My Backyard - Current City

Remember my last post about my hometown?  My next little post is about my current city, Portland, OR.

Guys - it's B-E-A-Yoooootiful here.  Gosh darn gorgeous.  We put up with 9 months of rain for a reason: The Summers.  July, August, and September could not be any prettier than up in the Pacific Northwest.

We have festivals almost every weekend in the summer, everything is about beer (and microbreweries), the food is amazing, and we have color.  Tons of color.  The people are colorful.  The city is colorful.  It's wonderful.

I joke about living with hippies, but in all honesty I'm totally serious.  There are hippies galore here.  If you move to Portland or visit here, you'll learn really quickly to recycle (you want me to have HOW many trash cans?) and appreciate Gluten Free/Vegan foods.  And get used to the smell of incense (blech gag vomit).

So with that being said, here are some of the pictures we've taken while we've lived in Portland!

Woodburn Tulip Fesitval!

Hop, skip, and a jump away to the coast

BERRY PICKIN'!!

Outdoorsy stuff.... like skiing

A beautiful waterfront

A forest... smack dab in the middle of Portland.

Good beer and perfect temps

Waterfalls... everywhere

 

Amazing hikes and beautiful rivers

Bridges, Bridges, and Bridges

Now that I've fully exploited this beautiful city we're living in, come visit (curing July, August, or September).  We love guests and love to share this wonderful city.

My Backyard - Hometown

Hi Friends!

The other day I was in the airport leaving my day-and-a-half trip to Vegas, because I work for the coolest company that has an annual company conference in Vegas.  Although I was still an 8 hour drive from Reno, I thought I'd finally make this post I've had in mind for a while.

I constantly see people post pictures on their blog of this magical land called "Tahoe."  They then proceed to talk about where Tahoe is and how beautiful it is.  Every time my comment to those posts is "that's my backyard!!"

I'm from Reno, NV.  Born and raised.

Via

I tell people this and they usually give that, "Gross" look.  It's not gross, unless you go downtown.  Then it's gross.  But Reno is lovely, especially if you're outdoorsy.

So welcome to my Hometown Backyard.

We have Santa Pub Crawls 

We have Wine Walks

We have Balloon Races and Dawn Patrol

We have Night in the Country and amazing sunsets #NoFilter

We have Donner Lake and backyard rock climbing

We have TAHOE

Via

I could go on and had to limit the pictures I used, but Reno really can be a fun city.  Not to mention the Doughboy Donuts rock ANY donut shop here in Portland.

Utah Vacay Part 2

Oh Hey Friends.

This post is long overdue, but I just haven't had the time to get these pictures posted!  I can't rave enough about our little Utah trip.  We had the best time and our pictures really don't do Utah justice.  If you missed my first post about our Utah vacay and our Canyoneering trip, you can find that here.

Aaaand queue photo-dump:


Hike to Calf Creek Falls



Bryce Canyon



Arches National Park



Delicate Arch



Canyonlands National Park - SUNSET!

I Cringe

The fiance inspired this post after replacing the toilet paper this week.  Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful he added a new roll, but it made me realize the little things that make me cringe.  And these don't include the obvious "your/you're" and "they're/their/there" peeves.  That's for a different day.  These are my own little peeves.

I'm not saying any of these are right or wrong, they're just weird little quirks I've developed in my 26 years of existence.

Wrong way toilet paper

If you ask me, there's a wrong way and a right way to load the toilet paper.  If I see toilet paper loaded the wrong way, I absolutely have to switch the TP.  I'm not sure where this peeve originated from and why not many people notice it, but it's one of those things that I'm trying to train my significant other on. 
I don't care if you leave the toilet seat up, down, off, WHATEVER.  But please, PLEASE, load the TP the right way.  KTHANKS.
**P.S.  He has since changed the TP :-)  Thanks lover

Where you AT

This one came from my step-dad.  He made sure to tell me for as long as I can remember that you never end a sentence in a preposition.  "Where you at" should clearly be "Where are you."  I get it.  It's true. But every time I hear someone say, "Where are they at?" I cringe a little inside.

Okay I cringe a lot bit.

Toward vs. Towards

Obviously toward is the correct version.

