What We've Been Up To

Can you believe Simone flew all the way in from Denmark to be one of my bridesmaids?!  We had tons of fun hanging out while she was in town.  We made sure to take her shooting because she's never held a gun - they're illegal in Denmark!

Kylie and I love having birthdays right next to each other.  To celebrate, we decided to go camping!  We didn't think about it being Friday though, and after driving around for a really long time, it became evident that there were no empty campsites to be found.  Oh, except for the free one in my parents backyard!  Good bathrooms and breakfast too!

The next day we got a picnic of Costa Vida and went to a park to play.  It was fun, even though all of the little kids were a little creeped out by us when they came across our hide-and-go-seek spots.

Bailey has been having just as much fun at work these past few weeks of May as the kids he cleans up after!  He got to participate in a little trading fair the 3rd graders had, and brought me home some goo that he bought.  We've had way too much fun playing with it!

I love puppies!  We went to our friend Mike's graduation party, and after he let me hold his snuggly little puppies and I was in heaven.

As cute as puppies are, my cousins are cuter and JEN HAD HER BABY!  Right after the last day of school too, that lucky teacher.  This is sweet little baby Ayla, and I think she's about the cutest baby I've ever seen.

Alli and her family invited us up to their cabin to eat dinner and hang out.  American Fork canyon is so beautiful!  We loved playing on the gigantic swings and going on a nice walk.

We're Home (What Now?)

Today we got home from our honeymoon road trip!  It was so much fun!  It is strange to be back though.  Driving through our old hometown to pick up my car was strangely unfamiliar in some way.  I've been away from home longer than a week before, but because my life has changed so much now, it didn't seem like home at all!  That's kind of sad to me, but at the same time I'm pretty cool with the idea of moving on.

These past few months have been all focused around getting through the semester and then getting through the wedding without any problems.  The wedding went off without a hitch, the honeymoon was perfect and.... well, what do we do now?  Haha, I had kind of forgotten that life continues after the hubbub is over!

So we moved in with Seiji and Kylie, who are kindly letting us stay for free.  We are so grateful for them, because otherwise we'd have to move into a place and pay for the place, only to move out again in February when we leave for China.  It's super convenient this way, and also we absolutely love hanging out with Seiji and Kylie and are looking forward to being their "roommates!"

Bailey and I will both go back to work tomorrow.  Bailey is the head sweeper at an elementary school, and he also is working hard building a business with his dad and his brother.  I still work for my mom's cousin Julie, who is an amazing single mom with 4 sweet kids who I nanny when I'm not helping Julie with her business or other errands.  Bailey and I are both so blessed to have jobs that we enjoy!

We are taking the summer off school, but in the fall we will continue earning our art education degrees.  Once again, all of my classes will be art classes, which will be super fun but very time consuming.  I'm excited about my Ceramics 2 class, which I'm hoping will help me decide whether or not ceramics is really what I want to emphasize in.  Bailey is still trying to decide what his emphasis is, but that is okay because he is still working mostly on generals.  Though he will be taking an art 2D class this fall, which is specific to the art program!

As I mentioned, in February Bailey and I will be moving to China for a few months to teach English.  We will be stationed in Changzhou, teaching from about 9-12 on weekdays.  The rest of the time, as well as a few weeks of vacation time, will be ours to explore the beautiful country!  We are so excited about the opportunity we have to teach and travel together.  Though it is stressful to take a semester off of school and work, we figure that now is a better time than any - especially because there's no kids in the picture yet!

We will get back to Utah next summer and continue with school.  Things are pretty tentative from there out.  We've considered doing a teaching program in Ukraine the summer after China, but that's definitely still up in the air.  Once Bailey finishes his art history classes, we'd love to pay a visit to our sweet Danish friend Simone and then travel across Europe.  Kids are definitely on the list somewhere, but we aren't feeling rushed.  We feel like we will know when the time is right to expand our little family.

As for long term, we don't really know where we will be!  We will both have our art education degrees, so we may just be art teachers somewhere, which sounds like a perfectly happy life.  Or, if we really put our minds to our dreams, we will live in a unique house that we built ourselves on a nice chunk of land, with my own little pottery studio in the backyard.  Bailey will be a member of congress and I'll stay at home making pots and playing with our cute little kids.

But as for now, living the poor married student life, we are pretty happy!  Being married is an amazing adventure already, and my favorite part about it is waking up to my cute husband's face every morning.  I'm so extremely grateful to be promised an eternity with him, and we are so excited to build our future together!

Since I hate posts without a single picture, here is one from the last day of our honeymoon, which we spent in (after driving to) Idaho.  Again, we went to Fork Restaurant because we dreamed the whole trip about their amazing food, and again we visited the state capitol.  Bailey has a serious thing for politics, so we got him a future campaign picture.

Though he may just be being silly in this picture, he has serious political plans starting with running for city council next year.  And perhaps someday making me the first Asian American First Lady, which I'm pretty sure I would rock at.

