a vegas wedding

i love weddings! alden was in his cousin's wedding last weekend so we got to do a quick weekend in vegas to celebrate scott and jenn's marriage.   we had time to split the sage fried chicken and bacon waffles at hash house a go go as soon as we landed and then spent the rest of the weekend with family at wedding events.


the blatters got sealed in the las vegas temple. the bride was beautiful, the reception had dancing and good food (plus fireworks) and we caught up with lots of people we hadn't seen in months.

























i wouldn't consider a 48 hour trip to vegas with a 9 month old a vacation, but it was a fun time and made for good memories. being with family was worth the quick trip.

and more pictures of madison since i've been lazy with postings...

brunchbox

saturday we had our second food cart adventure...we tried out brunchbox because it had a ton of positive reviews on yelp and we saw it on some local food show. there are something like 400 food carts in portland, bad news for my weight loss goal.



we both ordered the YouCanHasCheeseburger with bacon. a cheeseburger with two grilled cheese sandwiches in place of buns.

sounds like an easy choice but we had to decide between a lot of other burgers, here are a few just so you understand how difficult this was



we got our order and waddled over to a bench to eat

this picture actually looks kind of gross, but it was a good burger. it wasn't AMAZING like i imagined, but i guess with grilled cheese, hamburger and bacon all being so wonderful by themselves, it was just asking to much to have them be delicious when they're all put together (even if it sounds like a dream come true).



madison is still too little for the cheezasauras rex, so she had to settle for pureed bananas.

we both felt greasy after lunch. we were like "i feel kind of gross, like i only want to eat salad for dinner or something" but then we went to ikea and ate a plate of swedish meatballs, so we're a couple of liars.

portland: st patrick's day

saturday is our designated fat day, so this weekend we headed to downtown portland to try out a food cart that alden and i had heard about. there were lots of crowds for the st. patrick's day festival that was going on, but we finally found a spot on the street across from this restaurant

kind of awkward that it's within a block of two homeless shelters?



we both ordered their basic sandwich with turkey. it was $7 for a heavy ciabatta roll filled with turkey, cheese sauce and fries.



i like the novelty of eating a gut bomb sandwich filled with greasy fries. but, it was pretty much just a fry sandwich. it needed more cheese or sauce or something to make it less dry. still glad we tried it because i was pretty full for the rest of the day. i did try to enter the calories into myfitnesspal but i figured i would just pretend it never happened.



i didn't get a picture of it, but google helped me out with some pictures of the "never never van" we saw circling the crowded streets around the cart. this dude was making his puppet talk out the window, creepy.





we needed something to wash down our sandwiches so we stopped by voodoo doughnuts for a couple of maple bacon bars. we've made a bad habit of eating there weekly, but can you blame us?



i'm so lucky i found my food soul-mate in alden.

8 months

yesterday Madison hit the 8 month mark. now that she can play with us and we can see more of her personality developing it's been really fun. she's been crawling and pulling herself up, which is exciting but we have to keep a close eye on her since our apartment isn't baby-proof yet.

madison had her first real fever this month...she was really fussy and warm for a few days so i took her to the doctor like a good paranoid mom. he didn't find anything worrisome, and sent us home after attaching a little baggie to get a urine sample. ever tried to get a urine sample that way from a baby? it doesn't work very well when the baby has a poop explosion on the drive home. test was negative and she cut her second tooth the next day so i figured that explained her symptoms.



but the poor thing stayed fussy, and the next week her fever was up to 102, so i made her a little nest in the living room and gave her tylenol. that night she was up from midnight to 5 AM with a fever of 103.3 by the morning, so i took her back in. turns out she DID have a UTI so she's on an antibiotic and much better.


we had some really beautiful weather so alden and i went for a walk. i love where we live. madison was still sick so she got to wear her pjs and chullo.

some light reading between naps

picture post

trip to the coast

alden's parents came out from pennsylvania to visit us for a week- they hadn't met madison yet (grandchild number 20 for them) so they flew in to hang out and sight-see.

a miracle occured on our first outing: madison didn't have a meltdown in the car. but she made up for it by having a diaper emergency while we were having lunch. last week we had to take her to the dr. because she hadn't had a "dirty" diaper in 15 days. well, she was just saving it for our one day trip we've taken in 6 months.

first, we drove to the tillamook cheese factory. this was probably only cool to us because we're a couple of fatties that love tillamook cheese and ice cream. we got free samples and observed the workers on the packaging line in the factory.








then we drove up the oregon coast to canon beach.






the weather was perfect...warm, a little windy and very sunny. we walked along the beach down to haystack rock and then walked around the cute little town and had a fresh sea food lunch at one of the restaurants.