Weekend Events

My Dears!

How was your weekend?!

If you live in Seattle then you'll know that we were experiencing some crazy hot & humid weather. 

I'm not too familiar with humidity - it's bizarre. And it makes me feel very, very lazy. 

Weed the garden? Nah. I think I'll take a nap on the couch instead.

Bailey does not 'do humid' either. Hot? Yes. Humid? NO. 

He has been excavating dog-sized holes around the yard into which he can plunk his body and leach the cooler temps from the soil. 

Did I tell you he's in the running for "Laziest Dog On The Planet" competition? He's the clear frontrunner.

We have been thinking up all sorts of new ways to beat the heat. All of them involve water, not surprisingly. 

We trucked on over to a local splash park on Thursday with some buddies. It was a little much for Ben. There were lots of zooming big kids and water features that sloshed around unpredictably. I think we'll try out the wading pool next time. 

We had grand plans this weekend to paint our garden shed but the weather threw us for a major loop. Humid heat, combined with thunder and lightening storms, do not a happy painting situation make. Maybe next weekend.

On Saturday we stuck around the city and went for a little jaunt down to Discovery Park.  We liked the variety of terrain and the beach was a huge hit with the bambino. But it was also packed with people. A quiet little weekend ramble it wasn't. 

Hard to beat big sticks and sand, though.

It was so very foggy. You could hear the giant container ships passing just off shore....but couldn't see a thing. A bit eerie.

On Saturday afternoon we went to a company picnic at Emerald Downs.  I will admit that I'm not a huge horse racing fan. 

But the bambino was enthralled.

Whoa, nelly! Come here horsie!

It was a good opportunity to perfect his horse sounds, at the very least.

Sunday morning we headed back to our very favorite St. Ed's State Park. Our little quiet corner on the lake. 

Ben was not exactly thrilled to be stuck in the pack for two days in a row. He has a love/hate relationship with his carrier. Things are slightly better now that he can successfully mine the side pockets for treats and toys. He can also reach Chris' hair. And my dear husband remarked at the end of the hike: "Well, it's definitely time for a hair cut". 

Yesterday afternoon we spent a lovely few hours at the home of a new acquaintance that was filled with art and antiques. Ben, still on his equine high from the day before, made a beeline straight for the rocking horse. 

And last but not least, we also celebrated our six year wedding anniversary yesterday. I would love to say that we went out for a fancy dinner and a show. But that didn't happen. We put the baby to bed and vegged on the couch. Such is life, my dears. 

On our first wedding anniversary, Chris planned a trip to Las Vegas that included a few events (the highlight was this one, by far), a museum tour, and jaunts around the famous casinos. 

The second year we went out to a posh restaurant for dinner. 

And the third and fourth years? 

Eh not much. Clearly it's a downward spiral! [I jest, I jest]

Last year (No. 5) we finally got our act together and took a trip up to the San Juan Islands. Only ten months after our actual anniversary. 

A little slow, but definitely worth the wait. 

I told Chris we could designate our upcoming camping trip to Mt St Helens as our 'official 6th year' anniversary adventure....until I realized that it had already been anointed his 'official 31st birthday present'.

Back to the drawing board. 

xxoo, 

Sonja 

For you, on your anniversary

Lately I've happened upon a few blogs that I've found to be quite entertaining. Some of them have been from Crunchy Chicken and few others from LookyDaddy.com.

Here is a nice piece written by MetroDad to his wife on their 7th wedding anniversary.

There are three things that I always tell people when they're about to get married.

One, always remember that marriage is about the journey, not the destination.

Two, always remember that a great marriage is like a duck. Everything may look smooth on the surface but underneath, you've got to paddle like hell.

Three, keep in mind that the key to a healthy long-term relationship is never go shopping for shoes with your wife.

Also, if you can afford separate bathrooms (usually both for her,) go for it.

Personally, before I got married, people gave me crappy advice. About a million people told me "whatever happens, don't go to bed angry." Seriously? I find it hard to believe that there are couples out there who can get into massive fights and then have everything be alright before "Nightline" comes on. I have personally slept on our couch enough times that there's a giant indentation of my ass right smack in the middle of it.

But that's ok. Arguing can be healthy in a relationship. Spouses are individual people with their own individual views and needs. What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with the incompatibility.

That's far more important to remember than any aphorism about not going to bed angry.

Personally, I like to celebrate my anniversary by thanking my wife for putting up with me. I snore like a buffalo, hate doing laundry, and cannot go shopping with her for more than 10 minutes before I want to blow my brains out. I fart incessantly, tell the same stories at every dinner party, and am utterly useless at fixing anything other than a dangling participle. Also, my feet smell like ass and I clog our toilet up on a weekly basis.

