Playing Catch-Up

OK, so if there's one thing I know about, it's procrastination. It's one of my special talents. There are several things that have happened since last October that I never got around to doing for various and sundry reasons, most of which tie in with pregnancy somehow.  I am now going to do an epic epistle blog post to catch myself up.

Why update all of this now, you ask. Well, last week when Mom, Dad, Matt, and Felicia were visiting, we all played a game called "Things." You pick a topic card. Everyone comes up with an answer that fits that topic then you try to guess who said what. One of the topics was "things that are better late than never." The answer I gave was "thank you cards" (another thing I'm great a procrastinating), but later I thought that I should have said "updating the blog."

So here goes, starting with...

OCTOBER
We had our 2nd annual Halloween Feast. Because I was on partial bed rest and also because I suffered from exquisite morning sickness, 2011's Feast was more modest fare: bloody tomato soup and eyeballs, monster feet, and pina ghoulada. 

NOVEMBER
Mike surprised me by planning a Christmas train ride, complete with a visit by Santa Claus.

It was a beautiful fall day. 

We caught the train at Mount Rainier. 

The train ride lasted about 2 hours and went around the base of Mt Rainier.

 Along the way, we were treated to a visit by Santa Claus and got hot chocolate and cookies! 

FEBRUARY

February was a great month. We visited Utah for a week to see Matt marry his sweetheart, Felicia, in the SLC Temple. All three of my married brothers have picked amazing, wonderful women and I'm so excited that Felicia is a member of our family now.

Just prior to our flight to Utah, Mike and I traveled to Portland, where I did a photo Valentine's Day scavenger hunt for Mike like he did for me the year prior. I found four places of historical significant, made clue in the form of a poem for each one, and gave him four Valentine's cards, one for each clue. Unfortunately, I didn't save the poems, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they were brilliant.  

First we went to a Catholic garden that had a replica of Michelangelo's The Pieta.

We then went to a pioneer cemetery just outside of Portland. The tombstone in the middle is a stone relief of the founders of the cemetery.

From there, we went to Downtown Portland. I had found a couple of cool things there but hadn't taken into account that it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and we would have to pay for parking (supposing you could even find it). So we just did a drive-by of the remaining two places. The first was the county courthouse, which has a bunch of bronze animal statues around the sidewalk.

The last place that we went to was one of the first churches built in Portland that has an antique organ that's supposed to be really neat. We didn't go in, which is anticlimactic, I know. We had a fun day together, though, and that's what counts.