You walk along the stream, your head caught in a waking dream

so it's been a while...but that's because nothing's been going on. nothing but work and laziness. i'm going to say we're not doing anything so we can save money, but that's just to make myself feel better. haha. truthfully, we haven't been doing anything bc work is keeping us apart. our schedules used to work out pretty well, not so much anymore. i don't know what's going on, but my work schedule keeps changing every week. wish i always knew which days i'd have off so i could plan to do stuff, but i don't and i only know my schedule up until next thursday which is incredibly lame. so with my schedule absolutely nothing like the schedules of the past and jarrod getting called in to work at random, we really don't ever have time to go exploring. that's also very lame. :P i mean, i guess we could go wander around by ourselves, but i'm terrible at directions, even with my gps i'd get lost, and jarrod doesn't have a working car at the moment. pretty much we spend our free time at home watching movies or playing video games. blagh. i suppose eventually we'll get to the point where we'll feel comfortable enough to roam around by ourselves, but i personally am not up to that point yet. haha.
now to say we've been doing "nothing" is an exaggeration. sometimes while jarrod is at work i'll go to the free movies in the park with catherine, my new friend. :) we've had some pretty good times there. i enjoy those days. soon catherine and i will start re-watching LOST (yes!) but that's after i get her caught up on movies that she NEEDS to see. haha. so not all alone time is spent alone, but the majority is bc catherine also has an opposite schedule to mine. lame.

anywho, jarrod and i did do something exciting this past sunday. we went to McMenamins Edgefield (http://www.mcmenamins.com/54-edgefield-home) to see the Fleet Foxes! ahhhhhhhhhhh. awesome. fun. lovely. haha. the concert was part of the famous "concerts on the lawn" series for mcmenamins, so as my sentence states, the concert was on a lawn.

it was a really great experience since all i'm used to are indoor concerts. the weather was lovely, once we were sitting on the lawn in the shade of a giant tree. :) it actually got up to 85! and while jarrod and i were standing in line to get in, we were actually sweating! a first for this summer, besides the times we rode bikes on a sunny day. yeah, sweating, crazy, huh? (i laugh at your constant 100 degree weather back home. bwahahahahha!!!) back to the concert: it was very laid back, maybe bc the music was is so mellow, maybe bc of the venue, maybe both. anywho, it was really nice to just sit there and listen to the music and relax. i really enjoyed it. :) i liked the people-watching and being mellow, and not getting stuck behind some tall guy so i can't see the stage. very enjoyable experience. i should be going back to edgefield for The Decembrists in late august. i'm positive that will be a great time too. now i must add a fleet foxes song in here:

ah! so good! such a unique voice. fun show. :)
um....i don't think there's anything else i need to add...no big plans for the next few weeks, just the same ol, same ol. oh! except that daddy's coming to portland the last week of august. i'm looking forward to that! :D yay!
alright, i'll leave you with some lovely pics i took sunday morning after dropping jarrod off at work.

mt. rainier at sunrise from rocky butte

mt. hood at sunrise from rocky butte.

 

-sarah-

Half a Decade and still going strong

July 6th was mine and jarrod's 5 year anniversary. FIVE YEARS! Half a decade! wild, right? i'd say so. it doesn't feel like it's been that long, but if i really think about all we have shared in the past five years, then yeah, i can understand that it's been that long, but it still doesn't feel that way. that's probably a good thing though, right? haha. good thing we're not tired of each other! hahah.
alright, so for our lovely half a decade anniversary we decided to go out of town and head to newport to see the Oregon Coast Aquarium. (http://aquarium.org/) it was a pretty nice aquarium, but not as big as i thought it'd be. no matter, we still had a good time. here's some pics from that:

i tried to get a pic of a sea lion, but they wouldn't stay still long enough. haha.
after the aquarium we headed to Historic Newport Bayfront where we stopped at the Undersea Gardens, Wax Museum, and Ripley's Believe It or Not. all 3 of those came in a special package, which was really cheaper for all 3 than just one or two of them, so yeah. it was fun. pics!:

The Undersea Garden

Lewis and Clark

Johnny Depp, if only

LOTR

we then walked around the bayfront, looking through the shops and galleries. we stopped at a nice chocolate shop where we bought some delicious sea salt caramels. yum. after the chocolate shop we left newport to check in at our campsite at Beachside.
we unpacked our stuff at the site

then went back into town to find some dinner. we ended up having pepperoni pizza, which was pretty good. after dinner we headed back to our campsite and then we went to the beach so we could freeze our bootys off. it was COLD!!! and incredibly windy. somehow we still managed to stay on the beach to get some good pics:

see the wind blowing us away? haah

once we headed back to the tent we decided to start a fire to warm ourselves up and to get our smores started so we could get nice and warm under our blankets sooner. haha. jarrod built the fire (of course, that's what he's here for...hahahahah.)

