seaside to blue skies and pretty warm temperatures.  We first went to the Astoria Column.  It was dedicated in 1926 and is basically a really tall column that you can climb 196 stairs to the top and have a neat view of Astoria, Columbia River, Oregon, Washington, Astoria-Megler Bridge, and the ocean.  The side of the column has different frames of Astorian history and is pretty cool.  You can buy little wooden planes in the gift shop and people will through them from the top of the column and watch them circle down (with kids anxiously waiting to catch them), they had a burial canoe, and that is about it.  It is kind of a random landmark, but it is worth going to, especially on a sunny day.  We then drove up to Washington and explored Cape Disappointment which has two lighthouses and a Lewis and Clark exhibit.  On our way home we stopped in Seaside to eat our fancy peanut butter sandwiches.  Before leaving we stopped in the candy shop, The Seaside Candyman, mainly because it was playing the Candyman song from Willy Wonka and how can you resist that?  It was FULL of salt water taffy.  When we have more time I definitely want to see what some of the 170 taffy flavors are someday.  It was a really fun day, I just wish we could spend time together like that more than once every 2 weeks.  The next activities should be interesting, we are going into territory where I have never been: Mt Hood & Sauvie Island.

The Orchards

We went to Bell Orchards today and picked some honey crisp apples.  Sadly, the peaches are all done and gone :( but the apples are delicious and I really like UPick Orchards, they are quirky and cheap.  It was a nice very mini break-it is owned by people in our ward here and is just down the road-from JD studying and I have been munching on apples all day.  Happy picking!

Cooper Mountain Nature Park

We live in an area with a lot of 'parks'.  While there are your typical soccer field and playground parks.  There are also quite a few nature parks which entails pieces of wilderness and trails.  We are right below the Cooper Mountain Nature Park, which has multiple trails.  We were walking the Little Prairie Loop Trail tonight and came across this: the little prairie.  At first I couldn't figure out why there was a sign and two benches looking at this field until JD pointed out that this was the namesake of the trail we were on.  It is a pretty funny nature park, I can't wait to see what the big prairie looks like.

On the Menu

I am not a fan of cooking....at all.  I never have been.  My sister, Emily, is a master chef.  She was the one willing to help with the entire meal when we were growing up.  I would peel potatos and book it out of the kitchen.  I don't like timing things, making a mess, cleaning it up, shopping for the ingredients, going to cook something and missing a single ingredient, etc.  It is just a hassle I don't enjoy.  Since moving up here, I have been cooking a lot more.  I have enjoyed finding new recipes and only one was absolutely terrible (I blame false imagery on the part of CrockPot because I rechecked and I followed everything exactly correct) but that hasn't taken away from the whole process that I loathe.  One thing I have done to help that has worked well for the first 2 months at least is preplanning my shopping list for an entire month making me grocery store free for 29 days of the month which I love.  One the menu this month: frito pie, swedish pork roast, parmesean chicken, southwestern chicken chili, tacos, chicken curry, and honey spiced glazed chicken to name a few.

Silver Falls

We had a blast at Silver Falls State Park yesterday.  While not doing the entire Trail of Ten Falls, we did do 5.5 miles of the loop and saw 8 of them. My gracefulness cut the trek a little short with a bloody knee and scuffed up ankle and hands-not bad, just not very fun. Silver Falls is a really amazing place though.  We loved walking behind the falls, looking at crazy trees growing out of stumps and fallen down trees, and driving through the Christmas Tree Farms on the way to the park (those are not grassy rolling hills in the pictures, those are full grown Christmas Trees, it is crazy).  We are definitely going to try and make it back when the leaves are on in a month or so.  Sorry there are so many pictures, it was hard to decide which ones to add.  I had fun (probably a little too much) playing with the manual settings during this hike, so there were a lot to choose from.  Just click on any picture to get a bigger view.

Salem Bound

We had an interesting time getting to Silver Creek Falls today.  We were surprised to find that we were stuck in pretty thick traffic on our way to Salem and couldn't figure out what was going on.  Then we started noticing a trend of very bedazzeled cars with PomPoms, duck feet, beavers, flags, magnets, stickers, etc.  The drivers were often in bright green and yellow or orange and black attire as well.  We later found out that both Oregon State and University of Oregon were playing, one in Eugene, the other in Corvallis, both of which require I-5 to get too.  It was fun people watching and I got some great car decorating ideas too.  We also stopped by the Lego Store on our way to get a surprise for our old upstairs neighbors.  I love looking at their displays.  The movie theater one was fantastic.  It is hard to see but you have kings sharing popcorn with Harry Potter, light sabers, maces,wands, and bows are all perfectly normal in a Lego Theater.

Work Stress

I have had a month off of no job.  This has not been a fun thing.  I go crazy when I am not working and it has been hard not having work.  I have been making fancy dishes in the kitchen and have cooked a lot more than I probably ever have over the past month to take up time.  So this week I got three job offers within a few days of each other.  They are all very different along the lines of work, pros & cons, how offers have been made (or the lack there of and still an expectation to take the offer).  I hate business in healthcare (I know in general it is bad, but healthcare is really bad).  I like when an offer is made that is fair and just there.  I don't like the well what are you looking for?  How much were you making?  What have your other offers been?  I don't like the politics and the stress it creates. Look at my resume, tell me what you think and if there are problems we can talk.  I just need a job that can help us keep our debt down a bit, one that I can do for a few years before JD does clinicals, and that will be a good fit for what we need.  At this point I honestly am not sure as to which job/s I will be taking.  So who knows where or what I will be doing?  I don't, but I will let you know when I know.

What I've Been Listening To

It has been awhile since I have been so excited about a new album.  I love this band, they have some Utah roots so I've known about them for a few years and it is really exciting to see them getting more attention, I even heard them on the radio here in Portland the other day!  It is a great album with some of their past works added to this one like It's Time and On Top of the World.  Check them out, see what you think.

The Navigator

Today was a big day.  I drove through Portland, across bridges, along OR-10, OR-8, OR-26, I-405 S, I-5 N, I-84 E, I-205 N, OR-30 E, OR-30 W, I-84 W, I-5 S, and I-405 N.  I did this alone.  I did this without a map.  I did this without getting lost.  I did this in great time.  I DID IT!  I love maps and I love knowing where I am.  Moving here has been a little difficult in that I couldn't look at maps when I was driving, and I didn't know where I was.  Today was liberating to say the least.  Having a GPS would be easier, but then I wouldn't have victories like today and oh how good they feel!

The Study Bug

JD studies super hard all week and by the time Friday rolls around he is a bit worn out.  The above picture took place about 5 minutes after he got home from school on Friday.  The one below is JD's desk.  I thought it was pretty clever how he came up with the idea of balancing my totes to create a nice desk.  My supply of crayons, markers, and colored pencils that I use for primary is readily on hand just in case.  I am grateful that he is such a hard worker, I know I wouldn't have the fortitude to go through the program he is doing.  It has been a good experience so far we are interested to see what else is in store.

Seaside in September

I love September 1st, it means the coming of Fall.  It is the day that I can officially pull out fall decorations and get excited about changing leaves, apples, peaches and all that wonderfulness that comes with autumn.  We went to Seaside and spent some time feeding harbor seals, looking at creatures in the aquarium, watching kites, and relaxing on the beach.  JD wasn't sure why everyone thinks seals are so cute, he refers to them as "Fat Floppers".  Personally I think they are adorable.  I love being so close to the ocean, and having fun places to spend time with JD before he gets back to studying each Saturday.