a great visit...the Office...and Phoenix bound

It is so great to have visitors, especially when those visitors are family. We had so much fun travelling all over Oregon with Christine's mom and dad (and my new in-laws!). For Christine and I it was great to head back to Crater Lake and the Coast for the second and third times respectively. You notice something different about a place each new time you head back.

But more than anything else, it was just nice to have a big piece of home here with us for a few days.

People who know me very well know that I have a moderate-to-large sized obsession with the television show "The Office" (Christine loves it too). We had been counting down the days for four months until the new season started...and the countdown ended Thursday night. To mark the occasion I put on my "Office" tshirt, we drank from our "Office" mugs, and ate some of the Canadian treats that my in-laws brought for us. You really don't realize how much you miss ketchup chips and Mars bars until you can't get them anymore! It was a perfect night of laughing and munching....and I think there is enough chips leftover for the next episode too!

So, I know some of you are wondering what is next for us....well, Phoenix Arizona it is! It's hard to believe that time is moving this quickly. As sad as it is to leave the west coast, which we have loved so much, we are very excited to head south for the next part of our adventure. One of my best friends from childhood (Stacey) lives in Phoenix with her husband and little girl so we are so excited to be able to spend some time with them...as well as Stacey's mom and dad who will be in Scottsdale for the winter. Christine will be working in an NICU level II nursery in Phoenix Baptist Hospital. I could attempt to write about the hospital and the things that make this a great fit for Christine, but I have been after her to write a blog entry here and I know she wants to....so I will leave that up to her. For now we are trying our best to really enjoy our last little bit here. It hasn't sunk in that we will soon be packing up all of our stuff (again) and heading on a road trip to Arizona...leaving our very first home behind us. However, we knew heading out on this adventure that you can't stay and go at the same time. For us, it's time to go. Our move-in date for Phoenix is Oct 10th which means we will be leaving Oregon on the 7th or 8th. Christine's first day of work is the 15th. We hope to get home for a quick visit after our placement in Phoenix... but it's too early to figure out those details as of yet.
We want to say a big thank you for coming here and reading our blog. We have friends with blogs that we check often to see what is new...so we know what it is like to go to a page and not see any updates for days and weeks. I want to say thanks for sticking with us...if you are reading this it means that you didn't give up checking for updates from us. It means a lot to have you interested in what we are doing, humbling in a way, and ultimately we are so thankful. stay classy til next time.

Ducks Football...

Well, time continues to pass at a rapid pace. We are still loving it here on the west coast as the weather becomes cooler...it's nice to feel a bit of fall in the air. We have been pretty low-key lately but we have had a couple of events worth noting here on the blog. Friday saw Christine turn 27. It definitely felt a bit strange without our families and friends around, but we did the best we could with just the two of us. I managed to find a little cake for two and we had a nice dinner out at PF Changs here in Eugene...a very cool restaurant. We experienced one of our biggest highlights of our travels so far on Saturday. We got our University of Oregon Ducks gear on and headed to Autzen Stadium for a game against Fresno State University. No amount of describing will do this experience justice. Our little city here (about 150,000 in population) becomes completely enthralled with the Ducks, and nothing but the Ducks, for an entire weekend. After running around a bit in the morning we headed to the Stadium about 3 hours before game time. Even though we live about 5 mins from the stadium we knew that there would be no hope of driving right to the game. The sheer amount of cars coming into the city is enough to shut everything down for the day. So the city sets up shuttles (called the Duck Express) that pick you up at various spots around the city and then take you to the game. We parked at the mall by our house and then crammed ourselves onto a bus filled with people covered from head to toe in green and yellow. Riding the Duck Express was a cool event in itself....but nothing compared to what was to come. As you get closer to the stadium you see more and more parking lots filled with RV's and campers and people having bbq's....tailgating as far as the eye can see. Without a doubt, Duck Football is the biggest thing in Eugene and every other weekend the city shuts down and people come together as one massive community to cheer on the team that they have cheered on for as long as they can remember. I have been to hundreds of professional and amateur sporting events in my life so far...and I can say that nothing can even come close to the atmosphere that is created at Autzen Stadium. It is pure mayhem from kickoff to final buzzer. We were fortunate to get tickets as Ducks games have been consecutively sold out dating back to 1999. The attendance at our game was about 60,000 and there wasn't a spare seat in the house. The game was also a fun one to watch with lots of scoring and the home team coming out on the winning end of a lopsided game. 52-21 Ducks. The atmosphere was contagious and we could finally begin to understand why people are addicted to Ducks football...if we lived here permanently I know that we would be at every game. We got the camera into the stadium...so we hope you like the pics (click on the stadium panaroma picture...it's cool). That's all for now. Stay Classy....Go Ducks!

finally a moment to write...

It is really hard to update the blog when we are travelling all over the place for days on end. Finally I have a minute to sit down and type something.

Christine's brother Rich has come and gone...he was here for almost a week and it was so awesome to have him stay with us and travel around to see so many cool things in such a short amount of time. Besides touring around Eugene and showing him the local sites, we also made it into to southern Oregon to check out the deepest lake in the US called Crater Lake. Over 7000 thousand years ago there was a huge mountain/volcano that collapsed in on itself leaving a hole about 1200 feet deep. Over the years the hole filled with precipitation to create a lake...it really is unreal to see. You can drive around the entire outside of the lake (we didn't) and it's over 30 miles so it takes a while. Instead of driving around the outside, we parked the element and hiked up one of the peaks of the outer rim of the lake to get some better views. It was worth it... amazing to be up so high and see over the entire thing. The water is an amazing blue/dark purple colour and seems like glass at times. There is also an island called "Wizard Island" that sticks out of the lake and has some cool water colours around it as well. To give you some sort of reference point as to elevation, the rim around the lake ranges between 7000 and 8000 ft elevation. We had a hard time fitting the lake into pictures...so instead we set up Rich's camera on a tripod and snapped a bunch a pics of the lake and then stitched them together using some software when we got home....the result is extremely cool and is below.

After a day of touring around Eugene we headed to Seaside and Cannon Beach on the coast. Christine and I never get sick of being at the coast so it was great to be there once again and share the experience with Rich this time. We stopped a lot along the way and on the way home to check out some waterfalls...

very cool.

We stayed in Portland that night and then woke up early Sunday morning and headed for the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington to see the Dave Matthews Band. We have had tickets for months and was just hoping so much that it would all work out that Christine would have the time off work and that Rich could be here. If you have never heard of the Gorge Amphitheatre I have to say that it is the most amazing concert venue on the planet. You have to drive into the middle of nowhere in the desert with nothing around you and all of a sudden you happen upon a massive campground and concert venue with a stage that hangs on the edge of a cliff overlooking 20 miles of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge.

It has always been a dream of mine to make it here one day to see Dave Matthews.

The experience was amazing but all very surreal. After the show we camped at the venue campground with about 10,000 of our newest friends. It was hard to fall asleep with all the crazy noise of other people...but we managed. We headed for Eugene the next morning...about a 7 hour drive.

AND before we knew it, Rich was headed back to Canada.
I just figured out that we travelled over 1400 miles (or 2241 km's) in the handful of days that Rich was here. We got pretty road weary by the end of it... but it was worth every mile to experience such amazing things. Christine and I aren't heading off for any road trips for the next little while...or if we do they won't be very long. Hopefully it won't be long until we update again. Thanks for reading...stay classy.