Saying Goodbye

As stated before, I am starting a "new" job and am leaving my current job. I will technically be doing the same job, just in a different building. I'm still working on processing this, but in the meantime-things end and things begin. One event marking the end was my going away party from the site I've been at for over six years. Alas, Friday the 13th was my last day. I didn't know and I still don't know exactly what to think about that, but it has happened and the next phase must begin.

Here are a few shots from the party...

The table of goodies- almost 100% gluten free.

Getting ready for the party to start~ Waiting with me are friends, Megan and John.

Above: My dear friend, Diane (pictured in the below picture on the left in black) used her artistic experience to create this cat picture for me!

Diane and Jan

Opening gifts. My friend, Sally, knows I love almonds-I have a lifetime supply now...or at least a years supply! She also made a yummy gluten-free pound cake with lemon icing!

Dear friends Jenny and Sara! I will miss them so much!

Two of my biggest fans! John and Cece!

Jenny and Shauna!

Pam, Monica and me! Pam and Monica are the nurses on "my" team that isn't my team anymore. Monica is the official photographer and most of these pictures are courtesy of her.

Monica also got a picture of my office space that I shared with Donna. It's weird to know that isn't my area any more.

I will dearly, dearly miss all of my friends and coworkers at my "always-will-be-home-to-me" site. Maybe some day I'll return. I hope that I never loose contact with those who matter most to me from my days at this site. My heart hurts to say goodbye.

Basketball and Friends

I'm blessed with sweet friends. Friends who will decorate poster boards for the Trailblazer game that they invited me too while I work on cleaning out my office. And, they even help in the office cleaning out, physically and emotionally.

Jenny, Jenny's boyfriend, Matt and Sara bought a 15 game Blazer tickets package. Lucky for me, Matt couldn't go to the first game they had tickets too, so Jenny requested I join them! Much to my pleasure. The three of us girls went to the game last night and had a great time, even though the Blazers lost. We got on the jumbo screen with the poster boards that Jenny and Sara made! Woohoo!

Me, Sara, Jenny

I love the above picture~completely candid shot!

Sara was trying to get her arms around us...

We were up high-second row down from the top so we could see the whole arena!

Thanks ladies for the fabulous time!

I {heart} them!

I haven't advertised this much, but I have accepted a job at another ElderPlace site (there will be commentary about this in a later post when I have successfully processed the emotionalism of this decision and the fallout following it). I have worked at my current location for 6 years and 4 months and this was one of the absolute most difficult decisions I've had to make in my fairly short life. To leave was to not only leave the stability, comfort and security of the place I almost consider home; it also meant leaving some of the people that are close to family for me. I spend most of my time in a given day at work and am surrounded by people I love dearly, both participants and staff and some of those staff are my dear office mates.

I have shared an office with two of these three for the entirety of my "career" at ElderPlace and one of them is like a second father to me. So, to make the decision to leave was also to make the decision to say goodbye to these close to my heart people. Though I will still see them, it will never be the same. For them, and all other that I am leaving behind at a site I dearly love, I thank them for who they are and who they've helped me to be. This is my last week at my current site and in honor of that--Office Mate photo time!

L to R: Kevin, Donna, John and me. January 2012

Such a group!

It's Christmas time again

I didn't take many pictures of my Christmas adventure this year-for many reasons, but mainly because it wasn't anything really outrageous-just really layed back and nice.

Here are the pretty Colorado Rockies.

Snow covered below a blanket of crisp, blue sky.

We are a 3D family.

We went to see Hugo in 3D in Casper and I had to have a picture of us in our crazy glasses.

Mom, me, Dad, Josh.
I didn't take one single picture of gift times. Oh, well...

Back in Denver with Dad we went to explore downtown as we used to as kids and went to see this giant blue bear (like three stories tall, giant) and had to get a few pictures-they were hard to get because of the size and lack of light.

A totally blurry Josh and Dad in the "crotch" area...ummmm.....
And, I opted to stand near his foot than in the other area. With brother! :)

When I left Denver I really liked these waves of soemthing that I could see-when I got closer I discovered it was thousands and thousands of origami cranes that had been made and mounted in waves in the wall-pretty cool. A picture of the whole thing wouldn't have done it justice-so here is a close up of about 1/100th of the whole display.

And then, Christmas was over. I was back in Portland and back to reality. Though, I am thankful for the restful time I had and I even got to see my best friend from high school, Summer and meet her darling, just over 1yr old daughter, Penny.

I love family and friends.

Today...

...is my birthday. I'm a year older. Can I say better?! I don't know. What I do know is I neglected to get a picture with all the lovely ladies who joined my in an early birthday dessert last night to help me celebrate. Though, it was amazing and oh, so beneficial to my soul.

Thank you, ladies, for the smiles and laughter and lettting me be me!

Let the Birthday Celebrations Begin

So, these pictures don't all apply to my (early) birthday celebration, but they were all taken on the same day, so bear with me.

One of my girls groups, the one that hasn't been getting together on a consistent basis, got together yesterday morning for a cookie exchange. And, really, the most important part was to see all the new babies in the group. Three of the "girls" aka women from this group became mommies (2 or them for the second time) in the month of October. The two repeat mommies made it to the groupone because she hosted. There was also a 10 month old who came with her mommy. It was great to see all the little ones and how the older little ones got along.

These are the three princess'.

Evie was born incredibly early and was in the NICU for months, she is now 10 months old and entirely to precious; then there is Amelia and then my little Goddaughter Josie. All so precious!

