Catching Up: February

Preeettttty bad when you are so far behind on your blog that you have to catch up in monthly increments! Yikes!
With all that has been going on, I just had to give up some things.
Obviously, blogging was one of them.  (So was exercising and eating right but hey, we wont talk about that right now!).
So, picking up where I left off.....

First signs of spring:
crocus along the driveway

We found a new favorite restaurant in Newport:  The Noodle Cafe (every time I say that, in my head it's the voice of Mr Ping in Kung Fu Panda haha).  Anyways, a quaint little cafe with the best noodles:

Skott got the red curry noodles

I got some kind of seafood medley

drinks at Nana's afterwards

Cheers!

For a slightly belated Valentines Day, we went to Astoria, OR (about 2 1/2 hours north).  This is where I spent the summer as an intern in 2008.  I was eager to show Skott the town and all the places I explored.
We stayed at a fabulous old bed and breakfast up on the hill with a great view of the town.

There were deer in this lawn one morning

One morning we went up to the Astoria Column.

We hiked up these stairs:

They were spiraled so tight that we literally felt a little nauseous by the time we got to the top.

We went for a short hike after climbing the tower to calm our stomachs.  The light and moss and green colors were amazing!

a raindrop hit my eye at that exact moment

 Astoria is a very old town.  The majority of the town was destroyed by fire in the early 1900's, but there are some amazing buildings still!

all the garbage cans are vintage-like labels

Our favorite place was Fort George brewery, which was conveniently located about 5 blocks from where we were staying.  We were a few days late for their big "Dark Arts Festival" where they had something like 64 different stout beers on tap.  They still had a great selection left and we enjoyed sampling all the different ones.  Our favorite was one brewed with Mexican spices called Viva la Stout.

Did I mention it rained almost the entire time we were there?
This is us, bundling up before heading out into the downpour to walk back to B&B

One of the highlights of the trip was catching opening day for this new brewery:

 They are building in an old fish cannery/warehouse.  They have done AMAZING renovations, with more expanding continuing.  We were SO EXCITED to find these:

Yes, DEEP FRIED WISCONSIN CHEESE CURDS!  We haven't had deep fried cheese curds since we left Wisconsin.  Despite the fact that they cooked them too long and lots of the cheese had exploded out, we thoroughly enjoyed them!

It was a wonderful visit, despite the rain.  We had a great time exploring.  We had never stayed at a B&B before but this was a good experience.  We were the only ones there the first day, and the second day we shared breakfast with a fun couple from Portland.  We sat and chatted for almost two hours!  She is a special effects artist for "Portlandia" and "Grimm" so we had plenty of good conversation.  It was so refreshing to have real conversation, instead of the fluffy chit-chat we have at our jobs.

Already planning our next trip...... probably this fall.