Spring Break - WIN or FAIL; you decide!

I had such big plans for my week off. Plans that included reading all of the books I'm currently midway through, cleaning and organizing my house, running various errands, and blogging and relaxing. What did I get done? Blogging and relaxing. Which, let's face it, at least I prioritized correctly.

One thing I did get done, though, was taking Mrs P's avi and visiting the Twilight monuments nearest my home! TH was a trooper, and chauffeured us, nearly killing both of us and burning Mrs P's avi into a cinder in the process. Here is our tale.

One super sunny morning, we woke up and I (seeing the sun) announced, "Today is the day for Mrs. P!" TH had been briefed on my plans, so he knew what I was talking about, but wanted some breakfast first. So we headed out to our nearby diner.

Here is Mrs P with us at breakfast. For more Mrs P action, you'll have to wait for her post ;)

After breakfast, we crossed the river, and went to get on the highway.
In a little while (somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes), we hit St Helens. A little ways into town, we found the first turn...
And the second...

We went up a hill (the one Edward and Billy give each other the stink-eye on in the first movie)...

This is where I went all fangirl and started screeching, "There it is!! That's the house!!!"
The owners have posted a nice sign saying you're encouraged to take photos from the road but please stay the Hell off the lawn and please don't look in the windows. Seriously, have some manners, fans.

I had been nervous that we wouldn't be allowed to take photos at all, and that people would start calling the cops when a crazed Twifan (myself) holding a cartoonized version of another fan (Mrs P) showed up and started taking photos, so I was pumped to see this sign. I stayed off the gravel, even (since I couldn't tell if that constituted part of the yard or not).

This is the view from the road just after the hill - the mailbox is the one for the house (and is featured in New Moon, briefly), and the house would be on the left there, if you could see it.

So, that was very exciting - I didn't realize how fun it would be just to see it in person, and at this point I was raring to go to the Cullen house!
Back in the car, back to Portland. No turn-by-turn photos here, as it was more complex to get to, although VERY simple once we actually got there. I could take any of you there, should you care to visit, and I promise not to drive you off the road.

So here is the road leading up to it:

You can see in the distance it jogs a little to the left, just beyond that is the house. It looks like a forest road, but it's actually super residential, just alongside a steep drop off.

We weren't sure how close it was, so TH just kept going...

And just around the top of this bend...

The Cullen house!

This is where our lives nearly ended. Directly in front of the house (in the left of this photo), are two stanchion posts denoting that it's a private driveway. So TH decided to back up and back down the road to the previous street. But he did not back up in the same direction as the road. I felt a bump, indicating we had gone over the side, as pictured here:

I think you can see here how, once you go over the curb, the ground sort of falls away - we nearly fell with it

Not one to panic (thank goodness), TH put the car back in drive and we turned around in the Cullen's driveway instead (which was less exciting, in a very good way).

Our near-death experience allowed me to take this great photo...
... and this not-so-great one *shrug*

So we parked on the next street down and walked up to see the house.

The road up - better suited for walking

The beautiful home in all its glory!

Fun fact: if two cars pealed simultaneously out of that garage, they would fly off the edge of the drop-off and crash at the bottom. Like in Ferris Bueller.

Anyway, we're all okay, and we got to do lots of fun sight-seeing with Mrs. P! Later on that day, TH could be heard complaining, "I thought we were just taking this P character to those houses, not everywhere we went." Grumble all you want, TH, Mrs P got to see many sights!

Other than that and a very successful trip up to the wineries in Woodinville, Washington (see Thursday's upcoming post), I did a lot of nothing last week. Visited the dentist, slept a lot, and caught a cold. And today, back to work. Why does it always feel like you haven't been gone at all as soon as you get back to work, except that you have tons of work to make up and people have fucked up your shit? Makes me grumpy.

Happy Monday, everyone!