A Very Spontaneous Adventure

Because of the holiday weekend, Nick has 2.5 days of freedom (as opposed to his normal 1.5 day weekends, boo!). Unfortunately the forecast called for rain on both Saturday and Monday. We wanted to do a camping trip or go backpacking, but the weather was not cooperating! Instead we decided to just take it easy at home...
...Until I woke up early Sunday morning and checked the forecast! Apparently the weatherman decided that it wasn't going to rain on Monday after all, which meant we could have some fun. Nick and I looked through my new "One Night Wilderness" backpacking book that lists tons of amazing trips within two hours of Portland. Once it was decided, we scrambled to get all our gear together so that we had plenty of time for our hike into the wild. We chose a 4-mile (one-way) mild-to-moderate trail in Washington, northeast of Battle Ground. The drive took us about 1.5 hours--the last 30 minutes were spent driving on a semi-paved one-lane road up a mountain. I'm glad we took Nick's car for its 4x4 capabilities. We felt like we were on an Indiana Jones adventure at some points because of the crazy wildlife, overgrowth and bumpy roads.
When we arrived at the trail head, we loaded up and started out, sniffing dog in tow. I pulled out my camera for a picture of us at the beginning--and of course the darned batteries were dead. Ugh! Luckily my iphone takes decent pictures, so that is what I used to capture our entire weekend.

Warning: Photo overload ahead!

There were countless waterfalls along our hike and the "creek" that our trail followed was really a roaring river! It's called the Siouxon Creek (pronounced "su-sawn").

 Steps away from our campsite:

 Our little setup:

 Next to our campsite:

 On the other side of our site:

 Nick and I are pretty certain that this place is a part of Washington's hidden rainforests (yes, Washington has rainforests!). The entire hike had a mystical feel-- it was SO lush and beautiful. Moss, ferns and clovers covered the whole forest in green.

 Here's a video from our campsite:

If you look closely you can see two other creeks flowing into the Siouxon, one on either side.

Toby was an excellent traveling companion. We let him off the leash for some of the hike and for the most part he was an excellent listener. Only when he saw other people or dogs (or a chipmunk at one point) did he go a little crazy. 

 Since we got home, he's been glued to his bed. 

Speaking of which, I'm going to head to bed too. We are all wiped out, but it was well worth it. What an awesome, spontaneous adventure!

Guess what we did this weekend!

We got home a couple hours ago and we are exhausted!
More photos coming soon. 

Also, Happy Birthday Oma!

More Gorge-ous Pictures

It has taken me a while to get these pictures up because I had to make room for them on my computer--which meant transferring lots of files to my external harddrive (which can be a very tedious process when things aren't organized!). All of these pictures are from the hike to Wind Mountain that we took on our 3-year anniversary (5/14) at the Columbia River Gorge.
We came across some very cool wildflowers and I probably spent 10 minutes shooting them. I think the time was well-spent!

Click "Read More >>" below for the rest :)

Entering the Real World

It's official, I'm done with schooling for good! 

Thank you all for your well wishes, love and support!

Last week I permitted myself a few days "off" to savor my success and reward myself a bit. I also bought myself flowers in lieu of flying down to San Rafael to attend my graduation ceremony. I will admit that this grad school graduation has been pretty anticlimactic. I didn't realize how significant "walking" is in providing closure after two years of hard work. At times it has been difficult to find closure for this chapter in my life because there was no "significant event" to mark it. Granted, I still don't regret my decision to stay home rather than fly out solely to attend the ceremony. I just have a better understanding of what it can do for one's psyche! Maybe getting my diploma in the mail will help me mark the end of that chapter. 

I've applied to several jobs lately, from social worker to university "success coach" to kindergarten teacher (yes, there are a couple teaching jobs out there-- keep your fingers crossed!). As long as I can secure a job within the Social Services arena, I will be very happy. No interview calls yet-- but I have a feeling that next week will be a good one.

Busy

Lately, life has been very busy! From Real Estate training in Tigard to working at the branch, it often feels like there's not a lot of time to unwind and do the things we want to do. Katie has also been very busy up to the last few days. Now that the thesis is behind her, she is taking a short, well-deserved break before beginning the full-time job hunt this coming week. I am so proud of her for earning her Master's Degree!

Since I've posted last, Katie and I celebrated our 3 years of togetherness. As mentioned in the last post, she surprised me with tickets to Yanni. It was a phenomenal concert and I feel so fortunate to have been able to see him perform live. His music seems to show up at just the right time (when life gets hard or stressful), which I find really helps me put things into perspective.

