Coffee Shops in SE Portland on the 205 Corridor-Post #1

So Thursday nights are becoming "Try A New Coffee Shop Night" while I am waiting for class to start. My classes take place in South East Portland and needless to say, I do not know this neighborhood at all! Here's a post devoted to 2 new coffee shops I've tried.

A few notes about me and coffee: I love the stuff. Caramel lattes are my all time favorite drink. Insomnia Coffee Co in Hillsboro Oregon make the very best ones so everything I taste, I rate against the Real Caramel Latte (RCL) with light whip.

SoZo Coffee House
This place is an Asian run bubble tea joint that just so happens to make a kickbutt latte. Seriously. I have consumed a lot of caramel lattes hoping to find one as good as Insomnia's. While this just isn't quite an RCL, it is the closest coffee I have ever had to one! Yes folks, I've found a #2! The downside to SoZo is the atmosphere. I'm not into cheap Ikea furniture that is falling apart. And, I was the only non mandarin speaking person in the place. All this aside, I will totally be back seeing as though it's only 2 minutes from my school.

Coffees On-Mall 205
This is a strip mall coffee joint if I've ever seen one. Typical tiled floor with an office tiled ceiling. The barista was nice enough. The coffee was also good. It's not my #2 or my #1 but it's a solid coffee (latte). I would go back but I wouldn't drive across town just to get a drink here.

Well, look for more posts to come about my coffee adventures in SE Portland. So far, Portland has not made a bad cup!

a NEW school

Today marks the start of my academic career at Warner Pacific College. I am starting the last 18 months of my undergrad in the Adult Degree Program to earn my Bachelors degree in Business Administration.

After much runaround, I decided that I will attend classes at the 205 Campus in South East Portland. My first choice of campus was the Westside one that was located only 7 short miles from my work. The classes were scheduled to start in January but due to low enrollment were pushed back to start in March. The March start date meant that I would not meet the mandatory degree-in-hand deadlines for my internship at Intel...so a once a week drive to South East Portland it is!

Standing on this side of this new thing, I am a little nervous yet very excited to see what this new adventure holds.

1 Year Down...Many More to Go!

Last weekend we celebrated our 1st anniversary in Sin City, USA...Las Vegas. This wasn't my first choice of place to go but since I was already there for work at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) so it made sense. I flew down on January 6th and worked all week. Andy came down on January 11 to celebrate over the weekend.

This was the first time that we had been apart longer than 24 hours since we started dating in August of 2011! It was a long 6 days but when Andy finally arrived, I was so glad to see him.

We stayed at the Bellagio Hotel on the strip. It was a little ritzier than our liking but none the less, a very nice hotel. Our room had a view of the "lake" so we could see the fountains go off every 15 minutes. This was pretty cool. We could turn our TV on to channel 22 and hear music that the fountains were programmed to.

We weren't like most Vegas goers, staying up late at clubs and sleeping in till noon. We spent time relaxing at the hotel and on the morning of January 13, our anniversary, we ate at the Fountains brunch at the Jasmine. The food was soo tasty. Lots of fresh seafood, sushi, eggs, 3 types of prime rib and an entire room devoted to deserts complete with a floor to ceiling fondue fountain. We spent 3 hours eating here and watching the fountains.

On our last day we decided to gamble a little. I was VERY hesitant to do this but I gave in and we decided that $20 was our spending limit. We tried a slot machine and had no clue what we were doing and lost $2. Then we slide over to a video black jack machine and we found our niche. Here we spent 2 hours and won $25.

Las Vegas was a fun and I am glad to say I went there but I don't think it is on my list of must travel again. It is just not quite my style. I'm not a party girl but it was fun to celebrate 1 year married in a new place!

Slow Cooker Veggie Soup

Slow Cooker Veggie Soup

2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 small zucchini, chopped
2 medium carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, chopped
28 ounces tomatoes, undrained
2 (14 ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups chicken broth or 4 cups vegetable broth
4 cups tomato juice
2 teaspoons basil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 -2 drop hot sauce



Directions:

1.) Combine all ingredients in crockpot and cook on low 10-12 hours. Easy!

