Rose City Romance Reader's Luncheon

I attended the yearly Romance Reader's Luncheon held at the Governor's Hotel in downtown Portland this year. The luncheon was catered by Jake's, which is a very nice seafood restaurtant. There were ~200 people there, so it was set up in one of the larger conference rooms. The guest speaker was Suzanne Macpherson and there were at least 30 other authors there. It was really fun!! The author at my table was Ann Roth (for real!!) and I got to sit right next to her and talk to her the whole time. She was the nicest lady and I so enjoyed our chat. Love her books, so it was a real honor for me. I got an autographed book from her and also autographed books from Stephanie Rowe and Christina Dodd - two other authors that I like that were in attendance.
This convention is a fund raiser, so they raffle off tickets for door prizes and gift baskets. I won the first door prize!!! It was a gift bag that had six new books, along with book marks, lip gloss and chocolates. They also give you a goodie bag when you walk in that had another 5 books in it. Very fun!
The last time I attended the luncheon, I won a door prize and a gift basket - made a killing!
The cool thing is this luncheon raised over $2,000 for Oregon Literacy.
Can't wait for next year!!

Victoria Canada

My friend Karen and I took a trip up to Victoria Canada to celebrate her birthday. It started off with me driving up to Seattle Friday afternoon. Judene and I met up at the Lynnwood Mall and got caught in a snow storm. Long story but the snow only hit that one area - 10 miles away it was totally dry. Crazy!! Judene and I did some shopping, then we walked across the street in the blizzard, both of us were covered in snow, to MacGrath's and had a nice WARM dinner. After dinner, we headed back out into the snow storm and walked to the movie theatre and saw the Al Paccino movie - "88 Minutes". It was good. We really had a nice time!! I drove over to Karen's after the movie.

Saturday morning - Karen and I caught the 7:30 am high speed catamaran, The Victoria Clipper, out of Seattle up to Victoria. It was really cool...only took just over 2 hours to cover 180 miles. First thing on the agenda was to check into our hotel called Hotel Grand Pacific. We were on the 8th floor and had an amazing view of the harbor. One of the tour guides said it was their only 5 star hotel on the island. It was really nice. Once we checked in we set out to do our sight seeing and shopping. Weather was cold but clear, both of us were bundled up pretty good. Victoria is a beautiful place - the Legislator, the Empress Hotel - so much to see. We had lunch at a pub on the water front - the fish and chips were great. We walked around until amost 8 pm and called it a night.

Sunday - we took the tour bus to the Buchart Gardens. It was breath taking!! I have never seen anything like it and not all of the flowers had bloomed. I cannot even imagine what it looks like in full bloom. We walked around for a couple of hours and then took the tour bus back to town and grabbed some lunch. Then it was off to do some more shopping before we caught the Clipper back to Seattle at 5 pm. What a great trip!!! Would highly recommend visiting Victoria if you have not been there before.

Esplin's Springbreak in Portland

Wade and his family drove to Portland on Friday March 21st and stayed with Murphy and I in our condo. We ordered pizza when the arrived friday night and had wall to wall sleeping bags, but we fit everyone in!!!
Saturday morning we got up early and headed to the Portland Zoo, which is amazing and took the entire day to walk through. Uncle Scott met up with us at the Petting zoo. It was a gorgeous day - first sunny day after months of rain and we had a blast!!!! We took a break from the sight seeing to go out to the car and eat a picnic lunch we had packed. It was also a chance to warm up a bit, even with the sun it was just over 60 degrees out.
After a day at the zoo, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather (good chance of rain the next day) and we went downtown to the Saturday market. Lots of fun stuff and crazy people to look at. We all got Elephant Ears and jumped back on the train to go back to the car. Very fun day but boy were we worn out from a very full day!!
Easter Sunday - we all slept in a bit and were glad we fit in the Saturday market the day before because it was a gloomy rainy day. We packed up everybody in the Suburban and drove around to do some sight seeing from the car and avoid being out in the rain. Then we stopped at the Washington Square mall and Sears was open - all the other stores were closed because it was Easter. Sear's was having a crazy sale and everyone got some great deals on new clothes - super cheap and you gotta love not paying sales tax!! After our shopping trip, we headed back to my place to start cooking Easter dinner. I cooked a ham and we had scalloped potatoes, salads and yellow cake with strawberries for dessert. Not half bad if I do say so myself...:) Scott came over for dinner and we all watched a couple movies on HBO.
Monday - Everybody (except me, I had to work) packed up and headed out to have lunch with Scott at the Rose Quarter. They got to go down on the gym floor where the Blazer's play - think that was a pretty amazing visit!
Next stop for Wade and Family was the Oregon Coast and then up to Seattle to visit with Grandpa and Grandma.

