Friday, April 29, 2011

2009 - 2011, continued

March 2010
I know I already covered this, but I didn't remember anything. I do now. March was my first "hunt" for nail polish with my MIL. She has two boys, and she loves to hunt. So what did she get to hunt for growing up? The latest Hot Wheel collections. She also is a knitter, so she has gone on hunts for "retired" yarn colors before. But she was VERY happy to have the opportunity to hunt for nail polish, even though she didn't really know what she was looking for. :) We went to a local store called the Dollar Shoppe, lots of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Big Lots, Dollar Tree, etc. Those types of stores have great old drugstore brand (Revlon, Sally Hansen, etc.) nail polish for about 50 cents a bottle!

Also, we started agility classes for the dogs. I thought it would be fun for Jax since he's so athletic, and Geoff decided to take Roxy too even though her legs are about an inch and a half long.

We already covered April, so I'll skip that.

May 2010
In May I came up with the genius idea to get inflatable kayaks. I have always loved kayaking, we live right on a river, and there is at least one place we camp that has a great river available for kayaking. Plus we were going to visit my sister in Monterey where there is fantastic kayaking. So I got two 2 man kayaks, complete with life jackets for the pups. They have proven to be SO much fun!! I spent much of last summer kayaking - there are several put-in points on the river, so I typically will just drive to one, kayak down, and pull myself out near where we live. I deflate my kayak, carry it back to my house (although later I got a little cart to carry it, way easier, cause they are heavy), and then when Geoff has time get him to take me back to my car (or if I went with someone, the second person just takes us back to the first car). In all honesty though, sometimes there is so little flow in our river I could just put in and get out at the same place!

We also did the Portland Doggie Dash in May... super fun event with vendors and dog contests. We did about a mile and a half walk - that's all Roxy can handle! Jax could handle the longest run they have as an option.

May was also when we took the camper down to California for my sister's graduation. We met up with my parents (they stayed with us), and my aunt, uncle, and grandmother rented an Airstream at the same RV park we stayed at. It had a great dog park complete with agility equipment and we had a fantastic trip. After the graduation, Geoff and I had an extra ~5 days and we pondered what to do - Vegas and Disneyland came up as options. Then we realized we could go to San Francisco and eat at really expensive restaurants and it would be way cheaper than either Vegas or Disneyland. So that's what we did. We found a nice RV park overlooking the Pacific and just drove into San Francisco for a fabulous dinner each night. It was GREAT. Plus, I was driving my sister's Civic back to Oregon (to store it for the summer while she went to NYC for the summer), so we had that car to drive into SF with - made it way easier than the giant truck. We had three fantastic dinners, each easily ranks among the top 10 dinners of my life. I love food. :)

June 2010
This is another month that I remember absolutely nothing about! Such a disappointment. I guess you can't have an awesome month EVERY month. ;-)

July 2010
In July I started playing BINGO!! The gal that manages our doggie daycare, Chelsea, and I got to talking one day about cruises and how she played bingo on her cruise and loved it. I had been secretly Facebook stalking Chelsea for months, convinced we would be good friends (creepy much?!). Anyway, she mentioned bingo and I asked her if she'd ever been to Sunset Bingo, a local bingo parlor. She said she hadn't, and I hadn't either. So we decided to go together. Neither of us knew at the time, there is a LOT to learn about bingo!!! It's not just straight lines and four corners - there are seven ways to "regular" bingo! Then there are specials and rules about when you can call BINGO and you have to figure out what to buy and all of this craziness. It was soooo crazy, but so much fun. We got really into bingo and were going once a week for almost the rest of the year. We have only been ONCE so far this year, but we're going again tonight. Bingo will never get old! And it's not super expensive either - $6 will buy you about 2.5 hours of fun! We've come a long way and know a lot about bingo now... we're pros now. ;-) Oh, and in every state but Nevada (except for at Native American casinos), bingo is non-profit! So when we play, we are contributing towards local ameteur sports (like my boss's kids are fencers and part of the money goes towards fencing!).

July also brought a BBQ with my friend Laura and some of her girlfriends. We are coworkers and she has a general "no friends that are coworkers" policy but she decided I was an exception. ;-) So she invited me over and we have become quite close since then. It helps that we see each other daily for work!

We also had our first agility trial in July. It was a VERY hot weekend, but we had a nice sun shade and great setup, and our dogs did their best in a "fun" match (not judged seriously). My MIL and SIL came out to watch it, it was a super fun day!!

