Simpsons in Seattle

We've all been looking forward to having some time off to enjoy sunny CA and what better way to start off the trip with a visit to Harry Potter World?  We got to Universal Studios when it opened at 10am but the place was already as zoo. I felt a bit better that mask mandates were in place and it is required to be fully vaccinated or show proof of a negative COVID test before you get in. The lines to go through security and show your COVID status were long but moved fairly quickly, which was a precursor for the rest of the day. I haven't been to Universal in at least 15 years (since we moved to Seattle) and know that there's lotsto do but of course, first up was we HAD to go to Harry Potter World and go to Olivander's! This was Evie's only request for the trip so we made a beeline for the shop. The line to get to the "show" was already 40 minutes long so while Nora and I jumped into the line, Scott and Evie grabbed butterbeer - one frozen and one cold. If y

The Orcas house had an open weekend last week so we snagged it to go check in on the house before the end of the year. The recent storms apparently did a ton of damage to our cliff side - the stairs going down are demolished and a couple of scraggly bushes fell over the side! Yikes!  It was pretty gloomy all weekend so we didn't do too much. Still, it was a nice little getaway and even though we've been a zillion times now, we still discover new things all the time like the gingerbread house contest that they had at the local market. We were super impressed with the entries!  We made paper wreaths as crafts all weekend long. This was our fav gingerbread "house". It's a ski chalet and ski lift! Angry stormy water when we were on the ferry coming home.  

Evie's new favorite ice cream is hand-mixed cookies and cream! Nora wanted cookies with ice cream in the middle, which led us to smashing joe joes into vanilla ice cream and now Evie is obsessed and loves it! I am a big cookies-and-cream ice cream fan myself and think it's a great combo - the joe joes aren't too sweet and you can adjust how smashed you want the cookies, or how much cookie you want. Next up we will have to try this with all the various joe joe flavors!  

My team did a virtual holiday event where we made our own wreaths! They hired Sound Excursions (owned by our friends!) to ship us all the materials and then we all got on a Teams call together to have Sam and Cassie walk us through how to make our wreath.  I had to step away from the call for something else but they recorded the session and so that evening, Evie and Nora watched the session to follow along and make the wreath! The house smelled wonderful because of it and they had a lot of fun following along. I think the wreath turned out pretty well too!  

I'm a little late in posting about our fun Thanksgiving trip! We kicked off the holiday week with a visit from Evie's old friend, Nicole. These two used to be really great friends, and Diego (Nicole's brother) is a year older than Nora and so playdates worked out pretty well. Sadly, Nicole moved to Atlanta 2 years ago but we've kept in touch with them and when they mentioned they would be in town, Evie was over the moon! We met up with them at their hotel where the kids played in the pool and then we grabbed takeout to eat.  For the actual holiday, we took off Wednesday to try to beat the holiday traffic because we knew we had a l-o-n-g drive ahead of us! Our destination was SunPeaks, which bills itself as the second largest ski resort in Canada after Whistler. It's in interior BC and the normal route of going straight north towards Vancouver and then veering right after you cross the border would normally take about 6.5 hours. Unfortunately, the recent storms washe