Simpsons in Seattle

The girls and I went down for a quick last minute trip last weekend. We couldn't make it down to join the rest of the Yu clan for their Palm Springs trip, and it sounds like we missed out on a lot of fun but at least we were able to get down for the tail end of their get together! I'm so glad we did because we got to spend one evening with Way and her family before she had to drive back up to SF.  The rest of the weekend was pretty low-key. On Saturday, since we were already up bright and early to say goodbye to Way, we drove out to the beach. Unfortunately, it was gray and cloudy with June gloom there, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves before it got too crowded and got back to my parents house for lunch.  On Sunday, we celebrated Father's Day with an early lunch trip to Shake Shack for burgers! We've been to this location before in West Hollywood and like that it has a huge outdoor patio with plenty of space for us to spread out and the kids to run around a bit.

Some goofy photos from the past few weeks: Jenga night Nora always runs hot.... Doing fun selfies No clue why they both were trying to eat their toes!  

We celebrated Evie's big 1-0 birthday last week! I can't believe she's already double digits! It is really mind boggling how fast time flies. It only seemed like yesterday that she was this sweet little bundle we were taking home from the hospital.  For her actual birthday, she woke up to some balloons and a pile of gifts on the kitchen table. I cooked her requested breakfast of French Toast Bites, and then she jumped on her Zoom class for the day. Since it was a Wednesday, she was out of school early and set up a Zoom birthday call with several of her friends where they basically just chit chatted for an hour. I had offered to book a virtual escape room and even found her some online games like pictionary and scattegories but she didn't want any of my help with her party! For dinner, we had Evie's favorite chicken (aka orange chicken), and then a home made apple pie. My pie wasn't nearly as good as Grammie's, but it was a good substitute. At 10, Evie is at

Last weekend we celebrated Scott's 44th turn around the sun. Grammie and Grandpa were here to join on the fun, and we were all very grateful that Scott requested Grammie's famous apple pie for dessert because boy, do we all love that pie! Happy happy birthday, Scott! Scott always requests ribs for dinner. Cool dude doesn't look a day over 31. Pie pie pie  

There's a whole list of longer or more challenging hikes that I've been wanting to go to and we finally made it to one of them - a nearby-ish hike called Garfield Ledges. I was able to convince the girls to go because it was close, was not a long trail (2.2M r/t) and it promised a nice view. The hike ended up ticking 2 out of those 3 boxes! The trail was actually was a lot further than we thought because while it was only maybe 20 minutes on the freeway to the exit in North Bend, it was another 15 miles down the road after that. Still, we made pretty good time and was out at the trailhead by about 9:30am.  The hike was just a little over a mile to the viewpoint, and it ascends about 900 ft so there's quite a lot of switchbacks. The girls entertained themselves by talking about fairies and rock goblins and making up stories about where they live, and before they knew it, we were at the top!  We were there early enough that when we go to the top, there was one other party han