Halloween and Our Second Visitors' Visit

We had a great weekend with Mac, Liz, and Maggie. Albert, our friend from Colgate, was also in Portland (just on Friday, for work) and joined us for a little Halloween celebration that started at our place with "getting ready" (while drinking Dad's Little Helper). Well, I should clarify - Maggie was ALSO drinking Kool-Aid as an integral part of her costume preparation to become a victim of the Jonestown massacre.

My costume came together at the last minute, because Maggie just happened to bring with her this fabulous vintage blue dress that happened to go with a blue wig I had purchased last year in NYC when I dreamt of being the E train for Halloween (that idea never came to fruition.) All of the sudden, I had the makings of what I think is a pretty sweet costume. Add some blue eyeshadow to the mix and bam! - "You're turning Violet, Violet!"

Mac and Kyle were Hanz and Franz from the SNL skit, and I was suprised to find out how many people recognized them right off the bat. They were a huge hit, and hammed it up the whole night. As Liz aptly put it, they "took up a lot of space" Friday night - both physically (thanks to newspaper stuffing) and with their 'tudes.








On Saturday we took a drive out to Cannon Beach to get Liz her first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It drizzled the entire drive out but we still all marveled at the colors of the leaves along the drive - they were really incredible. When we arrived at Ecola State Park, the wind was whipping so hard that it was driving the rain into our faces like little prickles, and I felt fairly certain that the apocolypse was coming. We made our way along a little walk way jetting out over the Pacific, and all of the sudden the sun started to peek through. It was really pretty amazing - the combination of the different greys in the clouds and the sunlight struggling through and reflecting on the water made it look like an actual painting.

















After spending some time there we headed a bit further south and drove along Nehalem Bay to find Jetty Fisheries, a crabbing place Maggie's friend had recommended to us. It turned out to be the best thing we could have possibly found - a little crabbing outpost right in the bay where you can either rent a boat and crab yourself, or buy fresh crab and eat it out on picnic tables next to a little woodburning fire. By this point the sun was fully shining (what a treat) and so we sat outside for close to two hours eating fresh crab and oysters and enjoying some brewskies. It was pretty amazing - but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...