The Birthday that keeps going and going and going!

The octopus on the top of Greek Cuisina in Portland, OR.

My 35th birthday was exactly a week ago, today. It started out like any other Thursday . . . going to work. I don't even think I saw my roommates in the morning. But then, around noon Jess came to work and brought me some beautiful peachy colored roses and cookies to share with the office. And it only got better from there.

My roommates and I gathered with some friends from church to go to dinner at Greek Cuisina in downtown Portland. It was really good food and even better company.



My yummy roasted lamb all rolled up in philodough with great veggies.

Kalamari is one of my favorite things! But this picture was really to gross out the other people at our table :)

Beckie and I at dinner.

Pretty flowers at our table.

Beckie, Me, and Lori.

David, Kailina, and Jess

After dinner we headed over to Rimska's Korska Koffee House. It was an interesting and fun experience, as the pics show. We were seated at this round table, one of the largest they have. We ordered desserts and hot tea or cocoa. The restaurant itself is in an old house and if you don't know what you're looking for you'll probably miss it. The decorating is eclectic and fun.

My roomies and me at Rimsky's. I'm drinking my Earl Grey and waiting for my frozen Lemon Pie, which never came :(

Our creepy rotating table . . . until we realized it has a motor we couldn't figure out why our food kept floating away.

Kailina, who'd been to Rimsky's before, told us we all needed to check out the restroom.

This is the picture that greets you ask you open the door. The lady of shatolietpaper?

And this is the unsettling scene in the rest of the bathroom. Did I mention it was creepy?

And this is the funky ceiling. Not so much creepy as kind of cool.

Did I say my Frozen Lemon Pie never came? Well, actually, when we asked the waitress to remove it from the bill because I didn't get it, she was horrified!

She apologized profusely for forgetting the Birthday girl's dessert and gave it to me for free.

Here's her apology via the ticket. It originally said, "Happy middle of Winter Birthday." After she realized she forgot my dessert, she changed it to "Happy middle of the Winter Bad Waitress Birthday."



And that was the end of the Thursday night festivities, but my sister Christi came over on Friday night and we celebrated again! We went to dinner at McMenamins on the Columbia and then on to the Hazell Dell Bowling Alley for Karaoke, which came highly recommended by my friend Sami. It was fun and a little crazy. As you can probably tell from the pictures, the Bowling Alley Lounge is a bit of a dive. But it was a friendly crowd of regulars that all turned their head to look at us when we walked in.

We started off the night with Christi and I singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart." And then nothing for a long time. The Karaoke guy kept trying to get us up there and finally he made all of us get up and sing a song with him. This seemed to do the trick.

Soon after the first group sing, Beckie got up and rocked Sugerland's "Baby Girl."

Then Jess knocked out the Dixie Chick's "Ready to Run."

And Christi got down to Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move."

Beckie and our friend Beth perusing the Karaoke books.

Beth (who was a voice major in college) wowed us all with "God Bless the USA" . . . way better than the girl on American Idol!

Me singing Carly Simon's "You're so Vain" . . . who knew there's a line in that song that says "you're with some underworld spy". What?

And my birthday weekend continued when Christi and I flew out for Las Vegas the next day . . . but that is a subject for another blog post :)

Nothing Romantic about Schnitzel & Spatzle

Single Awareness Day, or SAD, as it is more commonly referred to , is celebrated by many on February 14th. I prefer not to refer to it by it's initials or acronym, SAD, because it's not a sad day for me--I'm not sad about being single or about getting to celebrate Valentine's Day with some of my best friends.

In the words of my roommate Jessica, "A single girl can ROCK this holiday too."

For the third year in a row, my roommates, myself, and our good friends Beth & Rea all went out to eat together for Single Awareness Day. Last year we struck out in search of the ultimate "Hole in the Wall" and found it at the corner of 46th & Woodstock (see last year's post for details). The year before that we ended up at a little Chinese restaurant, almost by accident, that was flooded with suburbianites waiting for take out. This year Rea's request was that it not be any place romantic or rather any place that could conjour up romantic memories, so we settled on Gustav's German Pub & Grill in Clackamas, OR.