we had some smores and then got in our tent and talked; reminisced about our previous anniversaries. we couldn't think of what we did our third year anniversary though...i still don't remember. weird. haha. but oh well. after talking for a while, we fell asleep.
Wednesday July 7th we woke up, packed up, and headed back to the beachside beach for a bit. it was low tide which blew jarrod's mind. haha. he took some pics while i kept my toes buried in the sand to keep them warm. once we left the camping grounds we went back into newport to the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse (http://www.yaquinalights.org/). we took a tour around the lighthouse and then headed down to another freezing cold, windy beach bc that's what jarrod wanted. :P my hat blew off on the beach-aggravating! lol.

then we decided to head to the Yaquina Head Lighthouse that was a few miles north of the Yaquina Bay lighthouse. i don't know how it happened, but it got COLDER while we were at yaquina head. maybe bc we were at a higher elevation plus the maddening winds and lack of sunlight. MAN was it cold. we were only at that lighthouse for maybe 10 minutes before i got so cold that we had to leave. we went to visitors center for some educational fun. we were there longer than the actual lighthouse, but it was inside, without wind. haha.

jarrod was trying to make me as tall as the lighthouse, but it's still a tad taller. :P

once we left yaquina head, we headed towards Tillamook so we can visit the famous Tillamook Cheese Factory (http://www.tillamook.com/cheesefactory/index.html). once there we went straight to the cheese sampling line (yes, jarrod DID sample cheese!!! OMG, i know, right? madness) and then we walked around the rest of the factory until we got in line for some yummy tillamook ice cream. we both got double scoop waffle bowls (a bit too much for me. sad days.). jarrod got root beer and something else...he didn't really like the root beer but he seemed to enjoy whatever else he had. i got grandma's cake batter (YUM) and german chocolate cake (YUM). omg, it was GOOD. haha. the ice cream was the end of our visit to the tillamook cheese factory.

we headed home after this and once home, we were lazy as can be. good times. :)
so that was our anniversary! :D it was lovely.
it was back to the real world after our few days off, but we did do something exciting friday!
we went downtown for an ice cream Churn-a-ment and free ice cream samples. YES. great beginning to a great day. after our samples we went to a food cart pod and got some cuban food which was so tasty!! yum. it was good. we got our food and then headed back to Pioneer Courthouse Square where we ate our lunch and people watched for a while. once done eating we walked to the Tom McCall's Waterfront park and then we walked over the hawthorne bridge and then back over to the park. we then got on the train to head back home. the rest of the weekend we were lazy once again. we don't really have much planned for this week, yet. i'll get on it though. in the near future (by this weekend) i plan on making some pie from scratch after we buy some fruit from a local famers market. i'm excited! other things for this upcoming week include....unknown. haha.
alright, now it's time for me to get back into my dexter addiction.
-sarah-

it's been a while....

where to begin?? i'll start with the hartfields visit, bc the week before they came we seriously did nothing but be lazy. haha.
the hartfields arrived around midnight friday 1st and all of us pretty much went to sleep right after that (except for jarrod, who didn't get home from work til 3am. yikes!) saturday morning i got to into at 8:30am. oh boy! the hartfields (including jarrod) went to Rocky Butte, the Grotto and Saturday Market. From what i heard, they really enjoyed their time at those places. :) they bought us some tye-dye shirts/dress (for me) at the saturday market. lovely. :) finally, i was free from work and ready to join the hartfields in their adventures throughout portland. they met me at the house and then we headed to Washington Park. our first stop was the Japanese Gardens. (http://japanesegarden.com/) we got to spend about 20 minutes in there because the park was closing soon. haha. here's some lovely pics:

after the japanese garden, we went to the International Rose Test Garden, which was finally in bloom! :D

after the rose gardens we went to eat at the Laurelhurst Market (http://www.laurelhurstmarket.com/) for the absolute BEST STEAK i have ever eaten. my mouth is watering thinking about it. i'd almost give anything to have that steak again....man, DELICIOUS!!!! hahaha. it was so good. i cannot stress how GOOD that steak was. man. haha.
alright, moving on to sunday. on sunday we went driving around the columbia gorge scenic highway and we went walking around multiple falls. here's some pics:

after that, jarrod went to work and me and jarrod's parents came back to the house to chill for a bit. i went into work at 5, leaving the hartfields watching The Return of the King on tv (mwahahahhaah!!!). they stopped by the theater later to see the green lantern-the first people i actually personally know to come to my new theater. haha. that was sunday.
monday we went to Voodoo Doughnuts, Too! and stood in line for about 45 minutes. the donuts were worth it, i'd say. :) after the donuts, we went driving around downtown in search of the world's smallest park, and we found it! but it was in the middle of the road, so we didn't stop to stand in it or anything. Mills End is it's name: (http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?PropertyID=265&action=ViewPark). i'm sure sometime soon we'll go back and take pics in the park, but we didn't have time then. once we drove by the park, we went to my home: Powell's City of Books and looked around for an hour or so and then headed back to the house, then the hartfields had to leave for their flight back to texas. :(
and that was our fun four day weekend with the hartfields :D.
i'll save our anniversary for tomorrow, bc i'm too into this episode of hoarders to go on....hahahah.
so there you go...an update. i hope you enjoyed.
-sarah-