Flying High

Since I work on a Naval Air Station, I thought it was high time that I flew a plane. Well, maybe I didn't fly it all by myself, but I did get to do a few turns in the air and a take off. I did the flight with the thought that I may be interested in pursuing my private pilate license. I'm still interested in that, but am debating on the timing/finances for it. For now, I enjoyed my intro flight in my itty bitty plane!

My Valentine Suprise!

So, this past weekend was Valentines day, followed by presidents' day (which of course I got off of work). I was told the week before not to make any plans for the weekend because I had a suprise planned by Ryan. I like suprises! Saturday morning, after we dropped of Tara for a puppy sleepover weekend, we got on the road and I found out that my suprise was a weekend in Portland! Yay! I have been wanting to go there ever since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, so I finally got to visit. The weather looked a little iffy as it started to downpour on the drive down, but somehow it managed to stop raining right when we were getting to Portland, and start up again right as we were leaving it the next day...perfect timing! We stayed at a super cute little boutique hotel right down town, so we had the valet park the car and we spent the rest of the time walking around.

[our super cute hotel]

[the largest independent bookstore in the country]

After walking around the city a little bit, we came back to the hotel and asked our concierge to see about getting a reservation at this great little restaurant The Urban Farmer. It kind of sounds a little redneck, but it's a super chic place that is apparently really hard to get reservations for! Luckily they had one time available for the rest of the night, so we snagged it up. The place is actually at the top of a hotel, so when we went to dinner we asked the hotel doorman where to find The Urban Farmer...he said 'it's on the 8th floor, but it's booked up for the night' to which we responded 'don't worry, we have reservations'. We're just that important to already have our name on the list :) The food and atmosphere were great and definitely worth the wait!

[fun at Urban Farmer]

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and left our stuff in the car while we headed to Voodoo Doughnuts. Apparently a really famous doughnut place where they have crazy flavors (like nyquil...eww) and doughnuts shaped like different things and even celebrities I think. After we got there and saw the line wrapping around the block, we decided we weren't quite that motivated to be touristy. I don't know what the deal was, but every place we tried to go to for breakfast was packed. Finally we found a cute little french place which probably ended up being better than any of the other places anyway. It was fabulous!

The rest of the afternoon we spent with further explorations of the city and a nice walk along the riverfront. It ended up being a really nice day all the way up till when we were headed out of town when it started raining again. It was a great suprise weekend it Portland! Just a few more days until our next exciting trip...Montana!

You Should See The Other Guy!

Sooo...the other guy is a mountain...and he's still standing :( We went snowboarding again on Crystal Mountain. I started out with a lesson at the end of which I was doing pretty darn well! After the lesson we took a snack break and headed up again for my last ride for a while. I hadn't even made it very far down the slope (which was starting to get a little icey) when I wiped out pretty badly. I am very thankful for my helmet purchase which saved my little round head, but my wrist was not so lucky. I was already in a lot of pain and still had to get up and ride down the rest of the mountain...at this point I was freaked out about falling again and making it worse, so it took a looooong time.  After going to the doctor on Monday and again on Tuesday, they determined that I had a small fracture and fit me with an oh so fashionable blue cast. I was going to go for pink but decided that blue was probably more appropriate for a naval officer. It has been a challenge trying to do everything with one hand and be a lefty! But I am learning quickly. I can't wait to get it off though! I have a check up in 3 weeks to see if I still need the hard cast or switch to something a little less cumbersome.

[my arm]

[get well flowers from Ryan!]