Miscellaneous December

It's almost Christmas!  How has the year gone so quickly?  This past year has been such a blur.  Nick and I have fixed up and sold two houses in Indiana, searched for and found new jobs in Oregon, moved across the country, bought a new house, made new friends, reconnected with (my) family, and even done a little bit of traveling.  Major life changes all in a short span of time.

This time of year tends to be hectic, and I'm sure many of you would agree.  I'm writing this post to share a few photos that are sort of from miscellaneous subjects.  It's going to seem like a very disconnected post since the photos aren't really related to one another.

One of my favorite parts of Oregon that I'd missed while I lived in Indiana was the fog.  In the colder months, the clouds sink low and cover the hills in a fuzzy white blanket.  Sometimes it's so thick you can't see more than a few yards in front of you.  Sometimes it's just enough to blur objects a few hundred feet away.  Last Sunday morning, we woke up to a thick blanket of fog.  As it began dissipating, it was still blurry but the sun was able to poke its way through a bit, too.  It made for a cool effect on our giant oak tree:

Creepy Oak

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the cookies.  Every year (with few excptions), my mom and I bake Christmas cookies.  I went to my parents' house and made a few kinds of cookies last weekend.  We're making more tomorrow, so I'll post photos of the cookies later.  But while I was there last weekend, I got to see Mt. Hood in the waning evening light, as the sun set and also after, as the light gradually disappeared.  The snow on Mt. Hood made an eerie glow while everything else was getting quite dark.  Here are my two favorite photos:

Mt. Hood, during sunset

Mt. Hood, post sunset

Earlier in the afternoon, when the sun was low enough to reach far into the house through the window, I took advantage of the bright window light to photograph my mom's blooming Paphiopedilum.  I love bright window light because it highlights whatever object is directly in the light, while everything in the background fades to black as the window light drops off very quickly.  About the Paph, I don't knwo what kind it is, but its blooms are this beautiful lemony yellow with a cute splatter of freckles across the petals.  Purely guessing based on what I remember from last weekend and not using an actual ruler, I think the blooms are about 6-ish inches across. 

My mom's Paph!

The Empire State

After our respective high school graduations and transitions to college and the Real World, my sister and I flew the coop.  I moved to the Midwest two years after she moved to the Empire State (commonly referred to as New York).  With the exception of a few months here and there, she has maintained residency there ever since, starting with tiny dump apartments in Manhattan as a college student, to an apartment in Jersey City (technically not New York, but it may as well be), to an apartment in the Bronx.  Her final foray into renting was her now-husband's parents' apartment on Park Ave in Manhattan (they live in the suburbs but own the apartment), before she and her husband bought a house in the suburbs where she can easily commute by train into The City.

Over the years, I have visited my sister several times: at least three Thanksgivings (possibly four?), two wedding dress shopping trips (mine, then hers), her wedding, one or two spring/summer trips and finally a trip with my own husband this past November to check out their house in the burbs.  Though they have lived there for a couple of years now, I hadn't had the time to make a trip out since they moved in.  But this fall we finally made it happen!

We were there from Friday through Tuesday over the first weekend of November.  We spent the weekend out around town near their house.  Wine tasting, scenic driving, restaurant eating, football watching.  Then Monday and Tuesday we commuted into The City with my sister and played tourists while she spent the days at work.  Visited Rockefeller Square, the 9/11 Memorial, Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, tried New York style pizza and Shake Shack, stopped at my favorite crepe spot, and strolled through Central Park.  With our few hours on Tuesday prior to our flight home, we were able to go up to 30 Rock to catch some views of The City that I'd never seen before.

All in all, we had a great time with my sister and her husband and the City That Never Sleeps.  Check out a few photos:

One of the kitties, Birdie

Bottles from a winery (the wine kinda sucked)

Lady Liberty

View from the ferry

View from 30 Rock

Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral

All you need is LOVE

Panorama from the ferry -- Manhattan on the left, Brooklyn on the right

One of the 9/11 Memorial pools