Lissa's birthday weekend

Nate has been planning a fun weekend for my birthday. He surprised me with many things!!

It all began with him picking me up from work and taking me out to PF Changs for dinner. It was happy hour, so we had a feast on appetizers!
Before each surprise was revealed, he would hand me an envelop that read "Birthday surprise #1 (1-5)." My surprise was told in each envelope. I love surprises!!

After dinner my next envelope had Blazer tickets in it! We headed out to the game. If any of you got to see the game on friday night you know it was a close one. They ended up barely losing in double overtime!! DOUBLE overtime!! It was quite exciting! As a result the game ended much later than we had anticipated and we were both very tired from the week.
My next envelope was very nice, we headed out to the Double Tree hotel just minutes from the game. It was nice to not have to fight traffic on the way home. They greeted us with warm chocolate chip cookies! We just enjoyed our evening and crashed into deep sleep.

Saturday we ate our way through Portland! If you know me, you know I like good food and good restaurants. It's more than a meal, it's an experience!
We had a nice brunch at Mothers in downtown Portland. I am pretty sure we had the best seats in the house. We were in a corner booth with a view. Nate enjoyed his egg nog pancakes with butter rum sauce and I had a wonderful eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce. =)

We browsed through Powell's and got our book fix after a few hours. I found a great book that showed you how to make stuffed animals from gloves!! I think I'll have to try that out.

Chocolate Moon Cafe was next on the food list. As always, we played a card game while enjoying our coffee on 23rd. They were giving away free samples of their signature chocolates...yum!

My favorite genre of food is Thai, so Nate had found a great Thai place down the street from where we were. It was quiet and had a good view of the park. Also, they had decorated their restaurant in local paintings done by a painter we had met a few months ago, Buzz Silar.

In efforts to become more "healthy" Nate and I are trying to only eat sweets on holidays like Christmas, our birthdays etc.. In celebration of being able to eat sweets on this one day, he knew there was only one place that would satisfy our craving for decadent dessert...Papa Hydens! We headed there after dinner.
Again, we were seated next to the warm fireplace in a corner booth next to the street view windows. Perfect! I love it when that happens.
I had what is appropriately called "chocolate cube" and Nate had their 5 layer carrott cake with cream cheese frosting. =) I think we're good to go for a while with our sweets cravings.

Like I said, we ate our way through P-town. It was really relaxing to hang out with Nate and not worry about a schedule.

When we got home that night our housemates were in the middle of a card game. We joined in Hand and Foot...I like that they enjoy playing games. We lucked out with this great group of housmates.

Well...it is now snowing outside...how fun! Nate was doing cookies in the parking lot. I think he misses driving in the snow in Michigan.
We are all hunkered down in our warm house. The fire is going and we're all working on projects. And yes, I'm still in my pajamas....it's 3:30. I plan on staying in them all day with a warm cup of tea. =)

This is a link to a video my sister made for me. Thanks Carm!

http://gallery.me.com/carmendasilva#100178




=)