We were all in good spirits as we arrived toting our little valentines gifts and/or cards. Some of us enjoyed the complentary cider in the lobby as we waited to be seated. After a short wait we were shown to our seats and started the evening off with some great cheese fondue! We laughed at each other's stories and enjoyed the ease of company that long friendship brings.

It was a learning experience for us. I don't think any of us really knew exactly what "schnitzel" and "spatzle" were before that evening, but we found out they were good! And Rea was right, German food really isn't the least bit romantic. Our booth was high backed and cozy in a good family meal kinda way, and this feeling was spurred on by the meat and potatoes compositions on our plates. Our waiter was friendly, attentive, and didn't seem to mind our frequent questions about the menu or our lengthy stay in his section.

We finished off the evening by exchanging the small gifts we'd brought along for each other as well as sharing a fantastic piece of strawberry pizza . . . that's what I said, strawberry pizza. How German it was, I'm not sure, but it was good! And finally we ventured out to the front of the restaurant to take some pictures. What we didn't know was that what had been a mild, day had turned into a freezing cold night. So in between snaps of the flash, our teeth chattered and we all wished we'd worn more layers. Good thing you can't tell in our pics :)

What a bittersweet memory! As Jessica prepares to move, our three year tradition has come to an end. We'll probably gather to celebrate Single Awareness Day next year, but without all 5 of us, it just won't be the same.

A synopsis of life lately.

This summer has been busy and yet I've taken time to "Breathe." It's been filled with old favorites (such as the Grandma Fredrickson blanket featured in this picture) and new favorites such as Marrakesh, Tad's Chicken 'n Dumplings, and hiking in the Columbia Gorge.

On June 15th I went home for the weekend to celebrate my Mom's Birthday and also Father's day. On Saturday Christi took Jared & Cassadie to the Zillah Public Library to get their own Library cards--which caused a flood of fond memories as I waited outside the little building. It was in that tiny library that I first fell in love with detective and mystery novels--I think I read every book they got in the "Saint" series as well as Sherlock Holmes and others.

One friday afternoon late in June I went to an early movie with my friend Bethany and afterward we went to AppleBees to get 1/2 price appetizers. We actually missed the 1/2 price appetizers, but when we came out of the restaurant, the sky was beautiful. I'm sure the other restaurant patrons thought I was crazy as I stood in the parking lot taking pics of the sky.

For the Fourth of July, my sister Christi and her family came over to join us for the second year in a row. We went down to the Fort Vancouver Celebration and had a great time. It was very hot, but we took plenty of beverages and snacks. Last year we struggled to get all our gear to the park, but this year my smart brother-in-law Alex brought the kids' wagon and we just piled everything in there. It was a good time.

After my sister's family left on July 5th, my parents came on July 6th for my sister Beckie's 30th B-day. We went to this great restaurant called Tad's Chicken 'N Dumplings. We sat in the dining room pictured above . . . it overlooks the Sandy river and all those windows fold back to make it an open air seating balcony. And they serve their Chicken 'N Dumplins in this great big goblet looking dish with the biggest spoon I've ever seen. We had a lot fun . . . for a further report of Beckie's birthday festivities, you should check out her blog. It's listed under "Sites & Blogs I read."

The next day, Mom, Dad, & I headed down to Sweethome, OR for the wedding of our good friend Tim Wyatt! It was a fun little roadtrip and the wedding was sweet. Congrats Tim & Megan.

And what have I been doing with the rest of my time? Working, of course. This is me on a break, sitting at my desk at work, trying to take a decent picture of myself. Summer is a busy season at work and so I've been working hard to keep up. But my job is fun . . . I really like it. I have yet to go camping this summer which is a bit of a disappointment, but there have been plenty of other exciting adventures to fill the gap.

