I was Brown and now I'm Wight: April 2014

Easter

As Cole and I were away for most of the weekend in Seattle, our Easter consisted of dinner at my grandma's on Sunday night and an Easter Egg hunt on Monday morning. K did well collecting her eggs and was very good about sharing with her sister and leaving some for her to find. B found a few eggs and enjoyed the excitement.

Find videos here, here, here and here.

Thankfully, they are too young to know mommy and daddy abandoned them this holiday. At least it wasn't Christmas :p

5 Years: Our Seattle Trip

Easter this year fell 4 days before our 5th anniversary so we took advantage of the long weekend and dropped the girls off at my parents' house for Fri/Sat/Sun and had a mini vacation in Seattle. We left really early Friday morning and came back Sunday evening for a family Easter dinner at my grandparents' house.

The border line up could have been worse and in fact, was made a little better by the fact that we accidentally (truly) ended up in the nexus line and had to then jump into the regular line so we cut in and reduced our waiting time significantly. It was a honest mistake- we followed the signs and the lane took us into the nexus line instead of to the back of the regular line. Even after it happened we couldn't figure it out.

We did some shopping at the Tulalip outlets. I hate shopping and avoid it at all costs. But we had some things we actually needed so we thought we'd try to find some deals down South that we wouldn't find back home. We were fairly successful. I got a couple of maxi skirts (summer's yoga pants). Cole got to gleefully make his way through the UnderArmour store..more than once.

Next, we spent some time in the temple book store, which we never really get to go to now that we have the Vancouver temple and it doesn't have a book store. Now book shopping is more my speed!

Then we checked into our hotel, right near the Space Needle. I was over the moon about having 2 nights where I didn't need to listen out for kids. My body completely shut down both nights and the sleep felt like 5 minutes. It was the sleep of the dead. I would probably need a year of sleep like that before feeling normal again.

We booked two activities, both for Saturday. One was a 3 hour walking/tasting tour of Pike Place Market called Best Bites. I highly recommend it. It was very interesting history mixed with some super tasty bites. Our tour guide, Marla, was excellent. Tickets were $40/each. Best bite was the chowder from Pike Place Chowder. It was closed the next day for Easter, which devastated us because we wanted to go back for a proper portion. But next time. Best chowder of my life. Their seafood bisque is also award winning. Everything we ate was superb. And as we were on the tour we took mental notes of the places we didn't get to eat at that we still wanted to try. On Sunday, after we checked our of our hotel, we headed back to the market and had our own tour of the all bites we missed the day before. My favourites (besides the chowder) were the yogurt stand (will blow your mind), the greek place (don't remember the name), Beecher's mac n cheese, Saffron Spice and Taste (the museum restaurant that is almost all organic/local). The olive oil/balsamic vinegar tasting bar was probably the more surprising and interesting, though. If we had a bigger budget for souvenirs, I for sure would have spent some there. Worth a trip.

I was supremely jealous of the fresh farm dairy, produce and flowers available at Pike Place. Would love to have a large farmer's market like that to frequent.

Our second activity was a couple's massage at Ananya Spa downtown. It was a full hour but felt like so much less. Perfectly timed after a 3 hour walking tour, too. From what I saw of the services while waiting for the massage and then the massage itself, I would have no problem recommending this spa.

Our dining experiences were divine. Friday night, we ate at Il Bistro (attached to Pike Place). It's super popular, and even with reservations there's a bit of a wait. It's a very romantic restaurant if you're not near a loud, drunk group like we were. A tad dark for my taste- but the service and food was excellent. Cole had a seafood linguine dish and I had a melt-in-your-mouth beef tenderloin. The dessert was lovely, as well. Saturday night was considerable less expensive (like our whole dinner didn't even reach the cost of one of our entrees at Il Bistro). It was this shack on the side of the road outside of downtown. The beauty of the internet is now those places can be found by the tourists. It was really busy and we just got in front of the dinner rush so that was lucky. There's a few picnic tables beside it. Paseo serves Carribean fare, the most popular being their delicious slow roasted pork sandwiches. Giant, oozing with flavour and under $9. Best meat sandwich we've ever had- side of the road or otherwise. Felt like my own Guy Fieri.

It was a lovely trip and a nice vacation from our kids. Super grateful to my family for watching them all weekend. Becca slept beautifully for them- almost 12/hrs straight. She's NEVER done that for me.

It was nice to be back in the city where we married for our celebration of 5 years. It has been an incredibly busy 5 years- it was good to take a couple days to enjoy some peace.

We did take some pictures of our tour, but that's about it, which is so like us:

Pike Place market (Il Bistro is the windows on the far right)

our tour started with a story about the price of onions back in the day
and how the market got started

our bite: banana, almond, nutella crepes

best chowder in the country (many many awards to prove it)

best yogurt of my life

enviable produce

if you like indian food, you'll love this place
(even Cole enjoyed it and he doesn't like indian food)

famous gum wall

Cole adding his own piece

Uli's Sausage (no preservatives or fillers)

such an interesting experience- worth a visit

not your average museum restaurant (organic, local, delicious)

Springtime with my Girls

Time for another general update. So much changes so fast. Spring has sprung and as such, we pray everyday for sun but mostly get rain. The glimpses we get that summer is on its way are delightful and my girls have been seen in shorts on more than one occasion this month.

B is 10 months old: she has 4 teeth, she can crawl, she can walk while holding onto something, she has taken her first step solo, she can stand up from sitting position without holding onto anything, she can climb, and she can say mama, dada and nana (which she uses for no). She knows Cole and calls him dada, and she uses nana when she really does mean no. Mama is used periodically and not necessarily when she's talking to me. But that will come. She is big enough and strong enough to wrestle with her sister. She is brave and when she hears me chasing after her, she crawls faster to her destination instead of freezing in the excitement. She sleeps practically through the night- she no longer gets up to eat before 6am but she sometimes needs us to go in there to give her back her soother or put the blanket back on her. She loves food- she's my little garburator and often finishes her sister's dinner. She does not like spicy food like her sister did at this age, though.

Cole's favourite B moment lately has been when she started rushing to the gate when she sees him coming home, she crawls fast and says "dadda dadda".

K is 2 1/2 and is now completely potty trained- even at night. Don't know how that happened...she's been waking up dry for about a month now. It was nice of her to take care of that on her own. Her speaking is taking off and she says complex, multi-word sentences now. She's learning present, past and future tense right now. She still has trouble pronouncing the "l"s, "y"s, "w"s and some "r"s (depending on where they are in the word). She's learning to pray and says her bedtime prayers almost on her own. She sometimes says the meal prayers as well. She's getting better on her bike- we don't take her as much as we should so it's slow going. She loves going to church. Her new thing is to tell us about all the things, places and people she loves.

My favourite K story lately has been when she went into the kitchen looking for a wipe. She looked around and then cupped her hands around her mouth and said, "Wipe! Wipe! Where are you?? Wipe?" She hasn't figured out that you can't call out for inanimate objects.

The girls thoroughly enjoyed having their cousin "J" come visit for a couple days. He seemed to enjoy them, too, most of the time. B and J are only 6 months apart. K couldn't get enough of another baby being in the house. She loves babies.

I can't believe B will be a year in less than 2 months and K will be 3 when the summer ends. This has been the fastest year of my life. I'm thoroughly enjoying this stage right now where B is active but not running away and the girls are able to play with each other. This has been the fastest year of my life.