Dress-Up

Every Friday, the Boys & Girls Club of Ada County (Marcel's place of employment for the summer) has a themed dress-up day. Marcel is super excited about all of them. The only rule I've given him is that he can't buy anything for his costumes, because his job cannot be costing us money, it has to be earning us money!

As of now, there are have been 2 days. I don't have words for the photos, I think they say plenty enough on their own!

NERDS
(there may have been a more PC term!)


BLUE

The blue snuggie-turned-cape is hiding the fact that the shirt you see is a tank-top and he was wearing a blue shirt with sleeves underneath that

Oregon Coast Aquarium

For Labor Day weekend, my mom and stepdad always head to the Oregon Coast (last year it was a month late and came just a few days after our proposal so they were here to celebrate with us!) and luckily enough we were able to meet up with them.

We met them in Newport, a beach I had never been to since it is about 3 hours from Forest Grove, and went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. It was really cool and the main exhibit was "ODDWATER" so they had plenty of very strange animals there. We then went shopping at the Outlet Mall but only had time to make it through Old Navy before closing time, but I got the outlet discount plus my 25% employee discount, so it was nice saving 65%! Next we met up with my aunt and uncle in Pacific City (where we spent the weekend for my birthday last year) for dinner. Overall it was a great way to spend yet another one of my full days off. Seems since I posted that I never get them I've been getting more and more ;)



with the coolest bird we saw



in a tunnel that allowed fish to swim all around us


my vote for the oddest animal we saw
it was so human-like it was scary


He waited very patiently to play like the other kids


And if there is a silly picture of Marcel I guess it is only fair there is one of me too!

Hagg Lake

August 1st, we spent the day at the beach, because by some crazy miracle I wasn't scheduled at either job and we wondered when we'd have another chance to spend a whole day together. Just 17 days later I had another day off, not by a miracle, rather because I switched some shifts around to have a full day off. In just 24 more days, I don't have one day off, I have 2 whole days off! I did request them off but we have no plans but to be together and celebrate my 24th birthday :)

With our approaching move in December, we have decided to squeeze in as much Forest Grove as we can handle in the next 4 months. This started with a day at the local lake: Hagg Lake. I had been there once a year every year I was in college because Orientation had that as an activity, but until this visit I had never been in the water. It is very muddy at the beginning of wading in and was gross enough to make me not want to continue, but with Marcel's help we made it out to beautiful water and enjoyed about an hour just floating on his inflatable shark and catching up (we went a few days after he had spent a few days with his mom and brother). It was a great date and the start of great Forest Grove experiences!!

We only took pictures once we drove around the entire lake and found an awesome pier I'd never seen before...Marcel's handiwork, of course!

the pier

in love at the lake

Marcel's best artsy photo of the trip

My Day Off

Saturday, I had a day off from work--I wasn't scheduled to work at either job. I don't know the last time that happened except in the cases where I request time off for trips and vacations. Marcel and I decided to take advantage of an opportunity to spend a good amount of time together and headed to Cannon Beach, the same beach we spent our 2nd anniversary of dating, and one of my absolute favorites.

I was glad to have a bit cooler weather after the crazy heat wave we've had but I would have loved for it to be a bit warmer or at least a bit less windy.

The newlyweds enjoying a day at the beach


A picture of myself I didn't know was taken
it is on the blog because I think it is surprisingly good


My handsome husband proud of his wonderful hole digging skills
he has since decided we need to carry a bucket and shovel in our car at all times, because you never know when it may come in handy at the beach!


We had a great day together and are hoping that we don't make it to my birthday without another free day off!

PS: I have already requested my birthday off (even though it isn't until the end of September) to guarantee that I have the entire day off!

Heat Wave in Portland

Portland (and the entire Northwest) is experiencing a terrible heat wave this week. I thought we were going to be so lucky that it would occur while we were in Idaho, but no so luck.

