peace out!

We are off to Yellowstone!

The East Side

This last Thursday Ryan and I spent the day with our friend Julie and Steven. We had an action packed day! We started out going here

The Vista House is a special place for Julie and Steven but Ryan and I have really never gone. It was so pretty! Not to mention that it had an AMAZING view

The color on this picture is off because of the filter lens I messing around with, but I like the pink tones in the sky.

Julie and I being dorks. After we finished up here we headed to Multnomah Falls for a hike. So pretty! We were all amazed on how crowded it was for a weekday.

After our hike we went to The View Point in so I could dork out. They filmed the final scene in Twilight there (the prom). This place has a killer view. I would love to go stay there some time.

After all our looking around we went to HUB for happy hour. Ryan has been dying to go to this brewery since it opened. We just don't get out on that side of town very often. We we stopped for some beer and probably the best pretzels I have ever had. After that we went to Foster Burger for dinner. The burgers were really good, check out Julie's blog to see some pics of the guys going at the burgers. After dinner we were all so full we could barely move. It was such a fun day!

We've set the date!

After a blur of venues Ryan and I found one that we both love! We will be getting married on August 6, 2011 at Elk Cove Vineyards. We are super excited!!

Summer Reading Part 2

I have finished yet another stack of books! I have been doing so much reading at work lately because I have been doing a lot of 1:1 with patients. It is so boring to just sit and stare at the patient for 12 hours, so thankfully we can read during this time.

I really disliked this book. I wanted to stop reading it on so many occasions, but didn't because I kept waiting for something to happen in the book. When I finished it I was like...ok now what. There was no climax to the book what so ever, which was disappointing. I really can't tell you what the point of the book was. So far I have been very disappointed in Madeleine Wickham's books. I love her books when she writes as Sophie Kinsella, but this pen name is very different. The books often deal with affairs and more serious issues. Which can be quite the downer.

Another Twilight book. This one was very short, it only took me a couple of hours to read. But it was interesting seeing the vampire side of the story. On Stephenie Meyer's website you can read a few chapters of Twilight from Edward's perspective. It is amazing! I would love it if she published more books from the vampire's point of view.

This book I actually enjoyed. I almost didn't read it because I have been so disappointed in Wickham's books, but I decided to give it one more go. I was pleasantly surprised. This was about a woman who is getting married, but she is already married to another man...a gay man. It was a fun book and made me really think at times about the issues in it. Because of this book I will give Wickham another try.

Jane Green was the first author that I read in the Chick Lit books. Her writing has changed very much over the years. I can really tell that she writes from her own experiences. At first the books were about young twenty somethings trying to find love, then about getting married and having kids, affairs, divorce, finding love again and so on. This one was very different from all of her other books. It is about a woman who has cancer. It was a beautifully written book that made me think a lot of my experiences of my Grandma and her cancer. A fun thing about this book was each chapter had a recipe in it. The book wrote from many point's of view so you could see how all the family and friends were affected by the cancer. I felt very silly because I read the book at work and it made me cry. I was trying so hard to keep it in, but the book hit so close to home that I couldn't help it!

Emily Giffin has a knack for writing about affairs. It seems to happen in most of her books, but this one was different. It alternated each chapter from either the wife's point of view or the other woman's point. Very fun to see both sides of the story and really made me think about the complexity of an affair. It isn't always so black and white.

Engaged!

Ryan and I are getting married! I know I should have written about this when it happened (7/22/10), but I can't even begin to tell you how busy I have been.

Ryan proposed to me on a Thursday night. We went out to dinner, watched an outdoor concert then when back home. We were sitting around watching TV and next thing I knew Ryan was down on his knee asking me to marry him. The ring is absolutely beautiful and perfect in every way. I wish I had some pictures to show you from that night, but taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. But here is one from the next day