Keep Catching up!! Holiday Season '08

At the beginning of October Opie and I invited friends over and we carved pumpkins and ate lots of candy, along with braised short ribs that turned out so rich and delicious. Then on Halloween Opie dressed up as Burt Reynolds (I had to live with that stache for months!!) and I went super old school and donned a white sheet with eyes and mouth cut out to be a ghost. The ghost thing really freaked people out....strange. Then into November and right before the busiest holiday of the year (my favorite Thanksgiving) Opie proposed!!! We had just had Pho at our local spot and walking home was chilly so I went to put my hands in his pocket and he brushed my hand away and reached in his pocket and pulled out a ring, all I saw was a flash and he was down on one knee!! I really don't remember anything he said but I do remember a pause and I said yes!! The ring is stunning, made in 1904 with a design that looks like it is based on an owl, it shimmers even on grey days. The other cool part is that Opie made a piece of art for the jeweler in trade for the ring (check out the black and white orb). We then took our good news into the holiday and I stuck my hand out for all to see and got much advice and many congratulations. For the day of Thanksgiving we went to McMinville and spent the night with our friends Jeff, Liz and Jason of course gorging ourselves with yummy turkey dinner.

Into the Fall of "08 we go

After our wonderful trip to the foreign land of Texas we went straight into Fall. Successfully making pickles!! Look for them on the left side of the picture (note the orchid has two blooms now!). These pickles were brined so just salt water and herbs/spices and set out for a month...so delicious. We even put lapsang souchong tea in one batch and after pickling it tasted just like black tea. We also picked out pumpkins with our close friends Sarah and her daughters Lucy, Ruthie, and Ida (you can barely see the girls in the background of the picture of Opie in the pumpkin patch, those pumpkins were big!). I also bought this great camera in Texas at a antique shop that has a timer, so I started taking silly pictures using the timer. The one of Opie and I was taken as we were buying stuff to pickle.
Fall in the Northwest is so full of food! Smiles-Grace

TEXAS here we come!!

Well, as the Summer came to and end Opie invited me to join him on a trip back to his home town in Texas. I was flattered and excited not only to meet his family that I had heard so much about but to see Texas for the first time! Opie's family was so welcoming and wonderful it made the trip so much fun. Turns out also that Texas is super super super flat!! Except where it drops off into beautiful canyons. A friend of mine says that Native Americans used to run buffalo right off the cliff into the canyons to kill them! We also did a little graffiti collaboration (our first art project together!) at Cadillac ranch. We titled it "DRAW" -Grace

Crazy Camping

Opie and I went camping in August of '08. I took ten days off of work, the first time ever to have that much time off without changing jobs. So we headed to the coast and camped out, only to find ourselves in the middle of a rainstorm.We rushed to the closest town (Tillamook), and bought a variety of tarps which we tried to use unsuccessfully to create a comfortable dry place to hang out while eating dinner. (We also got a chance in Tillamook to get out of the rain by playing a slow game of chess at the local coffee shop). With the rain beating down on us (the picture of the tent is from the dry safety of the car!) we warmed soup, ate dinner quickly since we were completely drenched, took a luke warm shower at the camp showers and spent a night cramped in the tent, while the wind whipped around us. The next day we went to Newport and rented a hotel room!! I guess you could say I wimped out but honestly it was my vacation!! (and the hotel had a pool/jacuzzi!!) -Grace

Orchid Mania

During our courtship in the Summer of '08, I was living in an apartment that was very very humid. In fact the place had all kinds of mold, I was incredibly happy when I moved out of there. The up side to all the moisture was that an orchid that had been giving to me 2 years prior was growing! This orchid did nothing for 2 years and in a matter of months (with a little plant food from Opie) the orchid bloomed!! It then continued to keep blooming (and when we moved to our current house it grew another stalk and kept blooming, so far it has had 12 blooms in less then a year!!) -Grace

Scrabble and the Glorious Summer

So all Summer long Opie and spent time doing things that we had not done in forever; playing a slow drawn games of scrabble, taking long walks in the neighborhood during the warm Northwest sunset, eating gelato at every place we could find (we joked that we would remember the Summer of '08 as the Summer we both gained 10 lbs), picking strawberries on Sauvies Island, in fact we spent lots of time on Sauvies Island last Summer, eating kettle corn on the beach. Did I mention eating things? Opie and I love to eat and spend lots of time seeking out delicious seasonal things to eat (right now I am eating fresh Rainer cherries, so sweet they almost hurt my mouth). During that early part of the Summer two of my three brothers randomly decided to visit (at different times). So Opie got a chance to meet Light and his family, and Ben and his girlfriend Sophia. I had not seen these brothers for years so it was fun to catch up and awesome to have Opie meet them. -Grace ps. For more pics of my brothers visit, check out my facebook page.

The beginning

Opie and I started courting in the early Summer of 2008. We had known each other for a couple of years, spending the occasional social gathering chatting in the corner together or vying for the center of attention (we both love the center of attention). During that Spring we starting spending more and more time together and soon realized that our attraction went past "just friends". So going into Summer we found ourselves spending pretty much all our time together. One of our first dates was to the lilac festival in Washington, just north of the Oregon border. Turns out the "festival" was limited to one small batch of lilacs behind an historic house (located directly below train tracks, no kidding the train rolled by at least 4 times in the hour and a half that we were there, and it was so close you couldn't hear each other talk when it went by!). The lilacs did smell beautifully and the person who planted these lilacs was also responsible for creating some of the hybrids that we find common these days (they started this process back in the 1800's) Opie's friends gave him lots of hell about going to a flower festival with me, but of course I loved that Opie was (and continues) to be up for any kind of outing that might be fun or interesting.