Birthday Celebration Part III

Yes, that’s right. For the third birthday celebration, we took the day off work and went to a corn maze! The one on Kruger’s Farm, to be precise. We arrived just as it was opening and were the first ones there. There was one other couple that came after us, but other than that, we had the place to ourselves. Here’s what we found:

Timer photo from atop a bridge with views.

The view:

There were many of these. We had fun solving them.

My previous visit to a corn maze in October taught me that footwear choice is key to comfort and enjoyability. I walked through while Matt walked around.

This was a big bonus to being the first ones in. There were many of these patterns on top of the mud made by some critter. We asked, but the person who worked there hadn’t ever seen them before.

Mushroom!

Some gross corn. The person working said it was a kind of fungus.

The inaccurate ruler puts Matt at over six feet.

And me at 5’4″

We traded off so we could get our faces in all the holes.

And used the timer to take this series:

After that we went on a different hike (really a walk, but less muddy than the corn maze) on Sauvie Island

And then, wandering around looking for someplace to eat, discovered that Broder is where Laughing Planet used to be on Mississippi. Big win, as I love Broder!

Here’s what my activity tracker looked like for the corn maze.

Birthday Celebration Part I: Pix and Dune

Matt (a fan of the David Lynch version of Dune) was excited to see the new version and I (not a fan of the David Lynch version but a fan of Timothée Chalamet) planned to see Dune and then go to Pix’s new vending machine as part of my celebration. Pix was a not-long walk from the Laurelhurst Theater.

Matt quite liked the new version (he talked nonstop the entire walk to Pix) and I liked it better than the David Lynch version (an easy bar to to clear).

The Pix-o-matic was fun to use, but very fiddly. Looking at the not-yet-cleared transactions on my credit card would have freaked me out, had the sign not informed me that if I messed up, the charges would be there, but wouldn’t be charged. I think there were 15 different tries before we finally got our Pix.

Pix also had a fun Halloween setup.

Fun birthday celebration Part I was followed by Part II on Sunday when we went to see the French Dispatch at Cinema 21 and ate at Lardo.

The Joining of the Fast & the Furious and the Orange Door. Plus Nidavellir.

Tonight was the night when the Orange Door broke out Fast & Furious Highway Heist.

As board games go, it was about medium easy to pick up. The important point is that both occupants of the Orange Door were positively interacting with the Fast & the Furious franchise.

We also played Nidavellir which was medium hard to explain and has entirely left my synapses.

A “Hike”

My company is having a fitness challenge and I get a virtual badge if I take a hike. So off Matt and I went.

We found a new park called Moulton Falls Park in Washington. It was less of what I think of as a hike and more of a flat walk through the woods. That works, though. It was a nice outing.

My grays are very sparkly in this picture. I’m not sure why.

We Visit the A, B, Sea

For our date tonight, we searched out Mike Bennett’s A, B, Sea display, which I read about in the Oregonian. Each day, Bennett puts out another letter in his themed alphabet in his front yard. We were there on the nineteenth day, so could see A through S.

Matt writes postcards to his niece and nephew.

We both posed for this top-notch head-in-the-hole display.

Matt poses next to his initials: jellyfish and manta ray.

I especially liked this elephant seal.

I posed next to my initials: pelican and clownfish. Also, when we visited, there were no other people present. I think maybe families come earlier in the day.

Though no seashells were available when we stopped by, you can see that others have decorated and returned these seashells and they were added to the display.

There were postcards and stickers to take home.

It was a fun find! Thanks, Mike Bennett. After the entire alphabet appears, this will go to live at the Rogue Brewing in Newport.

Celebrating Nineteen Years

Well. It’s our second pandemic anniversary celebration (who woulda thunk?) and so we ordered food to go yet again. From this menu we chose pork schnitzel, sugar snap peas with almond dip, asparagus panzanella, and hand rolled couscous.

I have no pictures of the food, but it was delicious and I hope to eat at this restaurant when we can eat at the restaurant.

And here we are at 19 years.

We also ordered desserts from St. Honré Bakery. They were much smaller than I imagined. They were also delicious.

We Explore Whitaker Ponds Nature Park

I’ve driven by this park several times when I take an alternate route to the airport and today we decided to explore it.

You can see the beavers have been busy, and the humans have been busy thwarting the beavers.

Birds on the wing.

The pond!

This was another pond that was separate from the main pond.

The foundation of a house has been turned into a mural.

More pond.

Us and pond.

Celebrating the New Job

Matt and I celebrated my new job by picking up food from Urdaneta, which is a Spanish small plates restaurant on Alberta.

The food was delicious, and I would like to go back when they are seating people.

Matt also was a fan.

P.S. Behind him, you can see my old desk, waiting for a NextDoor buyer to come and pick it up. More on that in another post.

Matt’s Fun Date Choice: Lego

It was Matt’s week to choose the date and he came home with a Lego set for us to put together.

I do love the tidy order and step-by-step of a good Lego set.

Here is the finished product.

I also think it’s fun how the astronaut fits in the cockpit, and the satellite folds and fits into the space ship.

Once we were done, we dissembled the whole shebang, repackaged it, and I dropped it off in a Little Free Library so someone else could enjoy it.

Our New Year’s Eve Celebration

I went to Fred Meyer and grabbed ingredients for beer cheese fondue, fondue dipping things, and our favorite kind of ice cream. As a bonus, I stopped by a Redbox kiosk to see if the movie we were planning on watching, Tenet, was available. It was! This means we paid $1.80 for it, rather than the $19.99 we were planning on paying.

The result: beer cheese fondue was delicious and simple to make, Tenet was entertaining, and the ice cream was, as always a cornucopia of chocolate flavors and textures.