August 2010
The only notable event in August was our 3rd wedding anniversary. Geoff and I follow the traditional wedding gifts, which is really fun and about the only traditional thing we do. It just makes it really fun to have to try to put a modern twist on traditional gifts. So the "theme" was leather. We actually came up with very similar ideas - he got me a leather luggage tag that contained a gift card for my favorite handbag "store" (there is only one store in the US and it happens to be in Vegas, where we were going to be going in September). I got him a leather wallet that contained a bunch of different gift cards - Chipotle, Best Buy, movie tickets, etc. It was really fun! And we went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Portland.

...Part 3 to come later....

Thursday, April 28, 2011

2009-2011 in review :)

Late 2009
So the last little bit of 2009 after we sold our house - the highlights I remember are moving into the camper, getting Portland Trailblazers season tickets, my 5 year college reunion at Northwestern, my sister visiting for Thanksgiving, and my first Christmas not spent with my parents. Oh, and at the VERY end of December, I believe the 29th?, we drove up to Washington to buy a new (used) truck.

January 2010
Why did we buy that truck? To buy a new RV of course. :) We made a hectic-crazy road trip down to Tucson, AZ in our new (used) truck. It's a 2008 F-450... man is it a BIG truck. A very very kind friend drove along with us - and we drove about 25 hours straight through to Tucson. It was the 3 of us, Jax, and Roxy, towing our "old" (2008) camper that we were going to be trading in in Arizona. We left Portland around 6 AM Wednesday, January 6th, and arrived in Tucson on Thursday around 11 AM. We checked out the RV, did a full pre-delivery inspection (PDI), and then signed our paperwork. They had a great setup - they allowed us to pull our old camper with the door aligning straight to the new camper. Geoff stood in the old one, passed stuff to Rick (our friend who made the trip with us), and Rick passed it to me and I scrambled to find a "safe" place to put it so it wouldn't get damaged on the trip back. After the "move" we were on our way - we went to Phoenix to visit some friends - Hart, Becky, and Patrick. We went to dinner at my FAVORITE restaurant, Los Dos, and then the dogs got a nice break running around in Hart and Becky's backyard with their dogs. Then back on the road. We made it back by about midnight Friday night - a fantastic ~60 hour roadtrip. And the craziest part was the boys never let me drive! I think by the time they did all the driving there, they decided that they were going to drive it back themselves. So I did my part by sleeping a lot and being "ready" in case they needed me. ;-) Our new RV is beautiful and I still to this day love living in it.

One other highlight of January was couple's weekend, an annual trip to the beach with friends. It was there that I read through a backlog of Real Simple magazines and saw an ad for OPI matte nail polish. I owned about 7 bottles of nail polish at the time, including 3 OPIs, because a friend had told me in college OPI was "the best". But I thought the matte looked cool, so I went to Ulta when I got back from couple's weekend and purchased a bottle. That led to me googling better application tips for nail polish, which led to me finding that there are nail polish blogs out there, which led to me finding a community named MUA (Makeup Alley) nail board, which led to a love of all things nail polish. My nails have not been unpainted a single day since late January 2010. I LOVE nail polish... this is easily my longest lasting hobby. I know it's weird for nail polish to be a hobby, but it is. More to come.

Feburary 2010
We had some friends over for the Super Bowl - our first guests to the new RV! Geoff and I took our first trip to Seven Feathers, which quickly became our favorite and is rated among the top RV resorts in the country. We spent a glorious 3 day weekend there, and I towed the RV back the entire way. It was my first towing experience with the new RV. The following weekend (my birthday), Geoff was on men's retreat, so Geoff's mom and I towed the trailer down to Eugene to Armitage County Park, which quickly became another favorite of mine. They have the county dog park right there, so it's great to let the dogs go play. It's a public park, so PLENTY of space, plus fire pits, and then have wireless, which is always a plus for me. I LOVE towing the trailer!!!

March 2010
I honestly remember nothing significant about March. The Blazers wrapped up their regular season in early April, so I do remember Blazers games getting a lot more intense as we got closer to the playoffs. But that's about it.

April 2010
I remember being sick on Easter. Sad! I had painted my nails a beautiful pastel manicure for the occasion! Also, we took our trailer in to have some warranty work done on it, so we lived at my in-laws for a couple of dates in late April.

I thought I'd finish this all in one post, but I am going to stop here and finish May 2010 - April 2011 tonight or tomorrow. :) I will keep chugging along on this!