Here are the boys swarming around the cookies while we were all coo-ing over the girls.

Alex in the red on the left, Myles in the center and Isaiah behind the stuffed animal on the right.
On my way home I realized how frosty things were and just had to take a few pictures of the frosty leaves and liked the definition of the frost on these rosebushes.

After being at home for a time between the girls group and a fun evening with a friend for an early birthday celebration I worked on Christmas cards....dun, dun, dun.

Then, Tera came and picked me up for a night out. It was so nice to know I was going out for the evening and didn't have to plan one minute of it. Tera planned the whole night.

First we went to one of my favorite all time restaurants- Deschutes Brewery---yummy gluten free buns for the amazing burgers and homemade gingerale=an amazing meal.

After dinner we went to Tea Chi Te for tea and walked the fun NW 23rd area of Portland to see the lights.

What a fabulous day and night spent with friends. Thanks, Tera for kicking off my birthday "season" the right way!

Birds on a Wire

For some reason, birds on a wire fascinate me. I took these pictures a week ago or so. I like the color in the sky, and of course, the birds on the wire.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Miss Stephanie and Myles's Grand Adventure!

I should have known when the day started out sunny, that it would indeed be a good day for a grand adventure. My friends Stasia and Dave have two darling kids. Myles will be three in February, and I had been thinking about "borrowing" him for part of a day and going on an adventure. Stasia had said that would be fine and once I came up with a plan we set it into play. So, today Myles and Miss Stephanie (how they refer to me) went on a grand adventure. We both had a blast!

I picked Myles up at 8:30ish and away we went. Myles loves Christmas trees so our first stop was going to be a REALLY big Christmas tree. The tree at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Look how small he looks at the base of that tree.

Smile, Myles!

Miss Stephanie and Myles at the base of the tree.
(I wish I could say my name the way he does-it's too stinkin' cute)

Looking at the tree from a higher perspective.

I love his expression in the picture. And, Sammy the cat joined us for our adventure also. You can see him in this picture.

:)

In order to get to the tree we rode the Max train, which Myles loved. At each stop he would say, "go, go." He liked to be moving, not stopped.

On the way back to the car we had some apples as a snack.

And we smiled.

Walking back to the car Myles held on to a few poles and would spin around them. He can count at least up to 15...Stasia- when did that happen? And he said all of his numbers in order. He's growing up too fast.

The next stop was at my place of work for a potty break and to see the fish in the fish tank. Which he LOVED. I hadn't planned on staying long, but we were there for at least an hour. Maybe a little longer. Myles introduce Sammy the cat to almost everyone.

He checked out the fish.

He went spinning in Chaplain John's chair.

And, he even played catch with people using Sammy as the item thrown.

Eventually we got out of there. When Myles was first in my car he had asked if we could have a hamburger, fries and a shake. I told him it depending on which kind of shake he wanted. He stated that he wanted a chocolate shake, of which I approved of and therefore we went to Burgerville for a lunch of a cheeseburger, french fries and a CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE, which Myles was so excited about.

Look at that spread!

And, to top it all off, he got a balloon. It was green. He said green was his favorite color. Sweet!

After that, I delivered him home to his mom, who was missing him. He was wired. I apologized. He never did take a nap. But, we sure did have fun on our grand adventure!

A Peaceful Thanksgiving

I had decided to spend Thanksgiving at home. In the peace and quiet of my home. It was marvelous. Every year I cook a turkey. This year it looked particularly nice and scrumptious.

Friday evening I headed down to Pioneer Courthouse Square to see the lighting of the tree. This year it is 75 feet tall and is beautiful.

Pre-lighting
with lots of people.

Santa and a few of his helpers to turn the lights on as the thousands of people on the square counted down.

Every year Pink Martini, a local group does a sing-along of holiday songs...Christmas and Hanukkah songs. This year held a special surprise. The Von Trapp Children, great grandchildren of Maria and Captain Von Trapp (the real life Von Trapps) joined us. Their voices were absolutely beautiful. I will hear them in concert, someday.

The lady in the middle, dressed in costume for a play called Ebenezer, has played Maria in a stage version of The Sound of Music.

And, the tree is lit!

And, I was there!

Lots of people are there!

On the way out...

It was a fun evening and a good way to start the Christmas season.

Merry Christmas!

Inside out, Upside down, Backwards & Sideways

My friend, Linda and her family have a Harvest Party every year and theme it differently. Linda has invited me in the past but I was never able to make it. This year I was. And, the theme was inside out, upside down, backwards and sideways. The food theme was something to do with apples. So...I fed two birds with one stone (as my friend, Cindy the bird lover says) and I made "Inside Out Caramel Apples" AND they were yummy. Now, they didn't look like the ones in the picture, but they were just as delicious, I imagine. You see, I can't eat puff pastry, so instead of using puff pastry, I made a gluten free pie crust and used it. It didn't cut into nice strips like the puff pastry would have, but I still had leaves.

Pre-baked.

I made 8 of them. It took me four hours. I made two sets of pie crust (out of a bag from Bob's Red Mill) and homemade caramel sauce from scratch. I forget how long it takes to bake since I hardly ever do it anymore.
Pre-bake and post bake photos.

Doesn't that look amazing?!?! They were SO yummy. And, because it was a backwards themed party dessert came first. As it should anyway. My inside out caramel apples were a hit.

But, I don't have a single picture of the party, where there were soups, dips, appetizers all made from apples. There was a reading of the poem Backward Bill by Shel Silverstein was read and the game Apples to Apples was also played and lots of laughter filled the air.