Weekend Birthday Trip

 Joshua took me to the coast last weekend for a birthday present. We spend Friday and Saturday exploring the area around the Three Capes Scenic Drive. The drive turned out to be not as scenic as we expected, but the area was beautiful and we found some great spots we are looking forward to visiting again. 

Friday it was rainy on and off for most of the day, but the drive up 101 was still beautiful.

 This was the first of the three capes, and the spot where we stopped to eat lunch.

Our campground was at the second cape, Cape Lookout. We got checked in and were going to go on a short hike nearby, but it started raining pretty heavily so we returned to the shelter of the van and drove down the road a bit to a place where we had a view of the water and played cribbage instead.

 We enjoyed watching and listening to the rain throughout the day and seeing all the mists and clouds.

 We were glad we weren't planning to eat at our table since it turned out to be in a large puddle. We had delicious breakfast burritos for dinner and while we were eating the sun came out.

 We decided to walk down to the beach and were glad we did because the sky was beautiful.

 I call this guy "the storm cloud that ate up the sky."

 It was getting pretty cold and we were concerned that the big storm cloud was going to start raining on us, so we headed back to our campsite for the night. By the next morning, the rain had moved on and it was a beautiful sunny day.

 We took a walk along the beach after breakfast.

 There were tons of these blue jellyfish all along the beach. We also saw a dead seal, but that was rather gross, so I didn't take a picture.

 There were lots of pretty flowers and plants growing around the campground.

The third cape was Cape Meares, were we saw the Octopus Tree and had more great views of the ocean.

We also toured the Cape Meares Lighthouse, which was neat. 

 We had a picnic lunch before continuing up the road towards Tillamook.

 We got a two-foot piece of beef jerky from the Tillamook Country Smoker and toured the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

Unfortunately for us, they weren't making cheese because it was Saturday, but it was still fun to look at all the equipment, sample cheese, and get ice cream. 

After enjoying our ice cream in the sunshine (which was a bit too bright for picture taking), we headed home down I-5, which ended up being a pretty drive also. It was a wonderful and relaxing couple of days and so nice to spend some time together away from the busyness of school and work.

Dave's Visit

We had a special visitor last week! Dave drove up Wednesday to bring a car we bought from a friend in California and then flew back on Saturday. Between then, we had a great visit. Most of the time he was here we had warm sunny days and we enjoyed going on walks and playing games together. We also took a drive over to Florence and had dinner with Grandad at Mo's on Thursday evening.

Saturday morning they met me at the bakery and we tried out the hazelnut sticky buns after I got off work. They are quite good and huge. We also went up the Saturday Market in Eugene and enjoyed wandering around there, looking at things and eating good food. It was an enjoyable and relaxing time to spend with family and we were so glad he was able to come up.

Spring Project

I had fun making this spring tablerunner with some fabrics Dad and Mom sent me for my birthday. I didn't quite finish it in time for Easter, but we used it anyway and have been enjoying it since then.

Happy Easter

He has risen!

This was the first major holiday we celebrated on our own. Although we missed our families and getting to gather together, it was neat to come up with our own ways of making the day special. Our celebration included a wonderful church service, brunch, baskets (in bowls), a hail storm, and way too much food served on china for dinner.

Cherry Blossoms

The cherry tree is blooming; I can't wait to eat cherries from this beauty.

Spring Break Visiting

 Joshua had a week off between the winter and spring terms this past week and, of course, with all the finishing up from last term, getting ready for next term, and trying to get done the things we had been putting off during the term, it wasn't much of a break. But we did enjoy having spending some extra time together and going up to visit Ben, Rachel, and their girls on Thursday. 

Both Jory and Amelia were sick, so that was too bad, but we still enjoyed getting to see them. We arrived in time to have tacos for lunch, then Rachel and I took the girls to a doctor's appointment while Ben and Joshua visited. The appointment ended up taking longer than expected, so once we were done it was almost time for dinner. Rachel's mom watched the girls so the four of us went out to dinner at a Thai food restaurant and it was delicious!