Trip to Boise

Jenny is going to kill me if I don't post something on my blog site. So here is my first entry in her honor.

My best pal John and I flew into Boise for President's Day wknd - Monday was our floating holiday this year, so we had a long wknd. We met up with Wade and Jenny at the hockey stadium friday night and watched the Steelheads get beat by one point in overtime. Great game other than the loss and we had a good time. Afterwards John and I hit a couple hot spots - had to show him a bit of the home town.

Saturday - John drove to Sun Valley for the wknd and I got to hang out with my family. It all started with Joy bursting into Lyta's house at 9 am telling me to get up so we could go to Macy's. I was sleeping on the couch, so there was no avoiding her...:) Lyta told me later that Joy was just dieing to get a look at John before he left for Sun Valley - even though I have told them over and over that he is like my brother. Once again for anyone who is hoping - we're just friends...
Cousin Mike called to tell us Kelly and Don were in town and they all wanted to go to lunch. So, Lyta, Joy, Kelly, Don and 3 of his kids, Mike, his wife and one of their daughters, Wade and his family and myself all went to the Chuck a Rama for buffet lunch. It was fabulous!! Took two large tables to hold us all but it was a blast to see everybody. Can't remember the last time I saw Kelly and Don.
After lunch, Lyta and I went to watch Wade and Jenny's soccer game. They won (of course) and then headed to their house for dinner. Jenny made some awesome pizzas with the dough from her bread maker and we pigged out. Terrific pizza! Then I got to play Wii for the first time with Madison and Mikayla. We had a lot of fun, even though Mikayla won every time. Lyta really liked the bowling game and she got pretty good at it!! Did I mention how cute all the kids are??? Can't believe how much they have all changed since I saw them last. Preston and Brendon built a pretty cool fort in the family room, equipped with Preston's dinasour collection.

Sunday - Joy, Jim, Lyta, the two dogs and myself all piled into Joy and Jim's van and headed to Nyssa to visit with Jerry and Cleo. Joy almost killed us trying to pass somebody and of course I was in the front seat! But that is another story. We had a really nice visit with everyone - sure felt good to give everybody a hug. Cleo was in good spirits and seemed to enjoy the company.
Afterwards we piled back in the party bus and headed back to Joy and Jim's for dinner. (Sure was nice of everyone to feed me whenever I stopped by.) Jim had put a pork pot roast in the oven before we left and it was delicious!! Not sure about the organic beer he gave me though...never seen one of those before.

Monday - Lyta, Joy and I went to Mikayla's soccer game. She is quite the little soccer player - scored two of the four goals to win the game. We got to meet her Dad, who seemed like a really nice guy. Then we headed over to Jenny and Wade's for lunch. Once again, so nice of them to feed me...:) Then we took all the kids to see the Spiderwick chronicles. Brendon was my little buddy and didn't let me too far from his reach most of the wknd. He sat in my lap during the movie and kept pointing out all "the monsters"...sure the man in front of us appreciated it. It was pretty cute. He also decided he was going with me to Portland. Think he kinda liked the idea of being an only child living with aunt michelle. Who could blame him? :)
John got back in town around 5 pm and we headed to the airport.