Wow, I am the worst blogger ever! It's been over a month since I've posted, and the worst part is that we haven't even been that busy! At the end of September, Chase's parents came to visit us! It was really great to have them here. Our first visitors! The arrived on Thursday morning and stayed until Monday morning. I even took Friday off so we could go somewhere fun. We took them to Hood River, OR. It is such a cute little town, we thought they would enjoy it! It was pretty rainy and cloudy out, so there were no views of Mt. Hood, but since Chase's parents drove to see us they had seen a lot of mountains anyway. We ate lunch at Full Sail Brewery, took a tour (free pint glasses!) and then checked out some orchards along the fruit loop. We even stopped at a new hard cider place!
I love this picture of the grapes hanging off the vines. We only stopped at one winery along the fruit loop (I think there are like 20..), but we got to see these cool grape vines up close!
Hard cider fermentation tanks.
We also had a lot of fun playing with Miles Davis. This isn't a very good picture, but he puts on a great show!
After Chase's parents visited, we took a hiatus from traveling and doing a lot of fun (expensive) activities. The whole government shutdown debacle probably would have affected me negatively had they not passed a bill to reopen the government. I'm sure glad they did! Because of that though, we stayed around the house a lot to save money until we knew for sure. Shortly after all the government debacle ended, we got some GREAT news! Chase got a job! He is working for a freight supply chain company. He does a lot of accounting and account management work (I think..). The best part is that it seems to be a great company to work for! The best benefit is a FREE family membership to a gym here in the Tri Cities. It is actually the gym we almost signed up with when we moved here because the have an awesome rock climbing wall, but we didn't end up going with that gym because it was a bit too far from our house for daily work outs.
Here are a few pictures of our shenanigans:
10/12/13: Celebrating Chase's birthday with the AMAZING K-State Alumni group!
10/17/13: Carving pumpkins with friends from work. Can you guess which ones are ours? Chase did the Chief's one and I did the kitty in a window one. The yoshi pumpkin was carved by my coworker Sonja and she even carved one of the ghosts on the other side and its reflecting onto the wall. My other coworker Liezel is a Stanford alumni.
10/19/13: Our next fun trip was a day trip to Paloose Falls State Park. Thanks to my labmates back at the U, we already had a state parks pass to use! This state park was small but awesome. This 110 foot waterfall just came out of nowhere. At first we just admired the falls from the observation deck above the river and falls, but then we ventured out onto a trail that was very steep and rocky but we got to the very stop of the falls! It was scary getting so close to the falls, but well worth the view! I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Paloose Falls State Park was fun! It literally is in the middle of nowhere. No service all around. No towns. Only Eastern Washington desert and then this beautiful waterfall and river.
10/21/13: Why yes, it is totally acceptable to ride your horse to the brewery in this town...... On the bright side, this marks one of our first adventures with Kit and Kelsey! Kit was my labmate back at Minnesota and he and his girlfriend just moved here! It's been so fun hanging out with them a lot!
10/31/13: We had friends over for Halloween. I really wanted to hand out candy to the kids, but being that we live in a condo complex on the very north side of Richland and that we are at the very end of the complex we didn't get very many trick or treaters. In fact, we only got one set of kids and some high school cheerleaders trick or treating for canned goods. We still had an awesome time though, we cooked the frozen lasagna that Carol Borland made for us and had carmel apple martinis!
All of Bridgeport Brewery's nonrecyclable waste fits in this tiny dumpster. Impressive. Inspiring.
Fresh hop season in the NW!
We visited the Arboretum in Washington Park. Specifically the Holly trail!
Since the Portland trip Chase and I have been hanging out around the Tri Cities a lot. Hanging out with friends, brewing beer and watching football with them. As I mentioned before, Chase started teaching the Oregon Crusader cymbal line. He is just covering the camps in Portland. He's having a lot of fun! While he is away in Portland, I usually lay around the house and catch up on my TV, maybe do some cooking and cleaning.
We had a lovely Thanksgiving despite the fact that we couldn't spend it with our family. We wanted to run in the Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving morning, but didn't want to pay the $25 bucks each. Instead we made up our own Turkey Trot! As you can see, it was super frosty! We get this thing cold freezing fog here. Very weird...
We were lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving with some coworkers! Tricia had all of the group that wasn't going home over for dinner. It was lovely. Great food and company! We made bacon wrapped green beans and roasted butternut squash. Both were big hits!
Today we ventured up to Spokane, WA. It is a larger city in Northeastern WA. We did a little shopping and walked around the downtown. It was nice to get out and about. I got some new workout shoes since the soles of my shoes are completely worn out and I can't even hold a plank in class. We also got new climbing shoes! We have been rock climbing a lot at our gym. We are trying to get better and more technical so we can climb outside next summer. We've met some friends here that we want to go with! Thanks again to our MN friends for spiking our interest. I'm glad we are finally committing. It is definitely a commitment now! Those shoes aren't cheap! They are necessary though. I promise.
I promise I will post again soon. Or at least not go another month without posting!
