2013 - Week 30

Hi :) It's time to get back into the swing of things after that nice long vacation. This has been another busy week trying to catch up with everything (including this blog and posting my vacation pictures to share with family and friends). I think we almost have everything put away at home now too, so that is a relief.

For my task this week, I did kind of a cheater hodge-podge of things including working on my Spanish by listening to Spanish songs and radio and trying really hard to figure out what they were saying, working on pictures and accumulating scrapbooking stuff, and even looking at some new knitting projects. Mostly just working on my pictures though, one of these days (I know I keep saying that, but eventually it's going to come true), I'll get to my scrapbooking.

I made a really yummy chocolate eclair dessert this week. It's something I've made before, but I've never divided it into one 13" x 9" and one 9" square pan, so it was sort of new (that experiment worked by the way . . . I just put ~3/4 Cup of the batter into the smaller pan and the rest into the bigger one and then eyeballed the other toppings). This dessert is pretty forgiving in terms of skill required to make it :) I didn't get any good pictures of it unfortunately, but you'll just have to trust me . . . it's really good, and very easy. Here is the recipe that I used:

1 Cup water
1/2 Cup butter
1 Cup flour
4 eggs
1 large pkg. (or 2 small) instant vanilla pudding mix
2 1/2 Cups milk
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 large container Cook Whip
Chocolate syrup

Bring water and butter to a boil; remove from heat. Stir in flour. Add eggs, beating well after each one. Spread into greased jelly roll pan. Bake at 400 F for 20 - 25 minutes. Cool.
Mix vanilla pudding with milk and cream cheese until smooth. Spread over crust. Top with Cool Whip. Drizzle with chocolate syrup. Keep refrigerated.

It's just that easy . . . you should really try it right now :)

Another new thing I did that also counted as my exercise this week was to try a new yoga studio. It wasn't hot yoga, but the location was convenient and I got a great deal with Groupon, so I figured it was worth a try. That class kicked my butt. I didn't realize how out of  yoga shape I was. My muscles were shaking a lot and I even fell over at one point . . . oh well, I guess that means I was trying hard, right? I guess I shouldn't have started out after this long absence with "Power Yoga", but it was a good experience. I'm sure I'll go to more classes in the coming weeks (especially to make up for all of that chocolate eclair dessert I ate ;))

So that was Week 30. I hope you all had wonderful weeks, talk to you again next week :)

2013 - Weeks 28 and 29

Vacation was awesome. We saw and did so many new things, it was wonderful. We started out in Portland, like I said in my last blog post (sorry for the little overlap in my trip saga), with my family for my brother's wedding. While we were there, we went to the famous Powell's Books, visited the Vista House overlook, went to a small lavender farm, and did all the fun things associated with the wedding (eating lots of food, getting hair and makeup done, lovely ceremony, etc.)

Welcome to beautiful Portland

Then we headed to McMinnville to see the Spruce Goose airplane (which I thought would look like it was made out of wood . . . I was a bit disappointed that it was painted . . . silly me). Then out to the coast for whale watching and then down the beautiful Oregon coast to visit my husband's family. And all of this in four days :)

The ginormous Spruce Goose (that doesn't look like wood)

While we were there we relaxed a bit, tried to help around the house and garden (I even made a cake), did a lot of family visiting, and we took a drive out to Crater Lake for the day. I was very brave and even jumped in the really cold water. What a great place to visit.

At Crater Lake

Beautiful

After that, we drove up to Mt. St. Helen's and spent the day learning about that and going on a slightly scary hike. Thankfully, I didn't fall down the side of the very steep hill, and it didn't re-erupt while we were there, so we made it out alive :)

Me on the trail in front of Mt. St. Helens

We had a slight hiccup with trying to find a hotel that night because of a Seattle to Portland bicycle race, but eventually we found a room in Tacoma and visited the church there in the morning . . . lovely people. Then we headed northwest and drove up to the top of Washington. We stopped in the lavender capital of the U.S.A. and saw a lovely large lavender farm . . . it smelled so good.

Amongst the lovely purple lavender

We drove to Port Angeles and then up into the Olympic National Park to Hurricane Ridge. It reminded me so much of the Alps. We had just gorgeous photo opportunities the whole trip, so I hope you don't mind all the pictures I'm posting :)

If that doesn't say "Alpine" to you, I don't know what would :)

From there, we drove to Forks (and yes, we did visit some of the "Twilight" spots, but since none of the movie was actually filmed there, there wasn't much to see). First Beach was really beautiful though, so we stayed to watch the sunset.

Sunset at First Beach

The next morning we drove back into Olympic National Park, from the western side this time, into the Hoh Rain Forest. What a difference from Hurricane Ridge the day before. I expected it to be raining in the rain forest (especially because it was in Washington), but we got a dry day. It was a really cool place to visit.

Hoh Rain Forest

We made our way back to Portland and spent one night with another of my husband's cousins. We spent our final day with my brother, rock climbing out near Mt. Hood. It was my first time rock climbing outside, but both my brother and his new wife we impressed with the skills I'd gained from my month of indoor rock climbing.

Going up :)

So that was our trip. It could have been twice as long and there still would have been more things we'd have liked to see and do out there, but I think for the time we had, we crammed plenty of awesome stuff into it. I dare say that I got a full dose of exercise and new things for the week. I did read on the plane home, so I got my reading in too. What a full two weeks :) Have any of you visited or done any of these things? I'd love to hear about it :)

2013 - Week 27

Hello from Week 27. I am not writing this exactly after it happened, so I'm sorry if this isn't the most complete summary of what happened. Most of this week was spent in preparing for our vacation that occurred during Weeks 28 and 29. There was a lot of planning and packing and preparing to do, so we were very busy.

For my task, I'm still reading, and travelling made for a great time to read. It seems airplane travel is not what it used to be (a fun luxury) and now each little thing that used to be included, even a glass of water while in flight, is now extra :( That fact, combined with the children who were directly behind us and not even reprimanded by their parents once for continually kicking our seats (and even at one point hitting my husband on the head) during the duration of our flight, made for a very exhausting travel day. But that being said, I did get a lot of reading done, and once we reached our destination (Portland, Oregon), we felt much better.

Aww . . . look how cute we are (me and my brothers) :) All grown up. 

The happy couple

We got to spend a lot of time this week with my family and I had the pleasure of being a part of my brother's wedding ceremony. We also stayed in a very comfy hotel (they served soup and warm cookies at 5 pm, how awesome is that?) and I took advantage of their exercise equipment to complete my workout requirement for the week. Add in all of the walking we did too, and I think I more than covered my hour, but alas, we ate so much good food that my exercise couldn't keep up. Oh well . . . it's vacation, right?
And as for my new thing this week, well, there were just too many to count. But I would have to say going whale watching on the Pacific Ocean was definitely a highlight :)

Our first mate :) 

We saw whales, but I didn't get any pictures of them. We did see (and get pictures) of other sea life though :) 

Stay tuned for a more thorough tale of the rest of our vacation and more pictures next week :)