Family-ness

I had a great time in Portland visiting with Echo and My family.













Echo, Utku & MarVi picked me up from the airport and we all went downtown and had lunch. It was so wonderful getting to spend time with those guys. Utku and Echo are living this amazing life in New York. They are both teaching right now. Utku is going to school as well as working, and Echo is teaching adult ESL classes.












I stayed with Mary & Matt for a night and got to spend some quality time with my little nephew, Mathew. He is going to be a big brother soon. Mary is due this summer with her second baby. They are the cutest little family!

After that, I went out to my parent's house and spent a couple days just hanging out with Jackson, Emily and My Parents. It was so nice just to have time to visit and hang out for a few days. On saturday night we had a birthday party for Mom, Dad, Mary and Matt who all have January birthdays.

We opened presents.













We had a pinata.

Rita was the one to finally break it.










Candy grabbing ensued.












Emily made a lovely cake.












We all sucked helium and sang together in a chipmunk chorus...












aahh, memories.