Simpsons in Seattle

Memorial day weekend is always extra special since it happens to coincide with my birthday. This year was one I will remember for a long time. On Saturday grammy and grandpa join us for brunch at the Space Needle restaurant. The weather was perfect, perhaps even a tad hot for us Seattlites. The view was spectacular but I think the girls were most impressed by the helium balloons and dry ice fog-oozing desserts. After lunch we went on a quick ride in the boat, then scooted back to Bellevue for a rib-tastic BBQ. Evie was so excited about my birthday that she decorated her plastic peddle car with birthday cards and drawings of Dad+Evie. After dinner May took me for a summer evening drink at a fancy bar /restaurant in Bellevue. On Sunday afternoon Greg and I took Evie + Blakely on an overnight boat camping trip. We geared up the boat, loaded it with hot dogs, and then drove the boat over to Seaward Park in Seattle and dropped anchor. The girls had a blast giggling and w

There was a Bake Sale at school to raise money for Cancer research and I surprised the girls with cake pops that I bought for them. This was Nora's face when she got her Chocolate Cake Pop. Man, this girls looooves her sweets.

oh man, we are so behind with posting! I was going to not post about Mother's Day because it already came and went but I needed to memorialize the day/night on our blog because it was EPIC! First, I got to sleep because Scott and the girls made me a lovely Sausage, Tomato and Cheese Fritatta for breakfast. Then, I got to open my lovely gifts: Many handmade cards and lots of gifts! An original Scott Simpson cutting board Close up of the beautiful berry bowl from Orcas Pottery. Then, we headed over to Seattle to have some playtime and brunch with our pals Blakely and Graham. It's been a Mother's day tradition (see here and here ) to hang out with the Kriegler family and we had a blast again this year. The boys made a wonderful feast and Scott even freshly squeezed grapefruit so we could have Grapefruit Mimosas! Unfortunately, no pics of the lovely spread or of the kids goofing around of of the beautiful weather that allowed us to sit outside after lunch. I&

I'd always vaguely taken note of the signs for the Rhododendron and Bonsai Garden off I-5 whenever we drive down south towards Portland, but never really thought about going until this was featured in a magazine recently as a "hidden gem". The article and website noted that peak blooming times for rhodies are March - May so I insisted we mosey on down there last weekend despite the iffy weather! I'm really glad we sucked it up and went despite the drizzle because the gardens were actually quite pretty. Even better, we couldn't see where to buy entrance tickets and no one stopped us from walking in so our little afternoon trip was free! There's several different gardens to explore and it was interesting that so many Rhodies were from the Asia Pacific corridor like China, Papa New Guinea and Indonesia and even Nepal. We didn't have much time to check out the Bonsai garden but it was fun to look at these trees that are decades old and only a foot or two tal

SO much to catch up on! But first, here's a quick snap of Evie at Judo class last weekend. We wanted her to try something like this so she can learn some self defense moves but we may have not given her enough context to the class. She was in the 6-12 age group and I think it was a bit overwhelming for her. She said she enjoyed it though! We'll try out a few other types of martial arts classes before deciding whether this is what she wants to do.