November

Happy Thanksgiving!!!
I took 3 days off so I got the whole week off, excellent.
We didn't go anywhere this Thanksgiving. Michelle cooked a half leg of lamb, green beans, and couscous. It was really good, much better than Turkey. November has been really sunny this year, but very cold and windy. Pretty nice Fall this year.

There was a free day at the Japanese garden, that day it was rainy and really windy (45mph.) We braved it and had a great time.
Pagoda from Japan.

strolling pond gardenwater fall at another Koi pond. The pond is being cleaned so the Kois are all in the other pond right now.

Moon bridge
We got our new sofa and recliner on Wednesday. They are very comfortable, hopefully the girls don't scratch them. We still have the old blue massage chair.


Kotatsu heater table keeps us warm and cozy.

TV, piano, and bookshelf for CDs. All three girls are in this picture too. 8)

October

Hi everyone,
Things are slowing down in Portland. It's getting quiter, not as many events going on in Fall. This October, the weather is really nice. It is sunny and it's not too cold this year. Halloween was pretty quite too, it was on a Wednesday so I heard that there are not many trick or treaters this year. We didn't get any in our new place, I don't think we have any kids in this Tower yet. I only saw one baby and a teenage.

Michelle got free tickets to go see Pittock Mansion. She has never been there so this was great. This is a really nice house on the hill that was owned by a newspaper owner. It was built in 1860s and has a great view of Portland.


This is the front of the house.

The music room.

The back of the house.


Michelle's grandma passed away so she went down to CA for a week to help out. This was the week with all the big fires down in San Diego. The Santa Ana wind was so strong it really fed the fire. I remember the wind was so hot when we lived down there. I didn't like it at all. Some tree fell down around Michelle's dad's house.
Hobi likes to sit on her mama.
Zoey preparing for Halloween. heh hehe.....

august - september update

Whew, I've been working 70 hours a week for the last 3 weeks. I am beat!
I'm taking this whole weekend off, Saturday and Sunday, yay!!!
The new place is good, the garbage trucks are so noisy at 2am, but that's the only problem so far.
Anyway, here is our August/September update in no particular order.

Nik and Amy came to visit. We had a lot of fun, this was right before work got really busy so it was good timing. That weekend, Portland had free ride on the tram to celebrate the completion of the Street Car's new South Waterfront loop. We took a stroll around the zen garden at the hospital. Nik and Amy said this hospital is rich. :)


This was at the performance center. I always wanted to sit here, but was nervous when there are a lot of people around. This was around noon on Wednesday so it was pretty quiet. heh heh....


Saturday Farmer Market. They were having a graduation in the park and the market had to compress a bit so it was very busy and crowded that day. We have a $20 limit when we go to the market since it is so easy to spend money here. This is about 5 blocks from us now so it is very convenient. When we used to live at Ione Plaza, this is right downstairs, but Michelle always missed it because she slept in.




Providence Bridge Pedal
Portland shut down all the bridges on this Sunday to let people bike around. I heard it was very crowded this year and there were many bottle necks at the bridges. Around 20,000 people participated, we just walked around and take pictures. Next year we'll join the official walk and go on Fremont bridge.






Tour de Fat - another bike event, this one is smaller, but has some fun bikes, entertainments, and live music.




Zoo and Washington Park concerts - we took Nik and Amy to a couple of concerts and walked around the Zoo. The Hippos are so round. After the zoo concert, we dropped by to see the tigers, they were playing and running around, it was so cool. It was too dark so we couldn't take good pictures by then. Usually the tigers are always snoozing in the day time so we would just see a tail and an ear or something like that. We also went to see the leopard, it looks so lonely by itself. It's very cute too.



This is a free concert at Washington park. look at all those rug rats rolling down the hill.



Soapbox derby at Mt Tabor park.
A lot of fun, but no parkings.... We parked illegally and left pretty early. Next year we'll go earlier so we can stay for the whole event. This time we just hang out near the finish line where we illegally parked in case we needed to make a quick exit. There were tons of illegal parkers though so I think the cops will let it go on event days. Next time we'll walk up to the top of the hill. There are fast ones and wacky ones. Each heat has 3 soapboxes and there are different categories to win prizes in - time, art, etc...


At the finish line, the hill flattened out so if your soap box didn't build up enough momentum, you'll have to push like Godzilla here. roarrr....
See Michelle? This is a bunny in a carrot, he was pretty fast.
A taco stand.

That's me in my green hawaiian shirt.
There two were racing to the finish line.
Man, this guy squirted water at me.




Elk Rock at Bishop's Close - Dunthorpe. This little public park is in a really tony part of Portland. This area is like the Beverly Hills of Portland. This property was donated to the church with the condition of having it open to the public. It looks like they are somewhat reluctant about the public though since it was pretty tough to find the place and there are no signs or anything on the main road. If I didn't accidentally found out about this on Wiki, we'd never know it exist. I'm trying out the macro mode on Michelle's camera on the various flowers here.
This is the Willamette, the same river that we see from our window.
I bet the home owners around here didn't want riffraffs like us showing up in there nice neighborhood. These people are opposing the street car to Lake Oswego extension because they don't want public transportation stops in their upscale hood.







Our 3 cats. for once not running around chasing each other. This is our living room, Michelle kept her piano afterall.


Eclipse on an almost full moon. I got out of work at 2:15am and it was just starting. By the time I got home and then took a shower - 3am - it was fully eclipse. This was really cool.