Happy New Year

We are exploring different areas of the city in order to determine the ideal location to purchase our first condo/townhome/house. We currently live in downtown Portland, but we are also considering moving to the Pearl District or Nob Hill. We went walking around the South Waterfront area of Portland the other day. It is just being developed and is a short distance from our current apartment. There are some great seafood restaurants right on the dock with outdoor patios sure to be frequented by us during Happy Hour in the summer.
Our current apartment lies in about the center of the skyline of this pic (it is just to the right of the tallest building, but obscured from view by the Marriott).


We spent New Years on Mt Hood snowboarding. They had fireworks at midnight and stayed open until 2AM. Funny story about New Years actually...we were by the lodge around 1:30am and decided to do one more run. On the way up on the lift, the power to the entire resort went out! Since it was night ski, this meant that it was pretty much pitch black except for the moonlight reflecting off the snow. And it also meant that we were stuck on the lift! We ended up waiting 15 min. on the lift before they got a generator running to get those of us stuck on the lift off. Once we were off the lift, they advised us to wait until the power came back on to go down the slopes. We decided we didn't want to wait any longer, so we snowboarded down the slopes in the dark. It was an interesting way to start off the New Year! We also went snowboarding a couple more times during the holiday weekends. I know, I have already posted several pics of Mt Hood in previous posts, but I just can resist putting more up!

Here's the view of the top from the lift at Timberline:

Here's Em at SkiBowl:

At sunset we were cruising down a run at SkiBowl when I looked up and saw the mountain changing from white to pink. The color was fascinating, and it actually looked even more pink in real life than shown in this pic. I took this on my iPhone...I really wish I could have captured it in higher resolution on a real camera.

Our new tradition after playing in the snow is to stop by a Chinese restaurant named OM Seafood on the way home. We were introduced to it by Em's uncle Charlie. The food is superb and very affordable. I got a whole crab for only $12. I feel like a king when I eat there. We ordered everything in the pic below (crab, sea bass, scallops, shrimp, etc with soup and tea) and the bill was only $41. Unbelievable....and very good. We always order in copious amounts, then take the rest home and have leftovers for several days. Life is good.