Friday In The City

Friday I took the afternoon off to take my oldest niece downtown to do Bikram in the city. The studio is actually right across the street from Moody Bible where my friend Seiko is now attending. So, after class, Brittany and I went over and picked up Seiko and took her to dinner at one of my favorites, Bistro 110. It was a great dinner and then I was craving a dessert bar so I hopped on the Yelp app on my Iphone and pulled up places.

The one that sounded the most interesting was the Choclate Bar at the Pen. Its the dessert bar at the Peninsula Hotel that is to DIE for. It had a billion different choclate desserts and then there was a whole fondue table with choclate, a choclate crepe bar where a chef was making choclate crepes to order. There was a fabulous hot choclate bar and you could even get these choclate martinis. It was all fabulous! And the ambience was amazing as well, even equipped with a jazz band. It was a little expensive but quite the experience. We had a great time!
Oh - I had to attach this pic.... It was from Karl's hotel in Portland. This is Timmy, the hotel dog. I think he looks a little depressed, but he supposedly happy.... He just kind of wanders around the hotel and "welcomes" guests. Crazy....

Babies And Friends

Two weekends ago I hosted a baby shower for my friend Rachel who's just returned from overseas for a year back in the states. Sarah Ann is their second and she was born outside of the states. Their first is a boy and is 5 so not only do they have a new baby, but its a girl so its completely new stuff than blue.

There were about 50-60 people who showed up over all. We had a great time just talking, laughing and eating. My friend Kim was such a super buddy and came out to photograph the day. We had each guest photographed with Rachel and the baby.

The reason for the photos was that I had asked each guest to make a scrapbook page of their family and then I'll add the picture of them with Sarah so that Sarah will have a nice little remembrance book of all the people back home who love her and are praying for her!
Instead of baby shower games... our scrapbook table...
Mike drops off Rachel and the baby.... I think there's fear on his face ... getting caught in a room packed full of women.... EEEK! We couldn't be content with just Sarah so it was a BYOB party... Bring Your Own Baby.... :)
The gift flow-over....
Rachel's dad and mom came from Indianpolis.

More friends and family...

Happy Sarah ....

Sarah and her big brother Jonathan.
My cupcake creation. I made all the cupcakes, but I cheated and the cake was from box... I can't find a good cake recipe like I get from boxes. The icing is mine, though, the strawberry is like the best icing ever!!!! Here's a link to the recipe http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/candace-nelson-strawberry-frosting

The "S" is for Sarah, not "Superwoman" like Rachel thinks :)

This is the best photo! Colton was looking at Sarah and all of a sudden, his finger flew right into her nose....

We all wore poor baby Sarah out... It was a long 4 hours, but it was a great time!

It Looks Kind Of Like Colorado

Ok, the title was basically for Karl... I really did think a lot of the views on Sunday looked like Colorado... I think Karl was pretty hurt and upset that I was comparing his state to that one....:) But it really did look a lot like Colorado!

Here we're headed out going to see the Painted Hills of Oregon. We had to go up and over Mt Hood so it was quite the drive.

This is on the other side of the mountains.... It looks like a different country :) (again, for Karl's benefit)... It really was night and day - and it took us night and day to get where we were going.

After about a 3 and a half hour drive, we reached the Painted Hills of Mitchell, Oregon. There are actually three "units", each in separate areas, but all with these painted hills which are supposed ash from a volcano. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Hills

Its always nice to have a bench available where you can sit your camera for a quick timed pic :)

Karl surveying his great state of Oregon!

And now, a series of "Alison Points" pictures by the famed photographer - Karl....

After a long day of finger-pointing, its nice to go into a "Rockette" pose....

The hills are made of this clay-like mud -- its like concrete when you get it on anything.

The mud takes on this "popcorn" like texture and the colors vary, apparently, according to the ash that its made of and also according to weather. Wet, dry, etc.

We finally hit some sun on the way out -- got a few sunlit pictures...

Catch Up In Seattle

I have a few moments in a Starbucks with - WIFI! and so I thought I'd take a few brief minutes to update some picts from this past week and this week.

This morning, I got up at the crack of dawn and flew from Portland up to Seattle. I had to swing by my hotel that I was supposed to stay at (in Seattle) in order to pick up something that was delivered there. On my way out, I figured that I would stop by Top Pot and pick up donuts for the account I was going to.

Top Pot is this donut place that I was told about that was on the Food Network and all the donuts actually were pretty good... http://www.toppotdoughnuts.com/

The pink donut in the box with the coconut shavings on top is called the "Feather Boa" -- I though that was kind of cute.

Going back to Friday :) I picked Karl up from his hotel and we went out to dinner at this really great place in the city. I had parked my car at the Hotel Monaco where he works and I had to laugh in the elevator as I noticed their ad poster...

And here below - you have a very very unique story....This is something I've been laughing -- well, at first I was a little too frightened to laugh -- about all last week. Portland has this, I guess its soccer, team called The Timbers and their logo thing is an axe or something.... They have these huge billboards ALL over the city with all these people holding axes. They even have this one with this little kid holding and axe! And then there's one with two women, one has an axe and one has a CHAINSAW! The city may say "welcome" but I think they need to work on their ad campaign because that says something a little different....

One last one to enjoy -- the first night I was in we spent an hour or so at Powell's books in Portland. Its this giant new and used book store like the Strand in NYC. Its a little neater and cleaner than the Strand - and a lot harder to find used books. I spent too much money because all I could find was new books :( This is Karl doing his "Mary Tyler Moore" in Portland outside of Powells...
Oh - in case you'd like to see... this is a picture of Karl's place... It the very last door. at the front end.

We'll see if I have WiFi and am able to update tomorrow!