Why I Love Living in Bend: A Glorious Weekend

This weekend was great. The wife and I are really beginning to feel like home here in Bend. That's not to say we don't miss Phoenix (we do, all though it has more to do with the people there than the city), its just Bend offers so many things that are amazing and the size of the town makes so much of it easily accessible.

On Friday, the wife and I mounted up our bikes and rode a whomping mile and 7 tenths to downtown. We had great Mexican dinner (although, Phoenix has better Mexican than here, this was still pretty good) and a cocktail. Following that, we began to make our way through the many different art galleries that were open for First Fridays, enjoying all the cheese and wine along the way. It was nice walking and talking with the wife, and we saw about ten or eleven people we knew and talked briefly with all of them. Cole rode his bike and walked with us through some galleries. It was fun. Following that, we rode our bikes less than a mile to the Old Mill and took in a flick. We saw "Knocked Up, "which is written and directed by the same guy as "40 Year Old Virgin" and more importantly, the amazing, debunked TV show "Freaks and Geeks." It was pretty good, although it did feature some unnecessary frat boy humor, overall we liked it.

Saturday we began to work on our yard. It was hard work, but planting flowers and cleaning the yard up has some nice rewards. Ron stopped by and said hi. The weather was great, about 80 to 90 degrees with afternoon showers all weekend. That evening we went out and got some Europe travel books for our big trip this summer. (By the way, you people that have been to Europe, any suggestions on what not to miss? We are flying in to London and out of Frankfurt, seeing France, Italy, and Switzerland along the way. What are the best cities to see?) After buying the books, we went to our friends house and had pasta and wine to round out the evening.

Sunday started off with church and immediately following that we went back to work on the yard. We removed a huge hedge and fence like structure that was attached to our deck. It really helped open up the area of the backyard. It looks nice. We also planted some fruits and veggies in our greenhouse. We have tomatoes, red bell pepper, jalapeños, parsley, and watermelon. The watermelon supposedly can grow to be 20 lbs, so that would be pretty awesome. We'll see how it works out, this is really my first time growing any of my own veggies. I'm looking forward to eating fresh and cutting down on the carbon output caused by purchasing produce that is grown far away. Also, Carrie and I are going to try to just buy our produce from Bend's Wednesday's farmers market.

After another long day of gardening, we relaxed Sunday evening with quesadillas, pazukies, crystal light, and a couple episodes of 24. It was a good weekend.