Our Top 12 from 2012

Disney in December

Disneyland is kind of a Kangas thing. Matt (my father-in-law) loves to spend time with his entire family and what better place than to gather everyone in a warm sunny place to experience the magic that Walt Disney dreamed up so many years ago!

Summer Has Come and Gone

Fall is in full swing in my neck of the woods all though the weather isn't reflecting it. Andy and I came down with the first debilitating colds of the year this past week...that's how I know we've hit fall. Fox 12's weather blog called this July-mid October the driest on record, ever! It's been hot.We just took our air conditioning unit out of the window today.

Here's a recap of this summer:

June was pretty uneventful. It marked the start of a very busy wedding season as we went to Rachael (Rotter) now Gross' wedding. Spring term also came to a close just to have summer term kick off a week later. On that week break, we journeyed to Battle Ground Lake and camped for 2 nights. Needless to say, it rained. After all, what could we expect? Did we really think that we would stay dry while taking a camping trip in June? I think we've learned our lesson that summer doesn't really start until July in Oregon. The highlight of this month was Timmy (my brother-in-law) decided to get baptized when they came up to visit us at the lake. Phil & Kate (brother/sister-in-law) also came up to visit for the day and brought along the cutest little one year old (Xa) to play in the mud at out campsite.

 Timmy making public his decision to follow Christ through water baptism at Battle Ground Lake.

 Camping breakfast.

Trenches had to be dug around our tent to keep water out.

July brought another wedding and some long awaited sunshine. I had the privilege of standing along side my friend Christina as she wedded Stanley Friesen. The Branches Camping trip to Kilichis was also in July. Little did Andy and I know, July was a pretty chill month compared to the storm of events that awaited us in August and September.

Cooking chicken fajitias at the Branches Campout.

August held 2 more weddings, 3 family birthdays (including Andy's 30th), a new job for me and a family vacation. Heather and Jerry, our friends from church, were wedded on August 18th. Andy played a set of Beatles songs at their reception. On the same night, Nichole and Adam (Nichole was once in my small group), tied the knot. Since we couldn't be in 2 places at once, we attended Heather and Jerry's due to the fact that Andy was reception entertainment. The very next day was Andy's 30th birthday also a Sunday. We took the day off from all of our duties at church to celebrate. We traveled to Lincoln City and stayed the night at The Shalishan Lodge, a great place to stay! We will go back, hopefully soon. After that we drove up the coast to take part in my side of the families vacation. We stayed at a beach house in Cape Meares, just a few miles away from where we got engaged last November. Two nights later we were on our way back home so I could start my new internship at Intel. Somewhere at the beginning of August, I interviewed for an administrative assistant position at the largest employer in the state.

 Gorgeous weather!

 Timmy, Briana and Abe

 Happy 30th Birthday

 Celebrating August Birthdays! Andy(30) Rhonda & Dan (55)

On to September...Wedding season really ramped up this month. On the first Saturday of September, Andy preformed his first wedding as an ordained minister for a couple from Branches. (Side note: Andy has been ordained for 3 years just never been asked to preform a wedding. Must be because he wasn't married himself.) Fast forward 7 days to the next weekend, Andy was preforming wedding #2. This time I was the wedding coordinator for my good friend and ex roommate Katy (Pedersen) Smith. Then just one short week later we were celebrating our best friends, Rachael (Christophersen) & Dustin Ward's wedding. As this month came to a close, I started back to school at PCC for my last term before I transfer in January to Warner Pacific College to finish my bachelors degree.

We are very glad to be in the second week of October, done with weddings and settling in to what feels like a more normal routine. It's looking like December will be a fun month as we are going to Disneyland with the Kangas side of the family and of course Christmas will cap off the month. I am very much looking forward to the holidays this year and hitting our one year anniversary at the end of the season. God is still our sustenance through it all.