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.

Excape From Alcatraz

Lasst weak wee wint tue Al KuhTraz and sau thuh nete selz that thuh prihzuhnuhrs had tue stai inn. Iht wuz prittie phuhn dispight haffeeng tue lihmp uhrownd ahl dae beecuz eye hert migh nei plaeing soccuhr.
Luckily it was a very nice day, much warmer than we expected San Francisco to be.
The audio tour was quite interesting, including stories from old, released prisoners recounting their time on the rock. It is quite a creepy place, though. I'm not sure how the prison guards and their families lived on the same island as the worst criminals in the country and slept at night.
After the tour we got some good ol' San Francisco clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl and fish sticks!

With a hurt knee, Labor Day weekend was spent lying around the house, watching the last season of Lost, and checking Craigslist for apartments like an addict. We FINALLY have a place to live in Seattle, we're moving this weekend (thanks to help from our families), and we just have to figure out what to do with our bed out here!

It's been great living out here in California. Going back to a roommate-style arrangement has been interesting, but we're excited to have our own place again. The weather has been amazing, prices - expensive, fun times - awesome. We'll see what adventures await us in grad school and Washington! Anyone who is ever up in Seattle or wants to come visit us sometime, feel free to drop by - we've got an extra room!

Happiest Place on Earth

We went to Disneyland this week! It was incredibly fun. This was Mitch's first trip to Disneyland and the whole experience exceeded his expectations. We stayed at the beautiful home of our cousins Grant and Natali Lenning and enjoyed visiting with them too. My favorite new feature was "World of Color" a water and light projection show in California Adventure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glpeElM-l5U&feature=fvw . We spent 3 days bouncing between the two parks and enjoying every minute. The first 2 days weren't too crowded and we were able to go on all the best rides with hardly any waiting in line. Our favorite rides were... Toy Story Mania (the ride is in 3D, how sweet is that!?), Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tower of Terror, California Screamer, It's a Small World. Another highlight was eating at the Blue Bayou. This is the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I've wanted to go there since I was a little kid and so we decided to celebrate our 3rd Anniversary a little early. We also loved the Pixar Parade...truthfully we loved everything about the whole visit. We'll let the pictures do most of the talking.




Back off Minnie!

Get yours today for only $25.95. This is a mint condition, collectors edition, new in box!

We were lucky enough to be in line just when Jesse was leaving and Woody was replacing her so we got a photo with both! Bonus! The new Toy Story Mania ride in 3D is SWEEEET! It's worth the long wait in line!

Sully wouldn't let Mitch hug him or come anywhere near me. He is a very protective monster...and very cuddly soft.

The Mad Hatter was tickled pink that we all matched!

Fantastic Family Fun!

This week we almost had more fun than we could handle! My brothers and dad came to visit on Wednesday...it was pretty much 3 days of non-stop excitement. Wednesday night we made smores and got to hear stories from Lee's mission. Thursday morning we went to San Francisco and visited all the trademark tourist spots including the sea lions, Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. We also went into some really pretty art galleries and had some delicious sea food and sourdough bread. One of the best parts of the day was Dad's street performing debut as part of the Merry Mary show. Mary is a circus type performer and Dad helped her with her juggling act (after she made him shake his booty chip n' dale style at the audience).

Dad helping out with the Merry Mary show. Leftys...the only ones in our right mind :)

That night Kody and I got see Wicked. It was BRILLIANT. We had fantastic seats and the performances were spot on. It was even better the second time around. So glad I got to see it with Kody. The whole experience was unforgettable.


Friday we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and got more than we bargained for. We started off by hitting all the big roller coasters. Then we caught some fun shows (sea lions, Shouka the Orca, and dolphins). Then back to rides. We also went through a beautiful butterfly house with hundreds of unique and lovely butterflies. We finished the day with bumper cars.


One of these things is not like the other.

Saturday we went back into San Francisco and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. We had lunch on the shore at Sausilito. Then we went to Muir Woods - the most gorgeous forest I have even been to. Some of the trees are thousands of years old and a hundred feet tall. That evening we had some tasty pizza and went to the Tennis Club and played Marco Polo in the pool and relaxed in the hot tubs. We polished the night off with Livermore's famous Donut Wheel and Miracle Snow.

BIG BRIDGE...........

little bridge

See the little tiny speck at the bottom of the picture on the right...that's me compared to the enormously humongous redwood tree. The beautiful picture on the left was taken by Mitch.


GIGANTIC, beautiful trees.

The boys left this morning after Sacrament meeting, which I might add, was excellent. The topic was education. The talks were really well done and the Spirit was amazing...a great way to wrap up a great week.