A Day on Cannon Beach

We got up early this morning to go find a church building where we were able to attend sacrament meeting.  There were so many cute kids there, it was kind of distracting!  Afterwards, we headed west for a several hour drive to Cannon Beach.  Eventually we reached the cute little coastal town, and parked to walk along the shore.

Oh my goodness, it was so beautiful!  While tropical beaches are so nice and sunny, when it comes to prettiness I prefer the overcast beaches of the Oregon Coast.  I've never been to this particular beach, but I was amazed by it!  It was a little bit cold outside, but not too bad at all.  Perfect Oregon beach weather, if you ask me.

We walked over by haystack rock and found a place to sit and admire the view.  Inspired by the gardens we visited the other day, Bailey built a sand garden while we sat!

After a little while we decided to find some seafood for lunch.  We drove about 15 minutes to find a place we found online, where we got deep fried razor clams and halibut.  Holy cow, it was delicious!  Though kind of a shabby place, it was probably our favorite meal in Oregon.  I forget how much better fresh fish is than the fish we find in Utah!

On our way back to the coast, we came across a little beach mall type thing.  They had all sorts of cute and interesting little shops where you could buy anything from unique yarn to ancient coins!  My favorite shop was definitely the candy shop, where we bought blue soda and marionberry fudge.

We decided that, since we were at the beach, we may as well build a sand castle.  So we hit a small convenience store on the coast where we bought a bucket and a shovel.  After leaving, we were walking back to the beach when we decided that we needed more sand toys.  I mean, why not be prepared to create the most amazing sand castle on the coast?!  So we bought all the sand supplies the store had, and the owner lady just laughed at us.

What we were really doing was killing time before the tide went out, because we really wanted to find some quality tide pools.  We still had several hours, so we took all that time to create this work of art:

Actually, Bailey did most all of it.  I mostly watched while snuggled up in all the towels.

We were pretty proud of the sand castle, and several people stopped to look at it, some grandparents even took pictures for their 10 year old granddaughter.  It was a shame when we had to leave it's side, because we knew that it would be a temptation for many children to destroy it.  But, that's how it goes with this type of art!

Right on the beach was a restaurant that we decided was a good place for dinner.  The wall facing the beach inside the restaurant was all glass, so we had the most amazing view of the beach while we ate.  We started off with some delicious clam chowder, and then ordered some seafood which we thought looked delicious.

It was definitely not the best seafood we've had - we didn't know about the tomato sauce it was soaking in.  But it was fun to eat!

Finally the moment we had been waiting for was here!  Bailey was so excited to find some tide pools, because he'd never seen any.  So we took off and ran up and down the beach, looking on every rock for sea life.

I could hardly keep up with Bailey!  Worried that I'd be cold, he wrapped me up in a blanket from his mom's car.  I was definitely warm, but moving was a bit hard!

Unfortunately.... we did not see a single living thing.  Bailey was so sad, and I was too!  We didn't give up, and kept on looking.  Even after Bailey got stuck on several rocks as the water came out.

Eventually some locals took pity on us and kindly explained that it was too early in the year and too late in the day to find anything.  Which is really too bad!  We had waited all day to see the tide pools, but we had so much fun waiting that it didn't really matter.  It was the perfect last day in Oregon!

Markets, Mansions, and Missing the Temple

We woke up as the sun came up this morning.  How could anyone sleep through this beautiful sunrise?  Like really.  It was burning our eyes out.

We hung around and enjoyed the treehouse for a little while before we headed back out.

This sitting room was part of our rental.  Bailey liked to sit in that chair and pretend to be a villain!

We went straight to the Saturday Market!  It was gigantic!  We ate pupusas and pork buns for breakfast (oh food trucks) and spent many hours seeing all the strange things there were to see.  Lots of soap and handcrafted knives!  I especially liked the ceramics booths, and seeing the iconic Portland sign.

It got kind of hot outside, so we bought some delicious looking fruit which we thought would be nice and refreshing... but for some reason it just wasn't.

We decided to walk to Voodoo doughnuts which wasn't too far away, because that is apparently one hoppin' place.  We found it, as well as the line that stretched down the sidewalk, and promptly walked away.  Neither of us like doughnuts anyway.  But we do like this sign.

Once again we were ready for a less chaotic adventure, so we went up the hill to Pittock Mansion!  It's a historical site, an old mansion built in 1909 or something.

It was really cool to see - I love historical stuff, but I did have a bit of a problem with the way it was decorated.  Instead of doing it 100% period appropriate, different people had put together each room however they wanted to, and in any style they wanted.  Nothing was super out of place or anything, and it was all absolutely beautiful, but I just prefer when historical houses are kept true to their time.

We were really pleased with the free parking there, and decided to enjoy it for just a little bit longer.  Luckily our hiking clothes were in the car and there was a trail nearby, so we embarked on an impromptu hike!

I think it ended up that we were in Forest Park, but we weren't really sure.  What we were sure of is that it was beautiful!  It is amazing how different Oregon and Utah forests are.  Both are insanely gorgeous, and it was fun hike around in an environment that we weren't as familiar with!

