Fun Weekends

With all this time to wait and wait (ugh!) until our referral, we've decided now is the time to make the most of our weekends. In our ten years of marriage, Daren and I have always been pretty good at this anyway, but now I feel like we are really appreciating this pre-baby time in our lives. It sure beats sitting around and feeling bad about the fact that we have no idea when our referral will come. So last weekend, I decided to surprise Daren. We planned to go out to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, in McMinnville, and afterwards I suggested we go to the local McMenamin's in town for some lunch. Well, I knew that Daren would love this suggestion, as he seems to love all the McMenamin's establishments that we've been to. So we head off to McMenamin's Hotel Oregon and decide to climb up to the Roof Top Bar for some food and beverage. As we're sitting, eating and relaxing, our conversation went something like this:

Andrea-"We should stay here sometime"
Daren- "Yeah, that would be cool"
Andrea-"Well, how about tonight?"
Daren "Well, we can't really do that, we haven't even packed anything"
Andrea-"That's already been taken care of, we ARE staying here tonight"
Daren-"What?!!!"

So then I explained that this was my surprise to him and while he was busy in the morning I was being extra sneaky and had packed a bag for him and managed to sneak it into the back of the car. Needless to say, he was thrilled. We ended up playing some pool, eating good food and went down to the Cellar Bar to hear the music. The band was called Terra, and they are awesome! Wonderful guitar, beautiful voices and moving lyrics. We just had to buy a CD, it was that good!! All in all, it was a great weekend for us. I really loved surprising Daren and watching him enjoy himself as much as he did, it was very fun!

This weekend, the fun continues (for me anyway). I'm headed south to Sacramento for a much needed, long overdue, girl's weekend with Cindy. For those that don't know Cindy, she's my best girlfriend of 25 years. Bob and Sandy (Cindy's parents) are babysitting the girls for the weekend and we are off to San Francisco for some good shopping and good food! We also plan to hit a couple of touristy things while we're there too, like a cable car ride and a trip to Chinatown. I'm really looking forward to seeing Chinatown as they gear up for Chinese New Year. I may even feel brave enough to give my Chinese language a try (Fei would be proud!). Anyway, I'll post again next week after our trip with some photos from the weekend. I hope 2006 is treating everyone well.

Love,

Andrea