Oregon/Washington Part 1

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! As I shared in my previous post Andrew and I traveled up to Vancouver Washington for Andrew's Grandma's memorial over Thanksgiving.  The circumstances weren't ideal, but we made the most of our time there and it was wonderful to be around family for the holiday! Since so much happened and I took A LOT of pictures I will fill everyone in with two posts instead of one long drawn out post!

We arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday and spent the afternoon grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner and spending time with Grandpa!

On Wednesday Drew and I drove to Salem to spend the day with Daniel (Drew's brother), Bethanee (his wife), and Vera (our beautiful niece)!! On our way into Salem we stopped and had coffee with some of our dear friends that we met (and lived with) in Pasadena! The best part of our coffee date with Kyle and Lahela was finally meeting their daughter Lucy!

After 8 months, we finally met Lucy! Cute huh?

Happy Family of 3!

THANKSGIVING DINNER:

• turkey
• mashed potatoes with gravy 
• roasted brussels sprouts with almonds currents and rosemary
• arctic Freeze
• roasted yams and sweet potatoes
• stuffing 
• homemade rolls
• traditional green bean casserole 

DESSERT:

• apple up-side down pie
• apple streusel pecan pie
• sweet potato pie with ginger snap crust
• chocolate cream pie

It was a group effort to create this Thanksgiving menu and it was so yummy! My favorites were the stuffing, roasted yams and sweet potatoes and the brussels!

Working hard to get dinner on the table!

Mr. Chef sauteing the brussels sprouts.  Although they weren't the crowd favorite (what do people have against brussels sprouts anyway) I LOVED them :)

Our favorite Thanksgiving treat...

Vera and I

Uncle Drew and Vera

Thanksgiving was yummy, filling, and loud, the way it's supposed to be. We sat around talking, drinking, laughing, eating, and just enjoying each other's company!

Part 2 of our Portland trip coming soon!

Warm Welcome

Since the minute we arrived in Atlanta we have been taken care of and in a lot of ways spoiled by all the people we are meeting.  From dinners, drinks, a house to live in, and tours of the city we feel our welcome couldn't have been warmer.  A couple weeks after we got here Andrew's Aunt Evette flew to Atlanta for a work conference.  I was so excited when I learned that she was going to be here because I knew it would feel good to see family so soon after moving away.  Evette treated us to an amazing dinner in Buckhead at Bistro Niko.

This past weekend some of our new friends took us out to an AMAZING dinner at Rathbun's.  If you haven't learned it yet, Andrew and I are total foodies.  We love eating, cooking, going out, reading & writing new recipes, and watching the Food Network.  So, we were so excited to go to such a well acclaimed restaurant like Rathbum's. The owner and executive chef has competed against Bobby Flay on Iron Chef.  The food was to die for and we felt so spoiled to eat at such a nice restaurant.  I took a few photos at dinner. It was extremely dim lighting so some of the pictures aren't that great. We started with an appetizer of bone marrow that you spread on crusted bread with plum preserves and maldon salt (a finishing salt).  It sounds disgusting, but it was pretty tasty.  And yes, like a stellar & committed vegetarian, I tasted it.  Totally worth it.

Here's a look at some of the food we had...

Drew's Pork Chops with Corn Bread Pudding

House made pasta with lobster,
edamame, and saffron Parsnip Cream

the 4 of us shared dessert.  The Toffee cake and
carrot cake doughnut were my favorite

Thanks Laura and Kevin for an awesome dinner and tour of downtown Atlanta!!

We will be heading to Portland next week to be with family on Thanksgiving (awesome) and to attend Andrew's grandmother's memorial service (not awesome). We are so thankful for the church members that used their airline miles to help us fly back to the Northwest.  It will be fun to see family, but we wish it wasn't under these circumstances.  I will have lots of pictures and updates after our trip.

Cheers!!

Stops along the way

This will be the last post of all the wonderful friends who saw us off to Roswell!

Saying good bye to Bethany, I will miss living so close to her! 

 

My Best Best Best friend Janelle drove from Seattle to say good bye! 

Our first stop on the way down was in Denver to spend some time with Rachel! We got the royal treatment while staying with Rach; A comfy bed, a homemade soy latte, a walk in Washington Park, taco lunch, wedding-magazine reading, tasty wine, and great conversation!

A walk through Washington Park!

Lunch at Marg's Taco Bistro

Drew, Rach, and I went to dinner at Cora's (my Young Life leader from High School)! It was so fun to be with Cora, we hadn't seen her since she flew to Spokane to be in our wedding in '09!

Cora and her adorable son Grant

Our 24 hours in Denver were wonderful, and after spending 18 hours in the car we needed an entire day to relax!

Nashville was our next destination! Nashville was almost 1,200 miles from Denver. We left at 5:00AM and arrived in Nashville just after midnight.  Needless to say it was a long day! We decided to drive that far to avoid staying in a hotel. Josh and Lauren, our very close friends that we met in Pasadena live in Brentwood, TN so we were so excited to stay with them and catch up on life.

Josh, Lauren and their youngest Maddy

It was fun enjoying brunch with J & L and seeing both their girls, Sophi and Maddy! We are looking forward to future trips up to their place. Since Nashville was the city we set out to move to (before Drew got this awesome job) we were excited to have some time to see the city.  I really wanted to go to Jeni's ice cream shop but it was going to be out of our way. I was bummed, but as we were driving away from brunch figuring out our plans and this is what I saw...

A Jenis food truck! It was awesome, and even better it was free scoop day to celebrate being voted best ice cream in Nashville. This is hands down the best ice cream I've ever had.

Enjoying some brown butter almond brittle and dark chocolate ice cream!

We were welcome to Roswell with excitement and Love! Thank you everyone who helped make our travels as easy and cheap as possible!