Intimate Mystery

This weekend we were treated to a marriage seminar led by Dan Allender, at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. Allender is a founder and professor at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, and he's also an author and marriage counselor.
It was a good seminar--covering some tough subjects. Dr. Allender is such a good story teller that at times I felt like I was back in Sunday school, sitting on my carpet square, hoping the story wouldn't end.
I have only read a few of Allender's books, but let me tell you--they are compelling. Particularly encouraging is his simultaneous frankness about the suffering in this world and the hopefulness with which he recalls the Resurrection, and its implications in our everyday lives.
Sitting in the seminar was like getting lost in a good book--and then being surprised at the end that you have to re-enter your "real life." But I think several of things discussed will linger, and Daniel and I have a lot to think about--and to talk about--as a result of it.

Craft Night

Craft night was started by my sisters when Daniel and I still lived in Galveston. It's a once-in-a-while get-together, where people bring the projects they're working on, and everybody does their own thing. It's amazing how many people have crafts in progress!
And it's fun because it's one way I've been able to meet some of my sisters' friends
Projects have included scrapbooking, curtain-making, room decoration-making, cross stitch, knitting, crochet, and even just personal projects on the computer.

Last night I hosted one--and although there was less craft-doing than socializing and eating, it was a good time. It's so fun to have people over. Especially on a weeknight.

Labor Day and Ducks

What a gorgeous day! It was warm with a cool breeze at Duck Creek by our house. We spent the morning reading, finishing our book--and watching the ducks.
You can't see them in the picture, but there are new ducklings across the creek--late for the season, I think. But tiny and cute.
I hope everyone else has had a good Labor Day!
Can you believe there are only 3 months till December?

Dancing

I love dancing. I love watching it and doing it, and it's been a part of my life since I can remember, through one form or another. Enter Daniel, who at age 6 declared that performance art was not for him.

Kudos to my husband for enthusiastically participating in our recently begun private dance lessons!
My apologies for the sub-par quality of the photo, but it's actually pretty good, considering it was taken from across the room with an iPhone.

Our instructor is John Laverty, a very helpful and positive private instructor.

We began with the Waltz, which we're getting pretty good at. And now we're on to the Fox Trot! 4 hours a week, and we are making quick progress :).

Day 9

Our final day in Portland.
We were anxious to try Flavour Spot, which is a street cart that sells waffles. But they're not just waffles. They are fresh, fluffy, hot waffles, made into tacos with yummy things inside. So we both had one with sausage and maple spread. We are on vacation, after all.

And finally we made it to Stumptown Coffee, which is famous here for being local, roasting weekly in small batches, and I think also being sustainable and green and fair and probably organic, too. It was good. They serve coffee from french presses. We watched them make a big pot of coffee by pouring three large french presses into the pot. Isn't that cool? I've never been to a coffee shop that uses only french presses to make their normal "drip" coffee.
We are ever deeper engrossed in The Passage, so we spent most of the day reading it, in the park. It's weird, but I swear there aren't as many bugs here. We sat in the grass for hours without seeing a single ant.
More daycare ducklings. They are so cute.

Today was a food cart day for us, so for lunch we tried some different ones.
They are so brilliant to have these in a city like this. Apparently the cart owners rent semi-permanent parking spaces on the exterior edges of a few parking lots down-town. Their overhead is low, so they can afford to sell their food cheap--and there are all kinds! Thai, Mexican, Greek, Celtic, Lebanese, BBQ, Burgers, Soups, Espresso. I had Pad Thai, and Daniel had Quesadillas. This is what $5 buys you at one of these places. I asked Daniel how he thought they passed health/safety inspections, and he said he didn't think they could. Don't know anything about that, but the food was good.

We cruised on The Spirit of Portland for about 2 hours this afternoon, enjoying the scenes up and down the Willamette River. It has been such a fun vacation. We are sad to be leaving, but I'm also looking forward to going back to normalcy!

Day 8

We had heard from several people about Mother's Bar and Bistro. It is a fantastic restaurant downtown that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner--and it's based on recipes from different mothers around the world. Thank goodness we split our meal--it was huge. If mothers around the world were daily serving their kids what we ate this morning, the obesity rate would be even higher. It was delicious.

Today: a full day of winery tours! Wowsa.
Oregon has over 400 wineries, and that is a lot! Texas has less than half that.The first winery we went to provided an awesome tour, with fairly in-depth explanations of the wine-making process.The tour included Daniel and me, an older couple named Carol and Denny, and their son Dylan and his wife, Elle. They were such a talkative, friendly group that we ended up sitting with them for lunch, chatting about politics, health care, each others' careers. They were from Iowa. So fun to talk with Americans from different parts of the country. This shot was Carol's idea. Don't the grapes look tiny? They'll harvest them in about 1-2 months. Carol and Denny just got back from a 2-week trip to Europe, and they apparently spent some time in the French wine country. Maybe in France it's all wine country. I wouldn't know. But it made me feel better about never having been there when Denny said it looks exactly like this.

Day 7

I had worried that a walking tour of the city would be all old news by day 7 of our time here--but we learned so much! It was very fun and informative and tiring!
This is Mill Ends Park, the smallest city park in the world. Funny, huh? And this is a solar-powered trash compacter that signals the routing station when it's full. Like it's from the future or something! Apparently the city of Portland was named after Portland, Maine--from which many of the original settlers came. "Boston" was another possible name for this city, but they flipped a coin--and "Portland" won. Have you seen a building like this whose windows open? We thought that was cool.
And these are especially cool. They are drinking fountains, but they call them "Benson Bubblers," after Simon Benson, who was instrumental in Portland's early construction. They run clean water from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., 365 days/year. There are about 50 of them around town.This is what daycare looks like in the urban setting. We saw about 4 groups of pre-schoolers like this, walking toward the big city park and around town.
We've seen this drummer twice around town. Recycling paint buckets has never seemed so cool.

We ate at a great cafe for lunch.

Today we said goodbye to the B&B and hello to The Nines! Beautiful! So swanky. So fun. Tomorrow to the wineries!