We are back from vacation and roasting in our apartment with no air conditioning. Our fans can do nothing to overcome the heat. I'm going to spend my night at work trying to think of places me and Marcel can kill a few hours tonight so we don't experience a heat stroke--even last night at 11:00pm, it was still 85+ degrees.

Some things I'm not liking about the heat (besides the obvious no air conditioning)
**Even after being moved out from in front of the window, our candles are melting
**Instead of having to wait for the water to come out of the faucet warm, we have to wait for it to come out cold

We have decided that we will do all our laundry before the heat goes away because the sauna that our house has become will make for a perfect atmosphere to dry our clothes without having to run the dryer. Now if I could only stand to get some other housework done in the heat!

7-11

On Saturday, Marcel enjoyed a great day together, simply because we are a one car couple with two very busy schedules, seen below:

7:45am--drop Marcel off at The Rock, the church he plays at with friends

9:00am--MaryBeth at work after playing on the computer in the parking lot

12:30pm--MaryBeth off work and headed to pick up Marcel

4:00pm--drop Marcel off at Sonrise, to play video tech at our church

4:15pm--MaryBeth at Panera Bread, enjoying free wi-fi

6:00pm--MaryBeth back to Sonrise for service

I wish I could tell you that this doesn't happen that often, but it happens just about every weekend. The weekdays aren't as bad because Marcel has a mo-ped and can get to work on his own, but the weekends when we both need a car leaves us being very creative. Also, since Forest Grove (our home city) is far from where all above-mentioned activities where happening, we must also get creative on ways to kill hours at a time.

On this particular day, we vacuumed the lone car in our family and headed to Little Ceasers, because it was a food option in our budget (barely!!). We planned on taking our pizza to a park we've found in Hillsboro (for Hillsboro folks: it's hidden behind the new assisted living condo's by Jared near the Streets of Tanasbourne). We knew it was free slurpee day at 7-11 because they are Marcel's obsession, and were excited when we found one to go to. Little did we know, we'd find 3 just on the way to the park, and let me tell you that we did in fact stop at all of them. We did enjoy our pizza picnic and had fun playing in the water fountain (without getting wet!) and all the other normal playground toys.

On the way home from church, we stopped at two more 7-11's, only 1 of which still had the cups for the free slurpees. No worries, though, because the last one in our day told Marcel that if he had a cup from a different store he was more than welcome to fill it up one more time!

Here's the stack of cups we collected throughout our day:

Enjoying the first of our many treats that day

Relay for Life

Last night me and my roommate once again participated in Hillsboro, Oregon's Relay for Life with our church. We decided that we were pretty much the youngest participants so we signed up for 11:30pm-2am (luckily with a little break in between). We were very excited to be walking for such a great cause! However, once we started walking we realized that we were still the youngest people there (mostly) but we were dragging our feet the most, figuratively. We hustled our butt around the track and we walked almost 8 miles, but there were people 3x our age and over who were still full of energy when we were finally done and getting ready to head home. We're both a summer away from being 23 and this event made us feel not as young as people keep reminding us we are :)

Even though the event is over, it is not too late to support me in my walking for cancer. You can follow the link below to find "my" page from Relay for Life to donate. Remember, everything goes to a great cause and your help "supports the American Cancer Society in its lifesaving mission to eliminate cancer as a major health issue" (taken from RFL website).
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TRC/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeGreatWestDivision?pg=peditor&fr_id=5757&px=3728696

Finally, it seems like Summer

Forest Grove has finally had a few days of nice weather and we're all hoping it will last for awhile. I was able to enjoy the weather on an amazing picnic with Marcel at the city park with the best swings, my only reason for going to parks in the first place!

Me and Marcel enjoying each other's company after a great lunch of sandwiches and chips.








We're still kids at heart enjoying swings :)











Now that it's nice, poor college students/graduates will do just about anything for some extra cash! By the way, this is not me :)