Actually, I remember the exact day that I made the decision "toward" was the correct version.  I asked my English teacher in the 10th grade which one was correct and she gave me one of those, "I think both?" answers.  So I made my own answer, and chose "toward."  It makes me feel intelligent, even though it makes no difference.

No Problem

This is another step-dad peeve.  Actually, I could probably write an entire post of little quirks I've developed from his proper-etiquette-ness.

But I digress.

I'm now that person that cringes when I hear someone say, "No problem" and silently think, "Well I didn't realize it WAS a problem."  When we would go to dinner we always seemed to get the 20-something college boy whose programmed response to any question was, "No Problem."  As soon as he walked away, John's first reaction was, "Well thanks - I didn't realize it was a problem."

I get it.  I mean, it's being overly critical and he's not doing it to be that guy.  But he was doing it to point out to me how a response like that can imply different things to different people.

This re-surfaced the other day when the fiance and I were walking and a biker was riding past us.  Polly wanted to play with the biker and we laughed and said, "We think she likes you!"

His response?  "No problem."
I instantly thought, "I didn't realize it was a problem."
I'm that guy.

Literally

"I literally just ate 600 pounds of sushi."  When I see things like this I just want to copy/paste the definition of "literally."  Some people are "literally" happy - they use it in every sentence.  Even exaggerated sentences.

Replace the word "literally" with "actually" and see if your sentence still makes sense.
"I actually just ate 600 pounds of sushi."
You didn't actually eat 600 pounds of sushi?  Then you didn't literally eat it either.

Via

Now that I've made everyone feel like I'm a total jerk with my pet peeves, I think I'll leave it at that :-) Happy Monday, friends!

P.S.  Anyone else have any weird quirks/peeves?

Utah Vacay! Canyoneering Day

After our Color Me Rad run, we high tailed it home, took an epic shower, and went straight to the airport.

We flew to Vegas so that the fiance could go rockclimbing with his bro-mance while my cousin and I caught up on girl time.  We only stayed for a couple of days before heading to UTAH!

Now fiance and I lovelovelove Utah.  We went to Zion back in 2009 and LOVED it.  We drove down one afternoon, slept, did the Narrows AND Angel's Landing in one day, then drove back to Reno.

Conquered both in the same day

We've been saying we need to go back to Utah, so we decided to make a week of our little Vegas trip.  We rented a car (which was a hassle and a half) and booked it to Zion.

Fiance really wanted to do some slot canyoneering so we threw on our helmets, grabbed a rope and some waterproof bags, and found our slot.

Now Zion is hot.  A lot hotter than the 66 degree weather here in Portland.  So when everyone kept asking, "Are you going to bring a wetsuit?" All I could think was, "It's hot here.  I'm not a baby, I don't need a wetsuit."

We chose to do the Pine Creek Canyon slot.  We REALLY wanted to do subway, but didn't have luck getting the permit.  Pine Creek was a great introductory slot for us.  It only took about 4 hours to complete and all of the rappels were bolted.  I HIGHLY recommend this if you ever get a chance to do a slot.

The very first jump was into a 6ft pool.  I found out REALLY quickly why everyone was suggesting wetsuits.  After making the freezing cold jump I saw there were a ton of guys.  Like... guy central. 

Every

Single

Boy

Wore a wetsuit.

And here is little Ashley running around in a tank top and shorts.  I was prepared to turn around and book it back to the campsite, but decided to pretend to be a badass and not need a wetsuit. 

Hey... I lived, right?

Anyhow, the slot was amazing. It was beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice! One day we'll be able to go back and do more slots.

And then he asks me, "hey babe - you ever thought you'd have to hitchhike?"  Just when I thought I'd done it all...

Color Me Rad

Hi Friends!  The fiance and I have recently returned from our week-long vacation.

Yep - you read it right.  AN ENTIRE WEEK!!  And it felt so good.

We started the vacation with the Color Me Rad 5k run and had ZE BEST time.  We did the run with another couple and had so much fun.

If you haven't done a color run, you HAVE to sign up.  Like, now.

We have so many pictures from our vacation that I'm realizing I need to break up my bloggy posts rather than do one massive photo dump.  Beginning with the color run of course...