visitors take 7/christmas concert continued/arctic blast

this sunday the portland area had something the news keeps calling an arctic blast. well, it appeared to be pretty harmless, but after driving a few miles on the freeway we had to get off and buy chains. fun. putting on chains is fun....um, no. basically, the whole portland area is covered in one big sheet of ice with very little pretty snow to show for it. are you asking why we didn't just stay home? well, ben wright came to town on sunday night for an interview at OHSU for a pediatrics program and he stayed with us. a drive that usually only takes 30 minutes ended up taking 2 hours. oh, and chains make TONS of noise! seriously, i thought my car was falling apart when we first started driving with them, b/c they were so loud! anyhow, after we picked up ben we went to a concert by the trail band as part of our christmas concert series. they were so amazing and fun! they played a lot of celtic christmas tunes with a huge variety of instruments and we all really enjoyed the show. i think they will be a new tradition for us each december. i didn't get any pictures of visitor number 7 or the trail band...i'm lame.

concert series dec 2008

since we're going to be flying solo for christmas this year up here in oregon we decided we needed to make sure we tried our hardest to do christmas things on our own. as part of this task we decided to go to as many holiday concerts as possible. great for me because i LOVE christmas music and so far blake is being a trooper. we're mixing it up with different genres of music and it is proving to be very fun.

the first in our concert series was seeing the Von Trapp Family Children with the Oregon Symphony. yes, they are the REAL Von Trapp's! Can you believe it? I didn't even know that the Von Trapp story was real. the children performed christmas songs and songs from the Sound of Music. they are the grandchildren of the youngest boy portrayed in the movie named Kurt. imagine that! i'll tell you this....they were not nearly as good as the singers in the movie, but it was still fun all the same.the second concert we got to enjoy was an amazing concert by the Portland Cello Project. so far they are one of my favorite finds since we have lived here. the are an indie cello group as funny as that may sound. at their concerts they do songs with different artist and collaborate with them for a really unique show. the concert was at my favorite venue the Aladdin and it had a fantastic theme...they asked everyone to wear very ugly holiday sweaters so a huge portion of the audience was walking around with santa, rudolph, snowflakes, etc across there chest.more to follow....

visitors take 6/thanksgiving 2008

happy very belated thanksgiving...at least know i was thinking of everyone on turkeyday!

we got to spend our first thanksgiving in portland this year and it was nice just having a small dinner with some good company, but it was a little weird not being in arizona or new mexico. we were lucky enough to have alexi and edi come down for a couple of nights to spend the holiday with us. it was edi's first american thanksgiving so the pressure was on! at least he didn't really know what to expect, but think all and all it turned out okay. oh, alexis is a fan of the macy's day parade, and i think i watched more of it this year than i have my whole life....i still don't understand why it is cool. i did try making a few new items this year and my favorite were the popovers. seriously, they were so easy and were really yummy. thanks barefoot contessa for the simple recipe and thanks edi and alexis for slaving away in I-5 traffic on a very busy driving day!oh, and the picture of alexis and edi is at the Pittock Mansion where the amazing race DID end! Happy Holidays!