Hey there, Delilah!

My friends Sami, Naomi, and I went to the beach in honor of Sami's Birthday. We made a day of it, leaving around 10:30 am and driving the long, but interesting way to the Coast and eventually ending up in Seaside, Oregon where we spent a couple of hours on the beach having a picnic, drinking sweet tea, and trying very hard to play frisbee in the wind. We got lots of advice from people walking by about how best to throw the frisbee in the strong wind.

Then we moved on down the beach to Ecola State Park in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Ecola is beautiful and we spent lots of time hiking around and just sitting at a picnic table eating muffins and drinking more sweet tea--enjoying the beauty that God has given us. It was a rare sunny day on the Oregon coast. We felt blessed.






Here are some of the highlights.

Sami & Naomi with Cannon Beach coastline in the background.

Random guy surfing or boogy boarding . . . hard to tell.

Sami, Naomi, and I trying to take a picture of us and the beautiful ocean behind us.

Sami, Naomi, & I--much better with someone else taking the picture.

While we were trying to take this pic, a cute little family further down the beach offered to take a pic of us if we would take a pic of them. While we were waiting for their family to gather the father nonchalantly told us their 3rd son (there were 4 total) was going to climb over the top of this large rock (at least 10 feet tall, maybe 15) at any minute. Imagine our surprise when their barefoot 3 year old climbed to the top of this big rock and walked over to the edge to wave at us, much to his mother's distress.

We finished the day with cherry limeades and burgers from the only Sonic around on our way back into town! What a lovely day with two of my favorite people:) The theme of the day was "Hey, there Delilah" by the Plain White T's. It's a sweet song. If you've never heard it you can go to http://www.plainwhitets.com/ and give it a listen. We heard it on every station we turned to that day, so about 10 times within 10 hours or so.

Does every path that goes up lead to picnic tables?

At a recent conference I was challenged to be obedient to the 4th commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."--Exodus 20:8-11 That might sound a little conservative and old fashioned . . . and a little common sense. Maybe it is.

As I sat on a bench looking out at Cannon Beach after the conference was over , things seemed clear and the task before me not so difficult. (How could it seem hard to bask in the Rest of the Lord when you are looking out at this beautiful beach?)

The thing that I liked about the "Breathe" sabbath as it was presented to us is that they weren't advocating legalism or more "religion". They were advocating freedom--freedom to spend a whole day, 24 hours, without creating, without being productive--just as God modeled for us in the creation of the world. But none of that makes it any easier to obey.

I've been trying it. It's been hard.

I think what I've learned is that I'm a narcissist. I think too much of myself. If I don't do my part of take care of my life, it will fall apart. What an arrogant thing to think--really, my attitude is telling God, "Why don't you just let me do it? You're just going to mess it up." As if I'm thinking, "If I take one day off, God isn't going to be able to handle to details of my life. Everything will spin out of control. I won't get my laundry done or I won't make enough money."

The irony is, my life spins out of control when I'm in charge, not when God's in charge.

The first time I tried this Sabbath keeping my roommates and I went to Moulton Falls--a small county park about 45 minutes from our house. The falls weren't spectacular, but they were pretty. We spent a least an hour taking pics and hiking through the woods on trails that we found around the park. We were actually looking for a second falls that I thought should exist according to the map I'd seen on the internet. But we didn't have the map. All we kept finding were picnic tables (which as you can see from the map, is really I'll you'll find).

I sat down on one of the picnic tables to catch my breath and asked in a purposefully forlourn voice, "Do all paths that go up only lead to picnic tables?" We are all started laughing. And then I asked, "If so, what kind of spiritual implication does that have?" We were just having fun and making the best of these trails that we kept hoping would lead us to another waterfall, but it really made me think. Picnic tables make me think if camping and fun and feasting together. So, really, in a way, the spiritual path that leads up does lead to picnic tables. Revelation 7:16 says, "Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst . . . . We'll be feasting forever with God in heaven.