There's a bear in our house!!

Okay, so it's not that scary. W spent the afternoon out in the garage with D yesterday making a wooden tool box. By completing that, he completed all of his achievements to earn his bear badge for scouts. He was pretty excited. Monday we are having our Blue and Gold celebration for the 99th birthday of scouting, so during that he will get to go into the bear cave, wrestle a bear and bring out a bear claw in order to be awarded his badge. He's pretty stoked.

Well, D was off again yesterday. It ended up being a good thing for me and MandM. We were able to go to Bridgewater for lunch...sans toddlers. Neither of us had been in there before, so we didn't know that they didn't open until 1130. So while waiting for that 1/2 hour, we wandered to the chocolate store at the other end of the building. I think I gained 10lbs just walking through the door. We found out that they do kids parties, how fun. They also do scout tours. Hmmm, I'm thinking maybe since we are selling chocolate, maybe we can stage a golden ticket contest with the scout candy and the prize would be a tour of the "chocolate factory". Anyway, lunch was good. The restaurant has a nice feel. I like the contrast between the industrial look of the high ceilings with open beam and exposed ducts and the posh look of the powdery green suede benches, linen table clothes and gorgeous square dishes. They did have a kids menu, but MandM was quick to point out the comment at the bottom stating unruly children could be "shanghaied"...Okay, so I guess the real important part of a restaurant is the food. I have to say, it was pretty good. I had the Brazilian hearts of palm salad with a mango citrus dressing along with the turkey and cranberry cream cheese wrap. Yumm. MandM had just a regular salad...but it looked awesome with multi colored little curly things on it. Her sandwich was a shrimp sandwich, which by it's description didn't jump out as anything special, but when it got to the table...It was mounded high and baked to a yummy gold and brown then sprinkled with finely diced peppers. So, we had a nice little lunch.

Lets see. When D proposed to me....We were living in Portland at the time. We came to the coast for Valentines weekend. I remember Saturday morning we went for a walk on the beach and he seemed like he really didn't want to walk on the beach, so we went back to the room. We did just normal sightseeing stuff during the day. In the evening we came back to the room and opened a bottle of Ferrari Carano Fume Blanc that I had picked up for D at the Eldorado on a recent trip to Reno. We were standing on the patio of our room looking out toward the ocean. D was standing behind me and took one sip of his wine then quickly set it down. I remember thinking "oh great, I picked a wine that he doesn't like". He had actually planned to just set his wine down, grab the ring and reach around and put it in front of me. But I decided to turn around and ask him what was wrong and kind of blew his surprise. And of course I said yes. Of course all of this excitement was topped off with a huge snow storm hitting Portland the next morning which cut our weekend short and caused us to have to drive half the coast in order to find a passable road back home.

So, for Valentines Day this year...Well, I think it might rain. We are going to do a tree plant with the scouts for the Oregon 150. I haven't planned anything romantic and I suspect D hasn't either. He did ask what we wanted to do for the kids.

In other news... Monday I had to take my 16 year old cat to the vet. She has had tummy issues for the last several years making it necessary to keep her on special food. For the last year or so she had also been having some skin issues. She has been loosing weight steadily for a while now, but recently had lost quite a bit of weight. Anyway, the vet examined her and said that she had a tumor in her intestines the size of a goose egg and there was nothing that could be done. He said that nothing showed up in her last blood work, but with this type of cancer it may not show in blood work that day even. You know, when I had called in I had made peace with the idea that this would be her last trip in. But it was still hard to hear the vet tell me that was what he thought was best as well. So, we are down to one pet now...a very whiny, furry dog. I'm not sure if she is whining because she misses the cat or just to hear herself whine. It was probably a couple weeks ago that she started whining and has progressively gotten worse. Looking back, I kind of think she may have started her whine fest about the time the cat really started going downhill. I know last year when the cat spent a few nights at the vet, the dog was just unbearable with her whining. Poor doggy. Soon we'll have to start thinking about a replacement to swat her nose regularly.

So, that's our news for the week. It's just been a weird week. It doesn't seem like we have done much, but it sure feels like we have.

I hope everyone has a good Valentines weekend. No O.D.ing on sugar.