After our hike we checked into our final Portland Airbnb, to stay for two nights.  We didn't get a single picture of the place, which is kind of sad because it was our favorite!  We had a whole little building to ourselves, which was a loft.  Kitchen, laundry room, and living room downstairs with a bed, closet, and bathroom upstairs.  We could seriously live in a place like that, it was perfect for just two people!  We'd also really love to build something like that to host guests of our own.  See the listing here if you're curious.

After checking in we made the drive to the Portland temple which wasn't even in Portland.  We were so excited to do some of my family sealings!  But... when we got there, we were informed at the door that the power had been out for 2 hours, so they closed for the day.  We were so bummed!  But we didn't let it get us down, and spent some time walking around the beautiful grounds.

Soon enough, after some subpar American food for dinner (we aren't as impressed by the food scene here as we thought we'd be), we drove back to our little loft!

Great Hosts, Gardens, and Grumpy Animals

The farmhouse just kept getting better!  When we woke up, the hosts came to our door with the most delicious breakfast of farm fresh eggs on English muffins.  We feasted on the porch with some of our animal friends!

Soon enough it was time so say goodbye to the farmhouse and start adventuring!

The thing that I most wanted to see in Oregon was the Japanese Garden.  So that's where we went!  After finding a parking spot and paying way more than we needed to to park, we walked up a trail that took us to the entrance of the garden.

We entered the gardens and were just amazed by how beautiful they were!  They were so peaceful, oftentimes we just sat down and relaxed on of of the benches.

It was pretty big, so we spent plenty of time there.  We took lots of inspiration pictures for our future garden, which we plan to be amazing.

One interesting thing that we noticed was that the workers were using traditional Japanese yard tools, or whatever you would call them.  I'm pretty sure a modern rake would have been more effective, but it was definitely cool to see the occasional worker!

Before we left we were sure to hit the gift store because gift stores are my favorite.  While there, we couldn't resist buying a bonsai growing kit!  It said right on the box that it was something we could enjoy for a lifetime and hand down for generations - how could anyone resist?!

When we were done at the Japanese gardens we were dismayed to discover that we had paid for about two more hours on our parking than we needed to.  Not about to waste the parking time, we decided to walk around a little more and see what was in the area.  I'm super glad we did, because not too far away were the rose gardens as well as a bunch of trails!

The rose gardens were so amazing - I didn't know that there were so many different kinds of roses!  Apparently I forgot to take a picture, but we did enjoy our time there, smelling the roses and trying to figure out what the bump on Bailey's finger was (it was gone by the end of the day, so we still don't know what it was).  I did get this picture of us with a leaf, so maybe that counts for something.

By then we felt okay about losing our parking spot, and headed to town to find some food.  There was a really good ramen place that I found online that I wanted to hit, so we parked and walked exactly where Siri told us to.... and couldn't find it.  We spent a lot of time looking, but eventually had to settle on food truck food.  We were so hungry, it was pretty good.  But now I can easily say that Utah food trucks are definitely better.

After we ate we walked over to Powell's Books because that's where one of my classmates had told me to visit.  On our way there, we found the ramen noodle place...

But anyway, the bookstore was HUGE!  In fact, it was pretty overwhelming!  I guess it's like the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world.  At bookstores I can usually spend a good amount of time going up and down every aisle, but there was no way we could go through this bookstore in a single day.  So we hit a few aisles, bought a shirt, and called it fabulous.

Being in the heart of the city for even that long was a bit stressful for us, so we decided to spend a relaxing evening at the zoo.  I didn't know this, but apparently Bailey has a thing for zoos!  So it was a bit disappointing when we went to the zoo... and there were no animals to be found.

We seriously spend the first 20 minutes wondering where the animals were!  We had all sorts of theories, our best one being that hippie Portland (hippies make up 98.7% of Portland's population) was taking a stand and making a point that animals shouldn't be kept in captivity or something, and that all of the proceeds were going to animal rescue funds (or "medical" marijuana, that's also very likely).  We thought it was a pretty good theory, but luckily we were proven wrong when we left the "forest" section of the park.

Let's see, we saw elephants, mountain lions, gazelles, giraffes, tigers, otters and more.  They actually had a pretty good supply!  It may have just been the time of the day or something, but all of their animals seemed at least a little bit grumpy.  Like this turtle who was not about to make any friends.

Eventually we had to leave all of our cute grumpy friends, and went to check into our new place!  We had booked, through Airbnb again, a treehouse.  I'll post pictures of our view tomorrow, but you can see the listing here to get a taste of the amazing place.  We were surprised by how mid-century it was, but we thought it was super cool!  The only weird thing was that the host lived in the upstairs of the place, so it wasn't as separated and private as the places we were used to.  But he was a super nice guy, and we enjoyed our stay!  Plus we were pretty close to the city, so it was easy to travel there for a nice dinner of hand crafted pasta.  Which was delicious!

The rest of the evening was spent laughing over the show Portlandia (it's very accurate) and enjoying the beautiful view of Portland from the glass wall of the treehouse.  I love night time city lights!