December Fun

Whew, December is going quickly! I need to quick promising to post more often because I just don't manage to do it.

Let's see...first weekend of December, we went to see Santa at the Flying Heritage Museum. Jack and Sam enjoyed it, but Tommy was too shy and wouldn't go close. Odd because he went to see Santa with his parents at the mall the day before and was okay...who knows.

The second weekend, we went to see the Nutcracker in Seattle.  I thought it was pretty good. Jackson liked the part with the mouse king and soldiers, and pronounced the rest boring.  Mike also thought it was pretty boring, though he said "good music."

 

Then, the third weekend, we went to Mike's company Christmas party. It was at the Seattle Sheraton...a 20's themed party that was quite swanky. I should have taken more pictures, but didn't. On the way there, I did take a couple pictures of some of the  Gingerbread Houses on display downtown....The theme this year is Historical Seattle... 

Along with these fun events, it's been super busy at work, and doing Christmas shopping and baking, and now that I'm on vacation for a few days, I'm been working today on getting the house all cleaned up and ready for company.

Catching up

After 5 months of not writing on my blog, I'm going to try to recommit to this space.  With a new house, moving, and a new job things have been a bit overwhelming. The new house is settling down now. The new job I'm not sure will this year. It's a lot of new all the time. Once I get through a whole year's cycle, I think it will get easier, but right now it's been quite a challenge. Anyway,  in October Mike and I went for a fun weekend in Vancouver to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We truly enjoyed wandering around Vancouver and look forward to returning again...We'd like to go back in warmer weather and also take Jackson. We spent a cold morning walking the seawall and then checked out the Aquarium in Stanley Park as some where to warm up for an hour or so. They have a great jellyfish display and a good dolphin show. We had a fun lunch in Stanley Park, then took a water taxi out to Granville Island where we had a great time wandering through shops and picking out some treats at the food market there. Then, we went to a NHL game to see the Vancouver Canucks play the Calgary Flames.  We packed a lot into a short weekend trip!

Halloween has been fun too. Jackson picked out a pumpkin that probably weighs more than he does. Of course, he was tired of carving not long after we started, so mom had to do most of it, but he did design the face. All told, we carved 4 pumpkins. 

I pulled out my old standby witch costume for school, but added a new feature by making some fun shoes to go with it out of an old pair of pumps that I needed to toss anyway. The papermache pointed toes did last through the day, but not much more than that...Still, it was fun.
I made an astronaut costume for Jackson. We used his rain boots, spray painted black, his white pants from Karate, and a sweatershirt that I sewed patches and nylon utility straps onto for the top. Here he is in the school parade, where he only wore the easy parts (too crowded for the helmet and jetpack) but he had fun.

We made the helmet out of papermache that I then cut a space in and lined with some black felt.  It had trouble holding it's shape, but worked well overall. Jack insisted on a microphone--his favorite part I think. Het spent lots of time singing into it and being a ham...next year perhaps we should dress him like a musician or rock star...

Then, of course, he also needed a jet pack, so we had to add that. It turned out to be a pretty cute costume overall.

We just walked to the houses around ours to trick or treat. There weren't many with people home...a very different neighborhood to our old one, but Jack got plenty. We were home in 45 minutes. All told, we got 10 kids at our house. We have to buy a lot less candy here than we used to!  

Then it snowed here on both Friday and Sunday! It's an early in the year for snow here; I've never seen it in November while I've lived here. They are saying it's going to be a wet winter. We'll see if that's true. This is after several hours of hard snowing, so it doesn't really build up very much. It's very wet, slushy snow.  The house looks pretty with a little white.

Early Summer Catch up!

Whew! What a whirlwind. I know I am very behind on the blog, but it's been hard to catch a breath. In early June, we attended Jack's Kindergarten music concert, which was very cute. Jack seemed to know about half the words and hand gestures. He likes the music, but he's not much of a performer.

 Then, in quick succession, I finished my Ed Leadership Program, graduated, got a new job, and worked hard to wrap up the old one. Then, right after the last day of school, I headed to San Antonio for 4 days to present at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We didn't have much time for sightseeing, but here are a few images.

 The cathedral across the street from our hotel does a light show on the weekends. We were able to watch from the balcony of our hotel.

 The Alamo...

 The Riverwalk...

 They have their own tower, which they delight in noting is taller than the Space Needle. It wasn't any more interesting...

 Before the first of our two presentations...

And before the second:

I started my new job on July 3...So far, it's been pretty boring, with just me and the custodian in the building. It's paperwork and reading this month. I can't wait until the teachers and students come back in the fall and things get interesting. In the meantime, we've got our house on the market and have started looking for new houses.

This past weekend, we took a break and went camping at Kalaloch in the Olympic National Park. It's a beautiful area, and we could have spend far more than the weekend there. We'll have to go back again. We had the dog with us, which meant the National Park trails were off limits, although luckily the beaches were still open to us.  Next time, we may have to leave the dog home so we can explore more, but she had a great time this time.  The coast was teaming with sea otters out in the waves, but really, really hard to get a picture. We also saw whales spouting water, but they wouldn't surface for a good picture either.

 The beaches here are very fun. Jack enjoyed digging and collecting sticks and shells.

 My favorite was Ruby beach, which we visited at low tide and were able to see all kinds of cool tide pools full of anemones and star fish.

 The first day, Friday, it was very sunny. As you saw from the pics above, Sat and Sunday were overcast and quite cool.

 Jackson wrote "Jackson lovs this beche" in the sand.  We'll have to work on the spelling.

 We also visited this big old cedar tree and took a drive up to the Hoh, but didn't go in because we were short on time and had the dog.

 Friday night, we had dinner here at Kalaloch Lodge...

While all of this has been going on, we've also been attending karate twice a week for Jack. He earned his white belt so far...Sam has been coming too. Not sure if the boys will continue, but they've been enjoying it for now.

 For the Fourth of July, Jackson again rode in the neighborhood bike parade. Mike and I made the mistake of riding our bikes too. A mistake because there are so many kids and you move so slowly, that we really couldn't get up to speed enough to right...But Jack enjoyed it.

 Then, we went to Lesa and Colins for dinner and then down the Seattle to watch fireworks from the deck at Zymogenetics. It stays light so late here that we had a long time to wait...They didn't start until almost 10:30pm.

 Hard to believe it's July 10 already.  Lots more busy-ness to come this summer, much of it not very much fun! It's packing time.