holiday travels

happy new year! i am so excited about 2010... 2009 was a painful, challenging, surprising and unexpected mix of a year. looking forward to this new year gives me hope for many things to come. among them, heading back to school, part time this month and full time this fall. this will mean some big changes, like quitting my job and throwing myself full time into something i really know nothing about. i'm excited for the challenge and excited for what this new education will mean to our family some day. 2010 will also hopefully include some home projects (and hopefully less drama - though it is an OLD house, i will not be naive and think we'll escape this year with out at least one thing going wrong!) 2010 will also hopefully include new cooking adventures, new travel adventures (we're hoping to take our west coast road trip this summer), new fitness adventures (i really want to run in my first timed event)... all sorts of new things ahead of us!

so our holiday travels were busy but wonderful! we went for a VERY short visit to indiana. i don't really get time off from work, so we sort of just went up and came right back. but we did get up there, saw some pretty pretty snow and visited with family for a short little minute. we learned that both my sweet cousins that are already mommies are both expecting again! what a joy! we know so many mommies to be right now!

after our quick trip up north we headed west. we spent Christmas in portland with sweet sister and her hubby. it was such a wonderful trip! we stayed the first three days in a cabin that we just didn't deserve up near mt. hood and the rest of time in the city at sister's house. let's see - we spent thursday at timberline lodge. i tried skiing and took a lesson, everyone else snowboarded like champs. i was proud of myself for trying though - i'm normally such a weenie and i was scared of it all, the hill, the zipping down the snow too fast, the chair lift, but it turned out to be amazing and i had a blast! friday was Christmas and after sleeping in (we slept ALOT on this trip!) we went snow tubing. again, the weenie in me was scared, but it was SO much fun! i wish it snowed here so we could do it every weekend. other highlights from our trip included soaking in an outdoor heated salt water pool in 30something degree weather. it was a crazy windy day and one of the most wildly relaxing experiences of my life. we also spent time exploring the city, taking a brewery tour (i think this is becoming a trend on our vacations!) and eating lots and lots of good portland food. portland is such an amazing wonderful city, so different then nashville. it's such a clean city, so full of interesting people and interesting things to do. people seem to care about the city and seem to love living in such a beautiful place. when we arrived home, driving down our street, seeing all the trash people seem to love dumping just down the way, it made me sad. people just don't seem to care here. anyhow, i've gone off on a tangent. the trip was wonderful!! we can't wait to go back.

happy 2010 everyone! there's are oodles of pictures of our portland trip on my facebook if anyone cares to see them :-)