Spring Break

Day 1
The first day of spring break ended up being quite different from my original plan. Originally, the plan was to go to Portland on the way to the beach and see a performance of "Wicked." This ended up being pretty spendy and I was able to the Broadway performance of "Beauty & the Beast" earlier this winter. Instead, Anthony and I were either going to go to the zoo or OMSI. The zoo if it was sunny and OMSI if it was rainy. Well, Anthony just began a new quarter of school and had a lot going on already in the first week, so we changed the plans so he could attend class before leaving. Instead we were going to go hike Fall Creek Falls on the way to Portland. We did this hike several years ago and really liked it. One thing we didn't do was check the weather before leaving. Winter has stayed late in the northwest and snow came late to the mountain, something us folks in the TC didn't need to think about with our nice weather. It ended up that the trail to Fall Creek Falls was not cleared of snow yet, so we were unable to hike. We ate the lunch I packed by the river on the road leading to the trail before heading in Portland. We ended up exploring some of the neighborhoods there instead.


Day 2:
We got up early in the morning and drove the rest of the way to Canon Beach. The weather was interesting! We had some showers in town, hail, and snow in the mountains. We checked into the cabin and headed down to the beach. We just had fun this day exploring and watching the sunset on the beach. No pics from this day.

Day 3:
Today was the day of our big hike! We ended up hiking a trail from Ecola State Park to Indian Beach. It was muddy, but the day was gorgeous! I was brave and went on some cliff faces during the hike. The path was safely wide, but if you know me - I was still nervous! Since we paid for the park we headed back for the evening sunset. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have every seen at the beach! I wish I could include all the pictures, but I will try to choose the best ones.


















Day 4:
Today was the nicest day of them all in terms of weather! Anthony and I spent the morning hiking and visiting beaches at Oswald National Park. We then headed back to Canon Beach and found a spot on the beach near Haystack rock to enjoy the warm weather. I even got sun-burnt! By dinner time some clouds had moved in including the neat looking ones behind Haystack in the last picture.




Day 5:
Today we had to come home. It was looking like it would be another nice day at the beach though. We were able to take one last long walk on the beach before packing up and heading home. We were even able to stop at Godfather's pizza outside of Portland and get a Taco pizza for lunch!

Homework Procrasitnation

I don't want to do my homework...nope, nope, nope.....so I am going to catch up on some more posting instead!

One thing that I have been trying to focus on is my health. Every since getting on Zoloft I have not been able to loose the 50 pounds I gained. I loose 10 pounds just to put 10 pounds back on. I have probably lost that 50 pounds several times if you add up each swing of loose 10, gain 10. This last summer I had the best luck with switching to the Mediterranean diet. I was home a lot, had a garden full of vegetables to eat, and was a lot less stressed. This last fall I added a new job in addition to the grad school. My schedule has made it so that I do a lot of driving every day and I take at least 1/2 of my meals on the go. (One reason I am looking forward to grad school being done). I gained 10 of the 20 pounds I lost this summer back. Last Christmas I wanting to do something extreme to get the weight loss going again. Anthony gave me the Insanity exercise program for Christmas. This program is extreme. I have added a lot of muscle and most importantly, made huge gains in cardiovascular health. Despite all of this I have not lost weight, but I have lost a few inches. I am frustrated by the scale being stuck and I have gone to Jillian Michaels for my next phase of trying to be healthy. I am reading her book on fixing your metabolism and re-balancing your hormones, so I am going to try and follow a lot of her eating ideas to see if it will rebalanced my hormones and let my body burn fat again. I am so tempted to do something extreme such as go to a prefed food diet, but I don't think those are healthy. I also think they are quick fixes. I don't want another quick fix that is going to hurt my body in the long run. The pictures below are from January and February. I can see some progress, but my stomach...oh my. The third picture is Kiara. She is having good weight loss success with her new food and extra exercise. She is a little more perky and plays a lot more as a result.










