Weekend Fun

Bri and I had a pretty fun weekend! Friday night, we started it off by feeding the Sister Missionaries. They are fun and the 4 of us had a good dinner! After taking met up with Alex and his brother Chris. Alex is in our ward here, and his brother was visiting before moving to DC to start school. We went downtown to VooDoo Doughnut's.... a famous Portland stop, open 24 hours a day! They have everything you can think of! You can get bacon donuts, ones with cereal on them.... whatever you want! I got one with oreo crumbs on it and chocolate and a peanut butter on it! So yummy! After our doughnuts, we rode around on a 'Pedi-Cab' - it was a guy on a bike with 2 rows of seats - it was way fun and a nice way to see Portland at night! We saw everyone who was out clubbing or at bars, and tons of people everywhere waiting for their copy of Harry Potter! There was a light mist all night, which just added to our 'Portland experience' for the night! :)

Saturday, we didn't get to sleep in much cause we went to a pancake breakfast hosted by the Stake in honor of Pioneer Day. After breakfast, we did a little shopping, then went to see Hairspray! It was excellent! The lead girl was amazing - the rest of the cast did an excellent job too! Saturday night, I got invited again to go out to dinner with the Sister Missionaries! Twice in one weekend! There was a group of 6 of us total, and we went to Sweet Tomato! Back to my place and watched some movies and just hung out (minus the Sister's :) )!

Sunday was Church, then we went to a Pioneer Broadcast fireside, which ended up being just a concert by the MoTab, but still very good! They sang a fairly random assortment of songs - my favorite number of the night was 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'.

Good weekend! Now it's back to another week of working!

Pictures: Me and Bri inside VooDoo Doughnuts (top left), Bri and Alex enjoying! (top right), Alex, me and Chris waiting in line for donuts (bottom left), Bri and Alex on our 'bike ride' (bottom right)

Happy 4th of July!! My second favorite holiday - I just love fireworks! Bri and I spent the day at the pool with a few other friends of ours, and got really sunburned! My forehead has been peeling the last few days and it's not fun! After spending the day laying by the pool, relaxing, reading our books and chatting, we went to a Portland Beavers baseball game. The game was fun, but after being in the sun all day, we were both really tired! The Beavers won, and then we went to the waterfront and watched the fireworks!! Overall, it was a great day spent with friends and just relaxing!

Ward Luau!

The Singles ward here is awesome! I have made so many friends already! It's just the perfect size - big enough that there are lots of people to meet, but small enough that people notice a new face and everyone is friends. In the 2 months that I have been here, we have done lots of fun activities. These pics are from a ward Luau that we had. Bri and I decided it would be fun to dress up 'Hawaiian' style. They had a dinner, a little show with some hula dancing, and then lessons after. Bri and I were laughing too hard to learn much, but it was fun anyway.

We also have an activity every 3 or 4 weeks with the other two singles wards in the area. I'm surprised by how many people actually go to the activities! It's usually a bbq of some sort, and then lots of games and time to just 'mingle'. The biggest difference between the singles wards here and the ones in Utah is that there is NO pressure to get married! It's SO nice for a change! This weekend, we are having a boat dance on the Portland Spirit. It's a famous old cruise ship, and I guess they just cruise us up and down the river all night. I'm not way excited about being stuck on a boat and forced to dance for 4 hours, but I'm sure we will end up going!

The pics..... (left) Me and Bri; (right top) Me, Mario and Bri; (right bottom) Shari and Me.

Service for Concert Tickets

On Saturday, June 30, Bri and I volunteered 4 hours of our morning and got concert tickets in return! We signed up with this company called Boost Mobile Rock Corps. They travel all over the US organizing service projects of different sorts, and then give you a concert ticket when it's all over. We joined about 200 other people to cut ivy off of trees. I didn't know this, but apparently, when ivy grows up the trees, it kills them. So they gave us some big cutter things and let us go to town! We ended up getting free t-shirts, a lunch, and best of all, concert tickets to Taking Back Sunday! It was tons of fun - I would defiantly do it again!

Chicago!!

My mom and I went to Chicago for one last trip before I moved to Oregon! It was lots of fun, although a little rainier and colder than last years trip. This year we went to Wicked - which was awesome! We were not planning on going, but decided to stop by the box office one afternoon, and they still had tickets left for that nights show. Our seats were good and the play was excellent! We went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Alder Planetarium on one of the rainy days. The end of the trip was sunnier, so we rented bikes for about 4 hours and rode around Chicago! It was a little scary riding in traffic, but I had an awesome pink bike, with a basket and everything, so I was a happy camper! We spent some time at Navy Pier and took a ride on the ferris wheel and a boat ride to get a view of the amazing Chicago skyline! And of course there was lots of shopping!! We also went to Millenium Park to see 'The Egg' again - which has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen! Another cool/random statue we found was of all these sets of legs - about 50 total, each one about 8 or 9 feet tall. So random that we just had to stop and take lots of pictures! It was another excellent 'Girls Trip'.



pics:
(top) Mom at Wicked; Me and Mom on the ferris wheel; (bottom) Our reflection in 'The Egg'; My cool rental bike; me at the Leg statue