On the other hand, my wife is a wonderful, intelligent, beautiful, sexy, funny woman whom I love and adore. She not only puts up with all my little "quirks" but she actually finds them charming. I'm lucky to have her and the key to our marriage is that we both know it.

So...happy anniversary, honey!

As the great American philosopher Rocky Balboa once said, "I got gaps; you got gaps; we fill each other's gaps."

Let's keep filling them together.

I love you.

1st Wedding Anniversary

Sunday was our first wedding anniversary! We got all dressed up and had a lovely dinner in Newport Beach.

Where has the time gone?

In honor of our six month wedding anniversary (which actually isn't until tomorrow), I decided to finally get our pictures together and put them into an album. Three albums, actually.

There are a couple companies out there that create photo albums after the customer uploads the pictures to their website. I tried one that is called MyPublisher and found that the result was a fairly good photo album for a somewhat moderate price. They make great gifts for friends and family.

Here is the front cover

My favorite feature is the fact that there are multiple layouts so it's easy to arrange the pictures to your liking. Here are a couple of the pages from our book:

We had a lot of black and white photos which I chose to group together in the album rather than mixing them with the color pictures. I wouldn't use MyPublisher if you need an album in which the pictures are of exceptional quality; the picture quality is decent but it doesn't have the pizazz that a homemade album will.
This is our "formal" wedding album that Chris' parents gave to us. It's archival quality and I chose to put only black and white photos from the wedding in this one. Today I also started on an album that will contain all the bits and pieces from the wedding; the invitation, program, newspaper articles, and all the lovely cards that we received from friends and family. I'm also going to try and put our honeymoon pictures in here. I'm a little overwhelmed though and mostly I've just been moving stuff around; not pasting it down. I'm gong to try and make it my project for this week.

Pat and Joy's Wedding

Right before we left for Hawaii, we attended the wedding of one of my best friends from high school. Even from the early days, Joy was the self appointed social chair. She was always the one thinking up activities, scheduling, cooking, baking, and hosting. Without her, my social calendar would have been pretty dismal.  So when she met Patrick, gregarious, fun-loving, out-going, a connoisseur of music and wine, it was the perfect fit. Think of the parties these two would throw! 

And, indeed, their wedding fit them to a T: it was a fabulous, jubilant event filled with friends, food, and dancing. A great, celebratory party. 

Their event was held in the Engine Room of the Georgetown Studios.  It was old-world industrial meets victorian chic. What a funky, fabulous location.

True to form, I forgot to take pictures. And the two that I did were blurry. So I borrowed a few from a diligently-snapping Marcilla:

 The nice thing about being pregnant is that I no longer feel guilty about being the first one to take a seat.   My feet hurt. Baby J is soooo heavy, let's sit down! Works like a charm.  

 Clearly, Sara and I matched both our outfits and our lipstick color ahead of time...

Reason #1 why I love weddings: The chance to see old friends from far away places. 

Also, did I mention that I'm going to have an easier time remembering Pat and Joy's wedding anniversary than my own? 10-10-2010. No excuse for forgetting that one..

3 Months!!

Holy cow, we're already at our three month wedding anniversary. Gosh, I feel old. :)
We were at a benefit auction last night and there was a couple at our table that was preparing for their wedding in November. I have to say, I enjoyed wedding planning for the first couple months but then it got old; especially in the month right before the big day. Both Chris and I got to the point where we were excited to get married but that we were also really looking forward to having it over and enjoying the honeymoon. That's not to say that we didn't enjoy the wedding; we both did. But it was such a lot of planning and I got a bit sick of the fact that weddings have turned into such commercial events.

Random Odds and Ends

We've been on a bit of a kitchen splurge lately. My dear husband is turning into quite the chef and he decided to take advantage of Amazon's free shipping policy to beef up our culinary gadget stockpile. I can only hope that our next home has a giant pantry.

This was the kitchen device about which I was most excited... An APPLE PEELER

I spent significant time deciding which one to buy: the clamp or the suction cup style. I finally went against my gut instinct and bought the suction cup one because it got better reviews on Amazon. So far, so good.


Despite the fact that my Joy Of Cooking advises pie makers to use red delicious apples instead of a blend of fuji and granny smith varities, a recommendation that is almost blasphemous in our household, they did manage to come up with a pretty good pie crust recipe. It's very flaky which makes it difficult to roll but the resulting taste was excellent.

