There is no place like home

I've realized how wise Dorothy was while she sat there eagerly clicking her red sparkly shoes. There truly is no place like home! Wes and I had the wonderful chance to go home for about a week last month. I don't even know how to explain how wonderful it was. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

How could you resist this?

Steve loved the mascots at the NCAA games at the Rose Garden.

Wes' grandparents came to Portland as well! It made the trip even better that we could see them as well. We got to show them Portland on a beautiful day! 

Waiting in the most ridiculous line for Voodoo donuts. 

I do truly love Portland. 

My sister had this beautiful little girl the day before we arrived. Isn't she adorable?

Big sisters are LOVING having a little girl in the house. 

Scooter fun

Even nicer day for sledding at Mt. Hood! 

Even got to spend it with these hooligans! 

I was a little scared to go down the path we had made. 

I mean, look at Mason's sled! 

And, that is how our sled ended up. 

I decided to stick to playing in the snow with this monkey.

Bopa even joined in! 

She loved going down on just her bum. 

Gotta do just as her older sister does. 

It is hard not to take a billion pictures of them, they are just so dang cute! 

Dad decided to try and build a snow cave. 

So happy to be with family!

Without even saying much, it was a fantastic trip! 

Bridge Walking

I'm realizing you may not care what happened 4 months ago so I'm going to stop catching up (except for our Oregon trip home which is next) and just start letting you know what we are doing now.

Manhattan is a funny little island that is connected to real life by a variety of bridges. The bridges are long and on sunny days give wonderful views of the city. A couple of weeks ago we walked across the Brooklyn bridge in the most beautiful day. Then this last Sunday we had an even more beautiful Easter Sunday so we decided to walk across the George Washington bridge. We live just up the way from this bridge and have sadly not walked across yet. It was a wonderful way to spend Easter. Here are some fun pictures of our walks across Manhattan bridges!

Brooklyn Bridge

(Word trade center in the background)

George Washington Bridge

Birthday Splash

Really...some day I might get better at this. In my wonderful form of trying to catch up I'll quickly tell of our birthdays.

This was the first year I had to work on my birthday, but luckily I have great coworkers that made it special. They got me a cake and even lit one candle for me. It was funny since I was currently setting up ionto (treatment) on a patient when they started singing to me and brought the cake out!! The patients all even joined into the singing.

Luckily my birthday fell on one of my early days so I was out of work at 1:40. Wes being his amazing self planned a trip to the Coney Island Aquarium!!! If you know me like Wes does you'll know that I LOVE animals and get extremely excited to go to zoos and aquariums (see previous zoo post). It got even better when we realized that the aquarium is actually ON the beach. Yes, December doesn't make the best beach weather but it was still fun since I also love beaches. Needless to say, the trip was a success. He then brought me to a dinner at this Italian restaurant that was recommended by a coworker. The night ended with an ice cream cake from Baskin Robins! All in all, it was another wonderful birthday! Here are some pictures from the aquarium (sorry if there are a lot, remember I love animals...)

Yep this a performing sea lion! 

He liked all the attention.

It was so cold they were shivering! 

Did I mention it was freezing?

But still so excited to be there! 

Coney Island was a success!

So sadly Wes' birthday happened to be the latest night he has ever had to stay for work... Needless to say it was uneventful, but somehow Wes was still happy with my lame happy birthday sign. All together our first winter in NYC was a wonderful success!! 

Its Christmas Time in the City (or it was...)

So now that it is officially March I was thinking I should actually blog about our holiday in the city... It was so funny to be preparing for the holidays in our little apartment and realizing our Christmas would just be the two of us. Being blessed with big families had spoiled both of us. We tried to keep as many family traditions alive with just the two of us.

We started with the Collett tradition of decorating Christmas cookies. I tried a new sugar cookie recipe and didn't know if I would have enough cookies if I halved it so...I didn't and we had Christmas cookies for a good extra month and a half. 

Wes gave into my love for "A Muppet's Christmas Carol" and let us watch it while decorating the cookies. I have to watch it at least twice during the holidays (that is a Berne tradition)! 

(Might not look like a lot but it is. We froze half of them)

We were really worried what to do for Christmas Eve since it was just going to be the two of us. Luckily, we live in NYC and the city actually loves the holiday and had so many things to do for Christmas. We decided to go to Rockefeller Center to see the massive tree. It is such a beautiful place! We then walked down 5th Avenue looking at all the window displays. These NY stores take window shopping very very seriously. It was really fun seeing these extravagant window displays. 

The tree really is massive! 

Told you...the windows are extremely over the top. But it makes for a fun Christmas Eve activity!

Next we went to Bryant Park to go Ice Skating!!! I have this absolute love/obsession with ice skating. I've tried to get Wes to go ice skating with me since we started dating, but he has always got out of it. This year he was such a great sport and took me ice skating! The rink was in this adorable little Christmas market with a big Christmas tree. Much to our liking, the rink had a wall that we became very friendly with, but we never fell (even if my left side did get super tired...)!! 

(The rink wasn't even that packed)

We then went back home to rest our tired ankles. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner of ham, homemade rolls, salad, asparagus, and homemade apple pie!! Was there enough food? Enough for one of our families to eat with us! To continue with family traditions we both opened our Christmas eve presents from my family. 

Gotta love Pajamas!!!

Duck paraphernalia is always a huge success. 

We skyped with both families to still celebrate with them. To end the night we watched "A Christmas Story" (what a weird movie....). All in all, Christmas Eve was a WONDERFUL day. And, there was only one more sleep till Christmas...day! 

The next morning Santa came and left our stuff on the couch in the exact spots we always sit. I've always been surprised that Santa just knows these types of things. Santa was very very good to us this year. Its odd to open presents when there are only two people. It all goes so quickly! We tried to savor it as much as possible though. I felt like we were little kids again as we opened and played with each new toy!! Since Christmas was on a Sunday we were slightly rushing as Wes made a huge breakfast. It was absolutely wonderful. 

Crazy morning! And this is after the clean up...

To cap off our wonderful holiday, we went to the Nutcracker!!! I somehow have never seen the Nutcracker and I was so absolutely excited! It was so fun to get dressed up and go to the NYC Ballet. 

It was such a beautiful ballet!! I loved the whole atmosphere of the ballet. We had wonderful seats that gave me a front row view to an amazing performance. Can you tell I loved it? I always struggle to express how I felt about such amazing things. It was just the most wonderful ending to a fun and exciting Christmas. 

I know this is such a late post but I felt like I had to share our first Christmas in NY. We wish we could've spent it with our family but we really had a wonderful time here together. We feel so blessed to have loving and supportive family as we try and make it here in NY. I promise to blog about our birthdays soon. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, even if it was 2 months ago.