Long Time, No Blog

Hello everyone, a lot has happened in our lives since we last posted. First, as most of you already know, we are expecting a baby! Lynn Ann is due on May 16. We found out about the pregnancy on the move out to Portland on the morning of September 19 in a Super 8 in Columbus, Montana. It's amazing how that little bit of news changed so much in our lives. We went to a doctor a couple days after arriving for Lynn Ann's first prenatal appointment and have been having check-ups every 4 week ever since. At the 10 week check-up, on October 20th, we were supposed to be able to hear the baby's heartbeat but the doctor was not able to find it so, as a precaution, we were sent over to have an ultrasound to make sure everything was OK with the baby. Everything was great, we were able to see the baby and its little heartbeat! Our next ultrasound is scheduled for mid-December, so we should know the gender of our little blessing before we go back to Wisconsin for the holidays. We can't wait to see our baby again and this time we should be able to see all of its little organs.

Lynn Ann has been doing quite well with the pregnancy. She is 16 weeks pregnant today! She has actually avoided having morning sickness, but has been very fatigued. She got both the regular and H1N1 flu vaccines, if any of you are concerned about that. She has found some friends in the Walk'n Mamas group of Beaverton that she found on Meetup.com. She has gotten many wonderful recommendations and even a few second hand baby items from the women. It has also been a nice way to discover parks with trails, as there are dozens in the area. As the weather has gotten cooler, they are switching more to mall walking. Lynn Ann is also spending a lot of time researching pregnancy and babies, but still finds time to read for pleasure.

Derrick has been busy with grad school. He has had a couple of meetings about a potential hydrogeology thesis project in Central Oregon that he is interested in. It involves nitrate contamination in a basalt aquifer and would require some isotope chemistry and physical characterization of the aquifer. More will be known about that in the next couple weeks. His classes have been going pretty well, with two projects in both of them that will keep him busy over these last two weeks.

As the weather has turned from mostly sunny in late September and early October to mostly rainy, we haven't been out to see as many sites since our last post. We did, however, get a chance to go whale watching at Depoe Bay, OR. It was a great time; we were able to see a gray whale and many sea lions. We went with Whale Watching EcoExcursions and our tour guide was a PhD marine biologist who did her dissertation work on the site. It actually was very late in the season to go whale watching and the first place we tried to go was closed and the second place said they weren't going out anymore, but they told me about this woman who takes small groups out on her Zodiac boat and that's how we found our guide.

We also were very fortunate to have our friend Janna come out to visit us last week! It was wonderful having her and we were able to show off some of the pretty sites in the area: Multnomah Falls, Mount St. Helens area (mountain was not visible), the Oregon coast. We hope to have more guests soon!

We just bought our plane tickets and will be coming back to Wisconsin on December 23rd and will be there until January 3rd. We look forward to seeing many of you Wisconsinites while we are back.

We hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and that this blog post fines you well.

Finally, here is a video of sea lions in the Pacific Ocean while we were on the whale watching tour:

Sightseeing in Oregon and our activities

Over the last three weeks we have done a lot of sightseeing around the Portland area. Two weeks ago,
we drove 30 miles east of Portland to go to Multnomah Falls, a series of two waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge that totals 620 feet tall. We hiked to the top of the falls (lots of switchbacks) and were able to look down the height of it.

The next day we went to Washington Park in central Portland and walked around the International Rose Test Garden, home to around 10,000 rose plants of all different shades of color. The area also has a nice view of downtown

Portland and Mount Hood.

Later that week, we drove to the Oregon coast, starting in the city of Seaside where Lewis and Clark finished their journey west. In Seaside we walked out to see our first view of the Pacific Ocean in quite a few years. We then drove

south along highway 101 along the coast, stopping at several places to see the beautiful sights. The shore is dotted with tall rock outcrops sticking out of the beach and ocean, which are a result of volcanic intrusions that are more resistant than the surrounding area.

A week ago, we took a drive up to the south side of Mount Saint Helens. We didn't have a particular place to go, but we did see a lot of pretty scenery.

This weekend, we drove to the western flank of Mount Hood in a similar fashion to the way we saw Mount Saint Helens where we saw the scenery. We also have gone hiking within the city limits of Portland. We went to Tryon Creek State Park where we hiked around a dense forest area that was very green and did not feel like we were only about five minutes from downtown.

Since we have moved here, Derrick has been busy with school and being a TA at Portland State. He is teaching a lab section for physical geology and taking Environmental Geology and Sensors & Instrumentation. He has been taking the bus downtown to school and has found that to be a very nice means of transport here.

Lynn Ann has been looking for a job and has an interview coming up this week. She has also been enjoying reading romance novels now that she doesn't have class work to keep up with. Since we hadn't visited the library she has been re-reading books that she already read, but just yesterday we joined the Beaverton library and came home with a whole slew of new-to-Lynn Ann romance novels (and some non-romance novels too).

Tulip has been spending most of her days entertaining Lynn Ann with how adorable she is and especially loves playing with her new banana catnip toy that we bought earlier this week.

We also found out that to get an Oregon driver's license, we have to take a driver knowledge test, so we have to study up, yuck! We haven't gotten around to many local restaurants yet, but we did find a place called The Whole Bowl that only serves one dish, a bowl filled with brown rice, red and black beans, avocado, salsa, black olives, cheese, sour cream, cilantro, and their secret Tali sauce...which is delicious.

First Blog Post!

Welcome to our new blog. We just moved to Portland, OR, arrived on Sunday. We want to start this blog to share our lives with family and friends who are so far away, we miss you all very much. We are new to blogging and are unsure how we will update the blog, but we are excited to start.

The trip to Portland in the U-Haul was rough, to say the least. Tulip's cat carrier was in the passenger seat and half of the middle seat, so Lynn Ann had to ride in the other half of the middle seat and on half of the drink holders, probably the most tiring spot. We left Oshkosh a little after 10 am on the 17th and made it to Fargo, ND, about 520 miles. The next day we drove about 640 miles to Columbus, Montana and after that we had a beautiful but slower drive through the Rocky Mountains and made it to Pasco, WA. We wound up getting into Portland in the early afternoon on the 20th and had everything moved into the apartment by dark. We are happy to be settled, if not yet unpacked.

Derrick started his TA training on Monday morning and it is going well. So far he is having to do a lot of cleaning for the upcoming Geologic Society of America conference. Classes start for Derrick this coming Monday, 9/28.

Lynn Ann and Tulip have been hanging out in our new apartment. Lynn Ann has been searching for a job and doing some unpacking. Tulip has, of course, been being cute, napping, sunning herself, and adjusting well to her new home.

We hope that you enjoy our blog. Please become a follower and check back often.