On the whole, I'm rather disappointed with my Joy of Cooking version. Not only do they recommend mealy red delicious, but they specifically poo-poo our very favorite granny smiths. The ratio of fuji (or like kinds) to granny smith's is a hotly contested topic in my home , spanning at least three generations. We take our apple pie very seriously in this household.


Besides, look at the cool shapes that you can make with quality apples. You could never pull that off with a red delicious.
Chris was most excited about our waffle and panini makers. My grandmother gave us her ancient waffle maker several years ago and it has been a faithful appliance for close to 40 years. However, I used it for both waffles and paninis and our waffles seemed to have acquired a rather strong burnt cheese flavor, no matter how well I cleaned the machine. So, it was time for retirement.

Enter the very cool new waffle maker. So cool, in fact, that I got waffles in bed this morning. A girl can't ask for anything else!
Here is your interesting Italian sandwich fact of the day (courtesy of wikipedia):
A panino (pronounced /pəˈniːnoʊ/) is a sandwich made from a small loaf of bread, typically a ciabatta. The loaf is often cut horizontally and filled with salami, ham, meat, cheese or other food, and sometimes served hot. A grilled panino is buttered on the outside and grilled in a press.
The word "panino" [pa'ni:no] is Italian (literally meaning small bread roll), with the plural panini. "Panini" is often used in a singular sense by speakers of languages that borrow the word, including English and French, and pluralised when necessary into "paninis".



In other culinary news, I've found that I have a bit of a moral dilemma on my hands. I am an unapologetic consumer of exotic fruits. You name it, I probably love it. I'm known at work for eating kiwis, mango, and papayas on a daily basis. We always had lots of fresh fruit in my house growing up and my mother purchased the stranger items so we could add them to our repertoire. Also, in Costa Rica, bananas, pineapples, and papayas were served for breakfast every morning.

Anyway, the dilemma comes from the fact that exotic fruit, especially in the winter, definitely isn't locally grown and has probably traveled thousands of miles to reach our table. This isn't a great use of fossil fuels when there are several local alternatives (oranges, strawberries, apples) to those grown near the equator. But....am I willing to give up my delicious (and healthy!) diet staples in favor of environmental consciousness? I'm still struggling with that decision.

This was our stock of lovely non-local fruits as of last weekend: I'm skipping around here, theme-wise, for this blog post. I've decided that it's time to ditch my wedding bouquet. It was beautiful on my (our) wedding day but by the time we'd arrived home from the honeymoon it was pretty sorry-looking. I've had it hanging in my closet every since, hoping that it would magically morph back into its once-beautiful self. That didn't happen of course. Instead it's been slowing shedding petals and collecting cobwebs.

There's another reason that I hung on to it for so long: good old sentimentality. I'm not usually a victim of that sort but here I think its understandable.



Speaking of weddings, I absolutely adore this wedding cake that was featured in the newspaper the other day. It's gorgeous. I probably love it so much because it's covered in dog wood flowers, a tree that I'd like to have in my yard someday. Chris' grandparents used to have a dogwood tree in their yard in Redmond and it always looked so fresh and pure. Of course, they also had a yard maintenance service that cleanup up all the moldy flowers so I guess I'm a bit biased here...

Maybe I'll have them make this cake for our 10 year wedding anniversary or something. Or perhaps our 5th year. I'm not sure I can wait all the way to the 10th (in terms of cake, not marriage longevity!). Of course, they used fondant on the outside which is absolutely tasteless. Give me creamy frosting any day.
Hmm. I really need to apologize for the randomness of this blog post. I went through my photos and discovered all the pictures that I'd been meaning to post for the last several months but never got around to.

Ok, last but not least, your dose of daily events from my office. It's a rather well known fact that I'm not a huge football fan. Not a huge fan of most organized sports in general. My office mates have been absolutely obsessed with a fantasy football league for the past several months. It dominates the lunchroom conversation. I made a tactical error early on by declining to join the league. Had I joined, I would have had something interesting to discuss. But no, I thumbed my nose at fantasy football and consequently suffered through the rest of the season. It was all in good fun, of course. I have a lovely group of coworkers that are a delightful bunch. But still, I would have thought that football talk would have run its course...eventually.....not the case.

Fantasy football wrapped up last weekend and in honor of my public football disgust, they named the first place trophy after me. I'd like to present to you: The J Trophy from the Waterstone/Millennium Fantasy Football League.


It was paraded around the office today and everyone (me included) got a good kick out it. At least they didn't name the loser's trophy after me! And who knows, maybe next year, I'll join get my own fantasy team.

