One Year Older and Wiser Too

I celebrated my birthday this week with beautiful weather, tasty seafood and all things Halloween. I felt completely spoiled by friends and family who sent a delightful batch of birthday cards (creative/thoughtful or hilarious birthday cards are my favorite). I also received some lovely flowers and fun Halloween decorations/clothing. Mitch made me a happy fruit filled breakfast and we had dinner at Duke's Chowder House on Greenlake. We also got pumpkin ice cream. YUM!


Tasty food all day long, including lots of chocolate, fruit and seafood.


Pretty flowers from Teddy, Mitch and Alan & Melanie

*Side note: my new favorite place is Greenlake. It's about 3 miles around and absolutely gorgeous with the fall colors. It's a great place for a thought provoking walk, people watching, walking your dog/kids, and eavesdropping on some fascinating conversations/debates. It's the ideal place to go on a sunny day, which we've had lots of since we got here surprisingly.*



Anyway, we also went pumpkin shopping on my birthday and picked out some great jack-o-lanterns to be. Mitch got me an amazing book! It's a collection James Christensen's Art and explanations/history of his artwork. It's call "A Journey of the Imagination". LOVE, LOVE!



Another highlight of the week was watching "How to Train your Dragon" with our friends the Staples and Andersons and having a treat fest with chocolate cake, cookies and lemon meringue pie. On Saturday we got to help at a local food warehouse preparing food for soup kitchens and food banks with other UW physics graduate students. Very fun indeed.

We Love Autumn

After we got the house organized this weekend I decided to try making pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin instead of a can. Here are the results...

BEFORE

AFTER (YUMMY)

I also made beef stew from scratch in the crock pot. I guess I was feeling extra domestic this weekend. The colors are just beginning to change and we are getting our Halloween costumes together. This is my favorite time of year!

We Love Seattle

We love the style and attitude here in Seattle! We love our new apartment and ward! We love new classes and new jobs! So many new changes in just 2 weeks!

NEW APARTMENT
The move to Seattle went smooth as butta. My mom and dad hauled the horse trailer full of our stuff from Utah up to Seattle (thanks to everyone who helped!). We found a great 2 bedroom apartment a few miles away from University of Washington. Here's a little virtual tour of our new place...


Living Room


Mitch's handy work :) what a helpful husband I've got. He hauled these up four flights of stairs and then put them together...hot!


Bathroom-I really like how the coloring turned out :)
We also have a little washer/dryer tucked in here.

Guest/Storage room :) VISIT US! We have lots of visitor space. There's another bed that pulls out from under the twin in the picture. Plus we have a big air mattress. So, bring the whole fam!


Entrance from the living room and kitchen from the hall.


Bedroom

Kitchen


The view from the kitchen into the living room through the cute little bar.


The view down our street and the porch.


View looking down and looking up from the porch.

NEW JOB
I was blessed with the perfect job about a week after we got here. I'll be nannying two handsome little guys named Teddy (12mo) and Gavin (18mo). Their parents are good friends and live only a few blocks apart so they share a nanny. There are tons of fun things to do in their neighborhood including a zoo, lots of parks, cute shops and cafe's and best of all Greenlake. It's about a 3 mile walk around the lake and it's gorgeous. I'll work T-TH for 9 hours and a half day on Friday. The parents are all wonderful and I can tell they are great parents to their boys.

NEW SCHOOL
When I asked Mitch what UW grad school is like he replied, "It's hard...Nothing like undergraduate studies because grades don't matter and the teachers don't give you all the material. You have to look it up for yourself."

Total homework time in 3 days...13 hours! That was just one assignment in mechanics.