I just ran around after typing the first half of the post and took some pictures. In doing so I dropped my poor camera again! It seems like nothing was damaged though. I took picture of what I look like today at this very moment. I am mostly worried about getting my stomach to shrink because it is so bad to have fat on your stomach. I also took pictures of our first tulip, other garden flowers, a bouquet from Anthony for April Fool's Day(He brought them in and said they were for his sister at first), and Kiara chattering at a bird outside the window.

Spring Flowers

I have not written a post in a long time. I have been very busy working and finishing my masters program. Fall semester was the worst because just about every spare moment I had out of work was doing homework. This semester is a lot better, but I am feeling the pressure of finishing my portfolio to get my professional teaching certificate.

I have been wanting to take pictures of the beautiful spring flowers that have begun coming up and blooming. These flowers are just in their first year, so it will be fun to see how they grow and mature. When it get s a little warmer I am also going to put some wildflower seeds around the bulb flowers. Today was pretty windy so the flowers are twisting a little funny at times.

Cannon Beach

At the beginning of the month I was able to take a vacation to Cannon Beach! It is one of my most favorite places to visit! In fact, it is probably my most favorite place, but I still have a lot of the world left to see.

So, I planned this trip well in advance. I had never gone to Cannon Beach on my own, always with my family. Anthony was able to come with me. I made my reservation knowing that I would be going no matter what! Even if that meant alone. I hadn't been to the beach in a few years and I was done waiting! So, luckily, he was able to get it off. I was also coming by a new route than our traditional family route, so there was a lot to figure out! First off, I knew I would be going through Portland to get to the coast, so I planned time to stop and hike Multnomah Falls. It was gorgeous and sunny for the hike!




After the hike, we continued to lunch. Now, I love Godfather's pizza, and there are some in Portland! In my planning, I found one by the highway. It had a lunch buffet and taco pizza! I was so excited for my favorite pizza. I asked the lady if she could make it for the buffet and she said sure! So I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally I asked her about the "taco pizza" and she asked, "beef?" I said yes, the beef because I remember them having a chicken taco. She felt bad about me waiting so she said she would make a pizza and bring it to my table. By the time she brought the pizza, I had been in the restaurant for way too long. I was still excited and she brought......la ground beef pizza. Sigh....I don't know what happened, but me and that godfather's taco pizza I wanted were never meant to be. The pizza she gave us was free though and tasted good! So, we got back on the road...



When we arrived at the beach is was beautiful, sunny, and warm for the time of year! It was so great! We checked into our cabin and hit the beach right away! Now, the cabin was great except for one incident. On day two, I was putting my beach clothes back on. Looking into the mirror before heading out I saw, to my upmost horror, a huge spider crawling over the top of the hood on my head! I screamed like I didn't know I could scream! Anthony got it off and then I asked for pictures to ID it later. I found out that it was just a harmless crawl space spider...hackled band weaver I believe is the name.



During the stay at the beach, some of my favorite things to do were seeing the tidal pools, walking the beach, watching the sunset with a campfire, and making a sand castle. The only downside the the vacation is that I somehow hurt my foot. It just began hurting and eventually bruised up. The pain got so bad that, by the drive home, I couldn't walk in a rest stop without wanting to cry...I got very close. It has been almost a month and it is almost all better. Well, I will just put some pictures that I liked below. I think those are the fun parts of blogs anyways!

Grad School

Homework - Aren't I supposed to assign it, but not do it as a teacher? =P

I like learning, but it is hard to keep up with it while working out of the undergrad college scene. In fact, one of my first major grad school assignments was sooo hard. It took me hours of reading and hours of work to complete the project. I took some pictures for you:





Hehe, okay, I am getting a Master's in Literacy, so I have to read and keep up with Children's literature. I have several new books to read and we do different kinds of books reports as we would want our students to do them. It is always good to do something first yourself before you ask someone else to do it. It actually took longer to do this than if I just typed about the book. And I really do recommenced this book! IT was such a good read for adults too. The book I read was the new Newbery Award winner, "Moon Over Manifest."

Now, that was fun, but I really do read textbooks and write big papers too. I took photos of those to prove it: