Blast from the Past

When JJ decided to go on her 100th trip this summer, she told me I should update our blog. So, after thinking about what we have done since our last posting, I realized we have not really done a whole lot. So, I went back to through the archives and looked at our lives. They are pretty much chronological starting with our honeymoon and moving back to our thinner days (and the more hair days!!). Enjoy.

2006 - European Honeymoon
Ferris wheel in Paris

2005 - Jessica's Graduation from PSU

2001 - Crazy Girl

2003 - Jessica's grandfathers 75th Bday

2001 - JJ and a Blurry Lotus

2001-02ish - The Home Depot Shirt

A long time ago!!

BEACH!

It is over 100 degrees in Portland and Ashland. So I decided to make a stop at the beach on the way home. Neskowin has been a perfect 80 degrees and sunny! My BFF's Lauren and Lotus joined me gladly! We are loving it! I am so grateful to have such a beautiful place to visit.

Chinese Gardens!

Last Thursday I had a wonderful day with Darlene! We went downtown to the Chinese Gardens. I have wanted to go for years, and just never went. So during my trip to Portland I made sure I didn't miss out, and it was a perfect sunny day to visit. Then gardens were gorgeous and I loved the floral garden. Our only discrepancies were that there was cob webs everywhere and all the windows were dirty. Afterward Darlene took me to lunch at DIM SUM and it was delicious.

Fortune teller! You shake a can, pick a stick with a number, and choose the number box with your fortune!

Darlene next to one of the many beautiful wooden doors!

Birthday week festivities

#27 Saturday my grandparents had a very nice birthday party for me! It was great to celebrate with them this year! It was truly special, and 90 degrees in the shade! This year I was lucky to have my Mom, Will, Anna, and Alicia all there too. My Grandma made my favorite dessert, lemon meringue pie, from scratch! YUMMY! And I got a fabulous crock pot from them. I already made a pork roast with it. Delicious! It is a great way for me to cook since I don't enjoy the act of cooking, just the eating part suits me. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa.

Now I am off to Portland to see family and friends for the rest of my week. I am excited to see Darlene, Al, and visit with my Dad and Robin! Its a good thing since Matt just began his Physics Class and his Business class is crazy hard. Now he will be more focused to study. Only 4 more weeks of classes and then he gets 6 weeks off! YAY!

The Mountain Lakes

Fish Lake This last week, and this week too, was over 100 degrees everyday. We decided to take an afternoon and cool of at the mountain lakes. About 30 minutes from our house and 5,000+ feet above sea level are 4 beautiful Lakes. It was a perfect 78 degrees in the mountains! We had a great sandwich picnic. We did try to fish at Howard Prairie Lake, but again unsuccessful.

Lake of the Woods

Hyatt Lake

We hiked a trail where there were amazing views of the lake and a nice seat to rest in!

Matt is posing the "I'm cool" look here!

Harry Potter

Its true, Matt and I along with my sis and her friend went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter.

All three of us girls made sure to fit in with the crowd by drawing harry scars on our foreheads! Matt didn't want to fit in!

We patiently awaited while the theater had a costume contest. Then the movie began. In MOJO's critics corner the movie got a C rating. We felt lost in many parts of the movie and it seemed to lack on the plot. Anna explained that the book filled in the gaps we were confused on. Over all we still had fun!

~4th of July 2009~

The birthday party! This afternoon we visited my cousin's family, who is from out of town, and celebrated her son Aaron's fourth birthday at my Aunt's house. We also had the opportunity to finally meet their son Ryan. We had a nice evening with family!

Happy 4th. This weekend we stayed in Ashland and enjoyed one of the towns largest celebrations of the year. We started the day by watching the town parade. Matt admitted that he believed it was the first parade he has ever been to that he was an observer and not a participant.

Later in the afternoon my family came to visit and we enjoyed a casual walk through the towns festival booths and enjoyed some evening fireworks! It was sweet that our apartment complex put together bbq food, casual music, and activities that happened to be right outside of our front door. Overall it was a quite and peaceful holiday!

Bandon Weekend

Last weekend I took a trip out to Bandon to visit my old roommate Joel and our friend Kevin. Unfortunately Matt had school and work and stayed at home. He is such and hard worker, and I missed him so much that I had to text him constantly (he probably got sick of my texting, but I didn't care). We had a lovely time relaxing on our own private lake, Laurel Lake. With jet skis, catch phrase, and sun I was definitely amused.

We visited a safari petting zoo and I fell in love with the baby lions and leopard! They were only weeks old and still adjusting to walking. It was so cute! But the white Siberian tiger was my favorite! Beautiful animal!

I did take the first book of Twilight with me, and I ended up reading the first two books in two days! I can't believe it, but I love it. I read book four (I couldn't wait to see what happened in the end) and now I am reading book three. I know it was disrespect to the Cullens, but whatever. This is the first time I have ever read a whole book series, I can't believe it.

Weekend with Grandma

This weekend Grandma had me accompany her to Corvallis for a PEO organization convention where my sister presented a speech. Anna was asked to speak because she was a PEO Oregon State scholarship recipient and a recent grad.



The food was amazing with salad, cream stuffed chicken and mashed potatoes, followed by delicious chocolate cake. Anna did a great job on her speech and Grandma and I were proud! Her PEO sponsors from Newport drove all the way to Corvallis for the evening to see her speak and they just love Anna. One of the ladies even calls herself "Anna's fairy godmother." They were so happy to help Anna and see her graduate.



I was excited Grandma booked a room at the Hilton, and the beds were like clouds. They even looked like clouds. I slept like a baby.

Father's Day

This year we were able to spend Father's Day in Grants Pass with my Mom and Will along with my grandma and grandpa! Matt made a great lasagna for dinner and accompanied by bread, salad, and a tasty fruit salad from grandma. After dinner we enjoyed the river next to Grandpa's patio bonfire while filling up on apple pie and ice cream. We had a lovely afternoon.

Lauren and Nate Visit Ashland

Golfing Day! Matt had Tuesday off of school and work, finally a true day off. Lauren and Nate came to visit us in little Ashland and we tried the greens at a Medford Golf course. We decided to do 18 holes with walking the first 9 and carting the second 9.

Now you must understand that our golf skills are not up to par for the season, so we spent half the time trying to figure out where the ball went after our drives. Well after the first walking 9, we were all so exhausted and we had to stop to replenish fluids. We were so happy to have the carts on the second half. By the end I was not even putting, I just picked up my ball and moved on to the next hole.

Unfortunately Lauren became ill on Wednesday and thru the rest of the week. We were supposed to go rafting on Thursday, but she was not pulling it together. Matt and I will have to photo shoot a raft trip later this summer!

So we decided to golf at the Greens in Ashland, a 9 holer, while Lauren manned the cart and tried to keep track of where we hit our balls. This local course was somewhat nicer than the Medford course, and I loved that in general the holes were not nearly as long. We played a much better game in terms of our skill level.

Anna's a Grad!

This weekend my family all met up in Corvallis to watch Anna graduate from OSU. She has a degree in Political science, a degree in International Studies, and a minor in Spanish. She graduated with honors; such an over achiever; we are all proud. As you can see, she was advertising herself, for hire, at the graduation. She is going to spend the summer living with my mom in southern oregon, and that means closer to me! Now we can job hunt and scrap book together!

Week with the Fam!

Last week our family came to visit and it was great to see everyone! We saw the Shakespeare plays Macbeth and Death of a Kings Horsemen. I really liked Macbeth, but have had to refer to the children's book afterwards to really understand what happened. The other play was kinda weird for me. It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it!

It was fabulous to have our B.B. Regan stay with us too! We took Regan to the dog park, and he was a shy puppy. I don't think he could handle all the doggy exercise and doggie friends. One dog stole Regan's toy and teased the other dogs with it and Regan didn't even care.

We had a lovely picnic at Lithia Park one afternoon. The weather was warm and sunny! Matt baked a great Strawberry Pie to celebrate his Mom's b-day, but of course I forgot a knife and serving utensil, so we made due with plastic silverware. The result was yummy mushy pie topped with hand whipped cream! It tasted delicious!

The Bridges enjoying the afternoon

Darlene is showing off the yummy ice cream we had for dessert!

To end the week, after our family left, we did see Love's Labor Lost at the university. It was a funny witty play and I really enjoyed it! We love the experience of the theater and can't wait to see more!

Our garden is growing!!!

We have a little growing garden!!!! Our tomatoes have a few small fruits on them! Finally. We almost killed the plants by planting too early. We assumed since it had been warm weather in March, and the stores were already selling tomato plants that it was fine to start the garden. A few weeks after we potted the plants, the spring freeze started, and all of our plants looked dead. We just left the dead plants in the pots, mainly because we had given up on doing anymore gardening until after Mother's Day. The beginning of May all the plants started to flourish!!!! Now we have added to the garden. We have Cilantro, Parsley, Basil, and 4 types of Peppers! I can't wait to eat them all! Not bad for a potted garden!