portland.seattle.

Ryan and I just got back from one of the most fantastic vacations. We spent the last 7 days in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. We stayed in Portland for 5 days with Ryan's oldest brother Todd, his wife Cathy and our 2 nephews, Owen and Grant. While we were there, we celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary and Grant's First Birthday!

I have several blogs to post about all the fun we had so bear with me while I put them together. If I dare say it, the pacific northwest suits Ryan and I very well. If the wind blows us in that direction someday, we would not be upset!

Here are a few photos that sum up some of our trip:

A view of Mt. Hood on our way into the Portland Airport. Welcome to Oregon!

Multnomah Falls in Oregon.

The famous Pike Place Market in Seattle.

Stay tuned!

What you can't see....

Our house is pretty neat and clean most of the time. But, as I have revealed before I have a little problem with closets and hidden areas where I tend to stuff random items that have no home. Well, now that our closets are mostly tidied up, I tackled our desk. Here is the before photo:


This leaf that Coodie is laying on is usually closed so the mess behind it is hidden. Today, I went to stuff some more papers in there and realized I was out of room. Luckily, I had some time and decided to tackle this disaster once and for all.
So, what exactly is in this pile? Mostly bills or other types of mail correspondence. Crazy how it piled up so much since the majority of my bills are now paid online. So, most of this simply needed to be taken out of the envelope and shredded and a few items needed to be filed. So, Cood sat right there with me the whole time and we listened to Pandora Radio (Coldplay to be exact) and shred...(or is it shredded?) Fun, fun!


Here is the finished product. Coodie had left me since I tuckered him right out with all of the excitement! The bag to the left is all of the shredding.


So, that's it. I think I have tackled all of my hidden areas at home! Now, onto my office at work...

Bonsai!

In the first year Ryan and I were together, we bought 2 Bonsai cherry trees. These trees are really Ryan's and have been with us for about 7 years. They used to go to "Donna's summer camp" when Ryan's parents, Donna and Sandy, lived just 10 minutes away. They had a fantastic garden with all sorts of room for the trees to be watered and thrive in the sun. When we had a small apartment in downtown Manchester, this was a lifesaver for the trees. Donna and Sandy have since moved to Tennessee and luckily, we now have a little more room in our townhouse to keep them outside. However, in the winter we do bring them to Bonsai West in Littleton, MA to be repotted and cared for in the cold months.

So...we picked them up today and they look fantastic. I wish I had some "before, after" photos but that would take some digging and I just don't have time to dig today.


In the first photo, you can see Coodie in the door wondering what the heck we are doing outside and not playing with him....




It's great to have the trees back, the sun out and so much green around! Happy spring!

The Cat Show...Seriously!

OK, so we may be a little bit dorky...but we went to a cat show this weekend. I could say it was because we had our nephew Ethan with us, but in reality we knew we were going before we knew we were going to hang with the E-man.

Ryan and I love, love, love our cat Coodie (hence, the blog name). He is super sweet and 12 lbs. of orange fur and cuteness. He loves us just as much and we battle about exactly who he likes better, mama or papa (don't get started on telling us we need to have kids!). So, we heard about this cat show in Concord, NH and headed up there after I picked up Ethan. We met some cool, crazy and fun people at the show and got to see and cuddle some seriously adorable cats. Here are some photos....

This cracked us up....here is Ethan behind the "no pets allowed" sign.

Ethan, Ryan and I all agreed that the hairless cats are a little scary.

A beautiful "red" Maine Coon cat. Very gentle and nice and quite possibly Cood's distant cousin.
I can't remember the name of this cat...persian? They are so funny because when they fall asleep, they crash right out...I wish we had a photo of that. They look so grouchy but have a very nice disposition.We fell in LOVE with these cats...the Birmans. They have this "worried" expression that makes you want to give them a big cuddle and kiss. They are "lap" cats and love people. Look at that little face! The fur is also like a bunny, amazingly soft.

Here is one of the Birmans being "judged". It's all a perfection game...poor kitties! We love you even if you have an extra stripe or an uneven paw!!

