In Which I Write About Topics of Little Importance

It's true.  Topics of little importance.  Everything you're about to read is just random, trivial, top-of-the-head kinda stuff.  Off the top of my head, y'all.  Flight of the Conchords reference, anyone?  No?  Okay.

So, as usual, stuff is the usual around here!  It's amazing how easy it is to slip in to the daily grind, until a month has passed and you still feel like you don't really have a lot to talk about. BUT, since for some crazy reason some people actually read this blog and apparently want to hear all about those random events around here, I'm going to tell you anyway.  Also, this is a blog.  And you can't stop me.  So there.

One exciting thing you might not yet have heard (although since Jason talks about it every chance he gets, I highly doubt that) is that we're actually actively trying to make more little Dunbar-Marshalls!  Exciting.  We won't actually hyphenate their names.  I think the hyphenating is silly.  But, if we somehow end up making two little redheaded twin girls, they are going to be Dunbars.  How could we not?!?

So that's happening.  Jason, as you may know, seems to think that it's generally totally fine to tell people all sorts of specific and rather personal details, and pulling the goalie just means that he has MORE stuff to talk about it.  In detail.  With people I'm really sure would rather not know.  So I've been shushing a lot lately.  You know, like: "Shush!"  Yup.

But, no babies yet.  I promise you'll be among the first to know when it happens, though.  :)

What else?  I haven't posted pictures from Christmas yet, so let me subject you to some of those.  I have a younger brother, Chance, who lives in Sacramento, who came up for Christmas this year, which was really awesome.  We haven't spent much time around each other ever, really, so it was awesome to just get to hang and bond a little.  He's going to Brown University in the fall for his first year of college, so I'm really prooud of him!  Plus, he's adorable.  And awesome.

Here are the photos:

Aunt Darth, me, Grandma, Jason, Nicky and Chance

My dad loves to buy gifts from the Goodwill.  This was a particularly nice find.  It even talks to you!

Angela and bingo, a very serious family Christmas Eve tradition.

Siblings.  Cute!

Also siblings.  This is also... cute?

Christmas day Jenga.

The tree at Nicky's house.

Another family tradition-- Authors, the card game.

Amazingly, we filled my dad's stocking, not the other way around.  Spoiled much?

Muh brotha!

Christmas was awesome.  Actually, one of my favorite things about Christmas was biking related.  I know it must seem as though I do a lot of biking, and I would like to clarify: I don't.  1.5 miles one way is really rather pitiful.  I even get all suited up in waterproof pants... most other bikers kinda look at me like I'm crazy.  But the thing is-- it rains a lot around here!  People seem to forget that.

Anyway, so I'm biking along my 'barely break a sweat or get out of breath' commute (did I mention that in addition to it being very short, there are no hills?  At all?), and one of the best things about the holidays was that along the bike commute, I could check out people's Christmas trees.  It was awesome!  I'd be biking along these neighborhood streets, and it's dark in the winter by the time I'm headed home.  Lights are on in homes all along the street, and generally people put their Christmas tree in or near the window... and so I'd just get these little peeks into other people's holidays.  Decorations, stockings on fireplaces, lights outside... I'd get these little pockets of festive all along the ride home.  Little flashes of the warmth from inside and the way people love the holidays.  It was really magical.

Right after Christmas, Kimberly Perez came to visit!  Kim is amazing.  She's a very good friend of ours from New Mexico who now lives in Colorado.  She's hilarious and wicked smart, and a nurse.  So we took Kim around to some Portland-y activities, which initially all involve beer.  

Kim and Jason, BFFs.

 Dusty Hoesly also came to visit!  I love me some Hoesly.  He's in California, PhD-ing and whatnot, and I just luuuuurrrvve him.

Me and D. Hoesly, not to be confused with his twin brother C. Hoesly, even though I've done that.

Nicky D. and roommate Emily

Me and Kimber!

 Of course we had to take Kim outside!  After a little bit of epic-ing with our car and lots of snow, we ended up hiking in some super-sweet NW woods.  If you don't think this place is magical, then you probably aren't paying attention.

Woods, and snow.  Oh, and some moss too.

Look at adorable little Emory.

Sweet redwood.

Family portrait.  Friends Julia, Eliza, Shane and Emory on the hike with us.

Look at these friends.  They're just so... friendly.

There's like, a lot of different colors of green in here, man.

Snow angels.  It didn't work, for the record.

Buddies!

Cool up-close one.  I was really into it.

And then we took Kim to do some Portland-y things, aka drink beer, on the other side of the river.  And I took a couple crappy photos:

Very nearly almost it could have been a good picture of Mt. Hood.

 

Food carts.  It couldn't be Portland without food carts.

This is a terrible shot of Portland and of bridges, but a really good shot of cool people.

K, so that was like, a lot of photos.  And not a lot of writing.  Which probably means next time will be the opposite.  But hey!  This is two months in a row now of blogging!  Take that, New Year's Resolutions!  For the record, these are the New Year's Resolutions:

BLOG
WRITE
CREATE
DANCE
FLOSS

I'm doing pretty well on the flossing one.  The others... well, let's just say it's a little early to say.  Until next time, internet friends!

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