I'm BACK!

Seriously... posting hiatus, anyone?  I am a total slacker.  Luckily, I have taken many photos, and will bombard you with those to cover up the fact that it has been 4 MONTHS! since I posted last.

Alas, summer in the Pacific Northwest is over.  We are well into the 9 months of rain and gloom that makes us forget what the sun really is.  However, in true Northwester fashion, we'll subject ourselves to suffering and frigidity in order to get outside and soak up whatever we can.

We haven't really been climbing much, but here's a couple photos to prove we have at least gone to Smith a handful of times:

Yup.  We made it to the entrance!

We actually did climb.  Just don't ask me how many pitches we did.

Man-love.

 It's snowing now, starting to really become ski season, and even though I have no idea how to ski, we're enjoying the snow anyway.  The forests out here are magical, storybook style.  We took this short hike in November, just when it was starting to snow.  It's about an hour and a half outside of Portland, heading towards Mount Hood. 

Jason and Bryan keeping it real.

What is that ridiculously bright thing on my back?

Mirror Lake.

We decided against summiting that peak in the background, due to the fact that we were FREEZING.

Duck face.

Have I mentioned that Portland is totally awesome, and so is being home in Portland?  It feels ridiculously great to be back.  One of my favorite things lately is my bike commute.  I'm turning into the guy from Portlandia.  I've started yelling things at cars, despite the fact that windows are always rolled up around here, and no one can hear me.  I've got some sweet rain gear.  Generally when I bike, I roll with a pretty large bike posse.  As I'm rounding this curve in the neighborhood near ours called Ladd's Addition, bikers come zooming in from all corners, and then we clog up the intersections and look badass.  It's pretty sweet.

I've started to get irrationally competitive about biking to work.  Some lady will roll up with a cruiser bike with two saddlebags and bright pink pants, and I'm like, "Hell nah, pink-pants lady can't catch me!"  Except then I get passed by like six people who are actually serious bikers (and by serious I mean they bike more than my measly 3 miles round trip).  I get passed a lot, actually.  Which might explain my pass-agression towards the people I can actually show up.

I get passed a lot because my bike is cool, but the gears on it are slow and don't have indicators, so when I try to shift more often than not I end up shifting two whole gears, or 5, and then my chain falls off and I look like an idiot.  This is probably exacerbated by the fact that I got a round of like 3 flat tires all in a row, and I had to take the tire off so many times that I stopped adjusting the derailer.  So I stopped shifting.  So really right now it's like I'm riding a fixie, which is cool.  Except it looks like (because it IS) a 10-speed, which seriously damages my Portland street cred.

Which might be why I get passed regularly by the guy that wears shorts when it is 28 degrees, as well as when it is raining.  You are tough, shorts guy, but you are also soaking wet.  I also get passed by many people wearing waterproof booties and spandex and very bright yellow vests made of very light material and helmet covers.  This is self-explanatory.

ON YOUR LEFT!

Haha, anyway.  Enough bicycle ranting.  Here are some more pictures!

Jason loves Willa.  We were the first people to babysit her for an entire weekend.  We're pretty cool.

 Some pictures of the shenaniganery (yes, that's now a word) of Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin pie.  A very serious specialty.

B. Caldwell making gravy for his famous breakfast dish (my favorite).

I am in the corner, and am in charge of biscuits.

Cooking in a tiny kitchen.

Thanksgiving at Antoinette's house!

My dad, working some magic on the turkey gravy.

Bryan, Luke and Brad.  They're all trouble, I tell ya.

Nicky and Estelle, adorable fancy ladies.

Somewhere along the line, Nicky learned how to cook.  I did not.  This is her amazing turkey.

 And you know, since Thanksgiving is the holiday of face stuffing (a new dish), I took a series of very artsy, amazing photos.  I call these, 'Full Plates'.  Yeah.

This is my plate.  I would like to say I finished it all.  But if I did, I'd be lying.

Angela's genius invention-- the bib-mat!

Bryan and his awesome layered plate.

Husband.  Very excited to be eating.

Adorable Suz with a reasonable amount.

 Thanksgiving this year was different-- it was the first time in a couple years I had to work the day after Thanksgiving, and this year that was also the 2nd anniversary of Mikey's death.  It was a pretty damn hard day.  But to celebrate him and how much we love him, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving we went down to the waterfront, pretty close to the place he died, and we lit off some cool lanterns.  It was emotional, but we really liked it, and I think we'll probably end up doing that again, maybe on his birthday this year.  Here are a couple photos that my cousin Angela took (she's an amazing photographer):

It's that bright dot in the sky-- it actually worked!

I'm not going to say a few didn't land in the water.  They did.  But the two that flew were really magical.

Here's a video (belongs to Mikey's friend Stephen) of us letting one go:

We had some amazing friends come out to the waterfront to send those off with us, and it was a really amazing rememberance of Mikey.  I miss that guy quite a bit.

And, of course, you can't have Thanksgiving without putting up a few Christmas decorations!  So Jason and I decorated our cute little tree, and put a couple presents under it... it was overall an excellent holiday weekend.

Nativity scene from my Grandma and Aunt Darth.

Did you think, for a small moment there, that we might not be playing Settlers of Catan anymore?  Oh, how wrong you were!

Obligatory Catan photos:

Setting up is serious business.  Allison is ready to win.

Portlanders are addicted too.  It's amazing.  We've even bought more expansion packs for the game.  Yes.  We are obsessed.  But it's just so dang good!

Anyway, this blog has gone on quite enough, and I've still got a ton of good photos!  More to come, ladies and gents, more to come.

Missing you,

Write often,

Send pictures of sun (what is that yellow thing in your photos again?),

Love,

Karissa