Well, we had a great time hanging with Ethan and the kitties. Who knows....maybe there will be another kitty in our future soon!

Whirlwind Weekend in NYC

As you know, Ryan turned 30 last Saturday. As it turns out, our friend Kate, part of the dazzling duo also known as our BFFs has her birthday the day after Ryan's. So, we usually get together to celebrate at one of our houses for dinner. This year, we decided to take a little trip to New York City. Scoop used to live there, Kate has never been there and I haven't been since '99. Since Kate and Ryan were the birthday guy and gal, Scoop and I did our homework on hotels.com and researched where to stay for a decent price. We landed on a Kimpton Hotel - "70 park avenue" - at, you guessed it, 70 Park Avenue. It was great - small, but not the shoebox you get in Boston. We were able to move around and the beds were super comfy. But, onto the exciting stuff... lots and lots of photos on this post!



Arrival at Grand Central Station. Notice the sign above the escalator - the MetLife building otherwise known as the mother ship. For those of you who don't know, this is my place of employment. Nothing like company loyalty, we stayed just afew blocks away.

Here is the actual building...pretty impressive as it looms over Grand Central.
Hailing one of many cabs on night # 1.

We are clearly very HAPPY to be off work for a bit.... even for a day!
Ryan in Times Square.


Terra Blues on Bleecker Street. We saw Ray Schinnery who was amazing. This is just Ryan and Scoop being goofy at our little booth.

Our means of travel during the daylight hours - the double decker tour bus. So touristy but so cool. They have a deal where you can hop off and on at each stop and the busses come in 15 minute intervals. So, we hit Ground Zero, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Chelsea Pier, Central Park, Harlem and SoHo. It may have only been for 1/2 hour at a time but now we know where to spend our time the next time we go. The photo above was taken on Harlem as we approached the historic Apollo Theatre up on the left.


Squirrels where I come from run away on the sight of a human. This was a Central Park squirrel who grabbed a chip out of the hand of a lady next to us and proceeded to enjoy it just feet away. Amazing.The boys at O'Brien's, just a few blocks from Times Square. They had the best Pomegranate Cosmo and the best view....there is nothing like people watching!


Happy girls!

We had the best time with Kate and Scoop in all of the 32 hours we spent there! Next time, we will stay longer as we missed seeing so many people while we were there.

Happy Birthday!

Happy 30th Birthday to my wonderful husband!

We are headed to New York soon for a special b-day weekend with our best buds, Kate and Scoop...so stay tuned for that blog. For today, we headed to our favorite brew pub to watch the Red Sox game (a win for Ryan!) and had a nice relaxing and quiet day together!

Look at Cood giving Dad a big kiss!

We have another birthday in our little fam coming up...Coodie is turning 3 on April 15th!

We tied his little toy bunny to Ryan's birthday balloon for a special treat - he loves it!

Happy day to both of my special boys!

Spring Cleaning

Ryan and I tackled some spring cleaning this weekend that was way overdue. We started with the worst task first...the basement. Someday, we will finish it but for now it is unfinished and dusty. Talk about sneezing! I think you will agree, we did a pretty good job (especially for those of you who saw it pre-clean):

Satisfied and motivated, we decided to do something fun and bring the deck furniture out (sorry, no photos as it is now raining).

On to the next task - our closet. I wish I had thought to do a before and after photo of this because it was a truly amazing transformation worthy of some HGTV show. I happen to have a *little* problem with not wanting to get rid of things which may have contributed to the issue and we have both been slightly negligent on closet cleaning since you can close the doors and pretend the mess doesn't exist. So, in a nutshell, you could not see the floor of the closet before we cleaned..... I am providing several views of this one because it was a doozy and I am very proud of our work!

I was able to part with several pieces of clothing, shoes, etc that I hadn't worn in years as did Ryan. We ended up donating 3 trash bags of clothes and shoes to Planet Aid.

Luckily, my mother in law visited in February and thoroughly cleaned and organized our spare room and bathroom closet so we had a head start and some motivation to get started. Thank you, Donna!

Spring, here we come!