Monday, December 17, 2012

Seeing Santa in Portland

Want to see Santa while you are in Portland?  Breakfast with Santa at McMenamins locations was pretty sweet - we sat and ate, saw Santa when the line was short and then went back to our breakfast.  The food was good, it was relaxed and we got the iconic "Santa is scary" photo.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Christmas prep

We bought sugar cookie mix at the holiday bazar last weekend and of course needed to make them before we head home at the end of the week.  When I took the dough out of the fridge and it crumbled in my hands I thought all was lost (we used super chunk sugar, weird butter with an eyeballed measurement and had refrigerated way longer than the recipe called for) but Jeremiah persevered knowing sugar cookies are one of my favorite christmas traditions.  Glad he did because these cookies are delicious!



Jeremiah's book cookie (getting ready to start his librarian/media specialist program)

Saturday, December 8, 2012

A local water spot


Baths, laundry, drinking and cooking water all in one place.  I try to think of this when I want to complain about our water situation.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Family photos

Getting professional family photos can be tricky as an expat.  For us, finding someone to do what we want locally was hard, and finding the time when we are home for breaks is nearly impossible.  We've been pretty set on getting some done and we wanted something that reflected where we are living for a couple of reasons.  It's important for us to have representations of where we have lived to take with us as we move to help Tegan have a sense of where she's lived and have consistent objects around (pictures are small and flat and take up little room in a box!).  And, we want to document our growing family for ourselves and to share with extended family and friends.

Lucky us, we discovered our good friend - Peter Hennigar - is a pretty amazing photographer!  It was a great morning out, full of laughing and onlookers.  He has a young family also so was great with a very cranky Tegan, knew that we wanted a bit of Nepal charm in our photos and shot a whole bunch of different styles.  The highlight had to be either the man joining our photo second photo down or changing from jeans into the skirt in the middle of the square with a rather surprised audience.  We are ecstatic with how they turned out.  I can't wait to get them printed and up on the walls!

If you are living in or visiting Nepal and want some more info check out his site at Hennigar Photography.







Monday, December 3, 2012

Homesick

Sometimes homesickness hits hard and drastic measures are needed.  Jeremiah recognized the severity of this last bout of mine and ordered us some supplies to make it through until we go home for Christmas.  Yup, pretty lucky aren't I?