I edited it out of the audio clip, but Yanni likes to preface some of his songs with a little story. For the song below--One Man's Dream--he mentioned how it embodies his hope for humankind (and an end to global conflict).

One off the bucket list

Nick has had a passion for classical music-- piano music in particular--for many years. I remember him listening to it in the first months after we met. When we would chat online, our chat program would also reveal what music the other person is listening to. When he wasn't listening to Lil Wayne or watching silly youtube videos, he was usually playing "Whisperings Piano Radio" from itunes. I knew he was trying to do homework or write a paper when Whisperings was playing.
When I was a kid, from maybe 4th to 6th grade-ish, I used to play classical guitar music or Yanni's piano music at night to fall asleep. At some point in the first few months of meeting Nick, I asked him if he ever listens to Yanni when he plays his piano music. I was surprised to learn that Nick didn't know who Yanni was! So I gave him the same Yanni CD that I had as a kid and, really, the rest is history.
In the last three years, Nick has developed a special relationship with Yanni--actually just that one CD in particular. And a few recent songs from "Yanni Voices." He set his morning alarms to Yanni, played him in the car, on his headphones, etc. Nick can name all of his most popular songs, knows quite a bit of Yanni trivia, and could tell you which song Yanni wrote for his mother--and plays at each concert. I have fond memories of listening to Yanni as a kid, so I guess you could say the man has a special place in my heart, too. :)
Anyway, about a month ago I was reading the news online and discovered that Yanni was in the middle of a tour across the states. Just for kicks, I looked to see if he was playing in Portland--and, low and behold, he was playing in only a couple weeks! Most importantly, the tickets were affordable! How could I not take advantage of such opportunity--only 10 days away from our anniversary--and surprise Nick?

One week to go!

Only seven days until my pseudo-graduation day, our 3-year anniversary and a Columbia Gorge retreat! I am searching for things to do in the area while we're on our mini-vacation and I've learned there's quite a bit nearby. We'll be staying on the Washington state side of the Gorge, which puts us right at the foot of Gifford Pinchot National Forest (we'd never heard of it either) and just East of Beacon Rock State Park. Between them it looks like we'll have plenty of hiking trails to chose from.
This week passed pretty quickly for me. I surprised Nick with an incredible "bucket list" treat on Wednesday, but I'll let you hear it (read it) from his perspective. I'm sure he'll be writing about it very soon. :)
On Thursday a very special (and very large) package came for me-- my mom's graduation gift of a super awesome, fairly gigantic Kitchenaid mixer!

My Thesis is Complete!

This past Friday I finished my thesis! It was a little more anticlimactic than I expected... I blame it on the fact that I've got loads of other work to do before graduating in 2 weeks. While my thesis is finished, I still need to fix in-text citations (waiting for the nice librarian to e-mail me back on that one), get final approval from my professor, print and bind 3 copies, mail 2 copies to Dominican, finish my powerpoint presentation, write my part for a group project, and present my powerpoint to the class (via Skype!) on Saturday. I will also be uploading my thesis to a database to be published! Once all is said and done, I can post a link to my thesis on this blog for anyone who is interested. Or, if you'd like to take a look sooner feel free to e-mail me and I can send you the PDF.
I will say, after finishing the paper I feel like 50 pounds has been lifted off my back. Having a giant 45-page project looming over your head for 9 months straight is not fun!
I have decided not to attend my graduation ceremony, as I feel it is not worth the cost to fly out just to dress up and walk... although Master's students do get to wear some pretty awesome robes! Instead of attending my graduation ceremony, I will be celebrating 3 years with Nick at the Columbia Gorge. Yep, my graduation and our anniversary are on the same day. It will be an extra-special weekend. Now if I could just get through the next couple weeks!

Our favorite place

The weekends in Portland have been beautiful lately. Yesterday was a wonderful 70 degrees-- the sky was clear and the sun was warm. Nick, Toby and I took a stroll to Cathedral Park to enjoy the gorgeous day. The park was busier than we're used to seeing it--but because it's so big and spread out, you wouldn't know it.

We sat at the shore of the Willamette River for a while and watched a few boats pass by... Toby's eyes were mostly on the ducks that were bathing nearby.

The sun felt SO good on our faces! (Although I was almost blinded by my own very white skin when I took off my sweater!)

I'm hoping that the sun will start coming out during the week, too, so Toby and I can soak it up whenever we please.