Wedding. Year 4.

Today is our four year wedding anniversary. 

How lucky am I that I got to marry this sweet guy?

Here are anniversary posts one, two, and three. Here are the photos from that lovely day:

Wedding

There are other things in life besides having a baby

My Dears,

I feel like I owe you an apology. If you’re not really interested in babies then this blog has been a prett-y lousy read for the last five months. Our lives have been consumed with the eating, sleeping and pooping cycle of one squalling infant and the blog has been a reflection of that. Plus I was so delighted to have another model besides Bailey that I got a little snap happy. So I’m sorry for that.

I’m going to try and add in a few other non-baby tidbits that have been happening in our lives. But I’m guessing it’ll continue to be pretty infant-heavy, considering that we don’t have a whole lot else going on at the moment.

So, first on the agenda:

Chris and I have our wedding anniversary here in a few weeks and I’d really like to do something fun. It can’t be too exotic since we have the bambino and I was thinking that we might push it back by a few months to take advantage of the cheaper fall season.

So: Any ideas? Recommendations?

I was sort of thinking romantic beach cottage weekend in the San Juans:

[eh, I cheated on this photo. It’s not from the San Juans but from Canada. And not even from the west coast of Canada either, but from a lovely little site on the Atlantic Ocean]

Or yurting along the Columbia River:

And then I made the mistake of googling ‘Glamping in WA’ which was all nice and good except I found a site which, in addition to cute tenting opportunities in our fair state, also lists cool glamping operations from around the world. Like this one in Australia:

Bad idea. I have got to stop looking at international travel Sites.

I then googled ‘unique places to stay in WA’ and found this gem. How often does one get to stay in a lighthouse?!

This website also had exotic inns from around the world. I was just about to sign my dad up for this one in Costa Rica:

Here you get to sleep in a Boeing 737 that’s been turned into a resort.



Anyway, back to our anniversary plans. Any reasonable, not-too-expensive-or-far-from-home ideas? Good restaurants? Cool places to spend a night or two? That allow kiddos? Places that have nearby things to do [eating, hiking, hot tubbing, eating, biking, eating, eating, eating (I like to eat) etc]. It doesn’t have to be far from Seattle, in fact, within the Emerald City is a-ok too.

Muchas Gracias, peeps!

Congratulations to Bob and Cherie who are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary today!

Christmas Recap

My Mom mentioned in passing that Christmas is a lot of work for parents. Boy was she right. 

But in a good way. 

Ben slept late on Christmas morning and Chris and I made breakfast and got a bit of relaxing in before the Bambino was ready for action. He wolfed down a few swedish pancakes and then moved on to his stocking. 

 Santa and his plucky little elf. 

 I actually wrapped some of Ben's presents in fabric scraps, hoping that he would find the wrapping to be less edible. 

 It sort of worked. He was pretty excited about the general ripping and tearing that was going on. Plus the ribbon made for some good chewing. 

 Pig pile on the presents. [Randomly, can you tell this year that I was on a green theme? I get tired of the red/green combo. Last year I think it was blue. The year before that: glitter.]

 Yummm...plastic!

 These are a bit 'big' for him right now but they'll be fun later on down the road. 

 Whoa nelly. What is this cool red thing?!

 Time to go for a ride. 

 After a bit of present opening, and naps all-around, we headed over to my Grandma's retirement home for a nice lunch that my mom put together. Nana isn't up for much these days so it was nice to be able to go to her. My uncle and cousin were in attendance and Nana was pretty pleased with the gathering. My grandpa is in the memory care unit right next door but he didn't much care for the idea of leaving his lunch in order to trundle over to the party so he missed out on the festivities. Not his best day. Another time, maybe. 

 Later we headed over to my parent's house for dinner and some serious apple pie eating. 

 A lovely, low-key Christmas. Glad to spend it with my dear family, sorry to not see Chris' family this time around. 

Today was equally relaxed.  Chris went into work for a bit and then we did a few things around the house, went for a stroll (above), made some post-Christmas cookies, and then met up with my parents to pick out our new front door. You may not think much of getting a door for Christmas.... but we are over the moon about it. It's going to be awesome. 

Chris and I still have to decide on our joint gift for this year. We have a bad habit of picking our present and then not following through. I still have a massage from my birthday last February that I haven't gone in for. And then there is that 5 year wedding anniversary trip up to the San Juans that hasn't made it past the planning stages. Maybe that can be my new year's resolution: stop dreaming, start planing. 

xxoo, 

Sonja