Portland Halloween, 2014.

For Halloween of 2014, Kendall and I decided to visit my family in Washington! Neither of us had been to the PNW during Fall and were excited to spend Halloween trick-or-treating with my little brother. The leaves were changing and the weather was perfect - we took Colton to a pumpkin patch to pick out his own pumpkin to carve.

The next day, we got up early to head out to spend the day in Seattle. We spend the whole day shopping at Pike Place and ate amazing food, including lots of sweets and delicious hot chocolate from the original Starbucks.

And, as usual, Kendall and I spent a date night walking down Hawthorne shopping and taking pictures of our food and Fall leaves. It was probably one of my favorite trips to Portland!

And, of course, VooDoo - always get VooDoo.

Girls just wanna have fu-uhn - Hawaii 2014

In August of 2014, my music therapy best friends and I decided to take a girls' trip to Hawaii! One of our trio, Lauren, moved there with her husband after she got married. She was kind enough to host Amber and I and show us around the island! It was seriously so amazing, and even more amazing because it was almost like a local taking us around. Lauren had lived there for almost a year and new all the best places to go. Each da, we had an itinerary with fun activities to do around the island.

We pretty much saw everything there was to see on the island - we went to a luau, snorkeling on Hanauma Bay, ate sea food at every point on the island, shopped on North Shore, hiked through the jungle and botanical gardens, saw the temple, and watched the sunset while eating Hawaiian food. It was so amazing to spend time with my favorite girls!

July 2014.

Summer of 2014 was a busy Summer! July was probably one of the busiest months of 2014.

1. My beautiful niece Rivers was born! I'm not very good at holding newborns, but she gave me lots of practice.

2. My best friend, Katie, was married in July! I was lucky enough to be co-maid of honor with her sister Kendal. Kendal planned her beautiful bridal shower and I planned a Harry Potter themed bachelorette party, complete with a feast in the Great Hall and a House Cup. She was absolutely radiant on her wedding day and I love her husband, David, like a brother. I'm so happy for my best girl!

3. Kendall and I spent the 4th of July in Payson with Katie and David where we got rained out and didn't get to see fireworks! But at least we had a barbecue at the cabin with hot cocoa and s'mores!

4. July was a huge month for my career - I completed my music therapy internship with Seasons Hospice, 5 days later passed my exam and became a Board-Certified music therapist, and the next day started my first job as a full-time music therapist at Higher Octave Healing!

I figured the crazy busy month deserved a break, so in August Amber and I took a much needed vacation..

Anniversary 2014

We're catching up, slowly but surely! In 2014, Kendall applied for tickets for us to go see the Conan O'Brien show live in Burbank and we were lucky enough to get to go! The coolest part was that the show was the day before our anniversary, so we turned it into an impromptu California anniversary trip!

We still had season passes to Universal Studios and, after a week of groveling, I finally gave in and told Kendall we could go to Disneyland. ;)

While we were there, we stopped to eat beignets, at Rosco's Chicken and Waffles (not as good as LoLo's), and went to downtown Hollywood. We were not impressed with Hollywood, at all, but were glad we went. Best part: standing where the greatest wizards of all time stood.

There's nothing cuter than a pug in Conan hair.

Portland WRAMTA Conference for music therapy nerds.

In college, I got extremely close to two beautiful girls in my program (my music therapy best friends): Amber and Lauren. In November of 2013, Lauren got married and moved away from us to Hawaii. We missed her terribly, but were lucky enough that she was able to meet us in March 2014 in Portland, OR, for the Western Regional American Music Therapy Association conference!

Most of the conference was spent expanding our knowledge of music therapy and connecting with other music therapists in our region, but that doesn't mean we couldn't have some fun! Since we were in my family's city, I was able to take my best friends to some of my favorite parts of Portland! We ate dinner at my parents', had my family over to swim, walked down Hawthorne, ate at Portland-y places (ahem, VOODOO), and went to the Saturday market. Our hotel overlooked the Columbia River and we soaked up our amazing girls' trip while it lasted.