Back at the house, we enjoyed the chocolate creme pie I brought for dessert. It is always nice to spend time with good friends.

Birthday Time

We had rain Wednesday and overcast skies Friday, but my birthday on Thursday was a beautiful warm sunny day with white fluffy clouds. I enjoyed going on a walk around the neighborhood and taking pictures of some of the many flowers that are blooming.

Joshua and I tried out a Thai restaurant for my birthday dinner and we were quite happy with it. The atmosphere, although a little on the noisy side, was nice and enough on the fancy side to make it feel like a special dinner. We started with an appetizer and then we both had a crispy Thai basil dish for dinner. That was delicious and we had a great time enjoying dinner out together.

Saturday we had birthday dinner round two when Joshua made me breakfast burritos and we had apple pie for dessert. Evan's birthday is four days after mine and we share a love of apple pie, so we have had apple pie together around our birthdays for many years. This year we didn't get to actually eat our pie together, but we both had pies from apples that came from the trees here, some of which we picked together while they were here in August.

All in all, it was a fun way to celebrate turning 32.

Creswell Bakery

 I've been wanting to post some pictures from work for awhile, but since I don't take any pictures while I'm working, I didn't have any to post. Today I found these pictures on the Creswell Bakery facebook page, so I thought I would share them. This first one is from the outside and was taken a over a year ago, but it still looks pretty similar. The sign saying we are open five days a week is gone and the plants have changed a little, but you get the idea.

Here are some of the sweet rolls that I spend a lot of time with. Twice a week I make big batches of rolls, about 120 each time. We have four types of sweet rolls: cinnamon rolls, raisin walnut rolls, coconut orange rolls, and hazelnut sticky buns. The two kinds above are raisin walnut and coconut orange. And yes, they are huge.

Here are our two mixers, a 20-qt and a 60-qt. Yes, the 60-qt is huge too. It probably comes up to about shoulder height on me.

Bread, bread, bread! This is good stuff.

This is our large bread baking oven. We just recently started using this to bake a number of our breads and it has been working well.

Here are some more pastries from my side of things. I don't do any bread baking, my job is mostly pastry prep work and then on Saturdays I bake off the pastries for that day.

Here are Brenda and Heidi trying out the bread oven. Brenda is the head pastry baker and Heidi is the owner of the bakery. Brenda is the person I work with the most since we are the two pastry bakers. 

This is our bread baker, Dave. He is up in the front part of the kitchen at the lunch line, none of the three of us bakers spend much time up here except in the early morning when we are using the ovens.

Lots of delicious goodies on display behind the counter in the front of the bakery.

And this picture is from this morning after I finished baking off the pastries for today. Jason, the manager and head chef, made me the special for today for breakfast. On a typical Saturday I usually bake 3 dozen cookies, 4 dozen scones, 1 dozen ham and cheese pretzels, 4 dozen biscuits, 2 dozen muffins, 1 dozen meat pies, 32 danishes, and 68 sweet rolls. I don't actually mix anything up on Saturdays, everything is formed and ready to go so I run everything through the ovens, brushing some with cream or egg wash, and then drizzle things with chocolate or icing and frost the cinnamon rolls. So, there's a little peak behind the scenes. If you are ever in Creswell, come on by!

March Update

I haven't been posting much lately, so I figured it was time for an update.

We are coming to the end of the winter term and with just one week of classes left before finals week, Joshua has been busy doing lots of reading and writing. He just recently found out that he will be solo teaching a critical thinking class next term and has also started preparing for that.

  Meanwhile I have been keeping myself busy with lots of baking, both at work and home. I have been on a bread kick lately and have been baking lots of bread. I got a starter going and used it to make a decent loaf of sourdough bread, but then the starter froze in the back of our fridge, oops. I'm thinking about starting another one soon though and will not store it in the coldest part of our fridge this time.

We have cabbage and tomato seeds sprouting for our spring planting and with all the sunshine we have had lately it feels like that time is just around the corner. There are so many things blooming around town now, it is really pretty. The daffodils came first, but they have been followed by many other flowers and trees and it is beautiful walking or driving pretty much everywhere around here.