It looks like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths but we all know looks can be deceiving! What a pair of cheeky boys!
Cheeky Monkey’s
Skiing
The ski lessons are back on a Wednesday afternoon and here are the first action movies. Admittedly neither are coming down the slope films but it’s a bit tricky identifying the boys amongst everyone else! Anyway, here are a couple of videos of Toby on and around the magic carpet and being scooped up by the ski lift:
httpv://youtu.be/SnXAu8QFWyo
httpv://youtu.be/lfrgVQw5wZs
A brief glimpse of Harry:
And a ready to rock Toby:
It certainly beats an afternoon at school!
Return to Bainbridge
The last time we went to Bainbridge was for a Gunners soccer tournament back in August 2011. The return to Bainbridge was because it was Saturday morning, the sun was out and I decided we ought to go somewhere on a ferry – after all Tracy does like a Washington State ferry!
After having a quick breakfast, getting dressed and throwing stuff in to the trunk we set off to Seattle and the ferry terminal. The excitement of going on a ferry, and having to sit waiting for a ferry, meant that we had a second breakfast – McDonalds hash browns for all – yum!
The ferry duly arrived and we drove on to what turned out to be a quiet trip. Clearly not many other people had got up and decided to go on a ferry somewhere. The view as we left Seattle was a lovely as the last time we saw it, leaving on an Alaskan cruise:
The initial intention when setting off on the ferry had been to drive up through Bainbridge and head to Port Townsend (built to be the New York of the west coast) on the Olympic peninsula. It was a bit of a drive to get there though so we decided to change plans and just have a day mooching around Bainbridge.
After some quick research we found a new beach park to visit which was just near the ferry terminal. Apparently Hawley Cove park is a great place to find sand dollars – which we hadn’t seen since our Oregon trip – so off we went.
The beach park was a short walk through the woods down to the water and it was a beautiful beach park. The sun was out, the sky was blue and the ferries were coming in and out!
After a nice stroll on the beach, climbing over driftwood, chasing sea gulls, watching ferries and not finding sand dollars we walked back up through the woods to the car.
Then it was a short drive to the town of Winslow, where we stayed last time, and time for a spot of shopping. We made a couple of purchases and then realized it was ages since we’d had two breakfasts so it must be lunch time.
We drove down to the harbor front and went to a restaurant we visited last time. We filled ourselves with pasta, burgers and salmon before eating some yummy puds. Tracy had a giant chocolate cookie warmed up and covered with ice-cream and sauce and I had lovely bread pudding.
Feeling quite ill, we went for a short walk along past the boats before heading back to the ferry terminal for the trip back to Seattle. There were no whales leaping from the water but we did see a bald eagle and the mountains looked fab – Rainier and Baker.
And to end the trip off that night Harry kept up the tradition of visiting Bainbridge by being sick! Not sure what it is about that island but something definitely doesn’t agree with him!
All the pictures are here.
New Year
So another year is complete and we certainly know how to celebrate in style! In the morning we collected Harry from his sleep over party. He’d managed a total of two hours sleep the night before and it has to be said he looked a bit like death warmed up! His grumbles throughout the day confirmed how tired he was – although he managed to stay up a lot later than we thought he would on New Years Eve.
In the afternoon we did a spot of shopping for new running shoes and cycling shoes – these were important purchases to support our 2013 year of exercise! How long will it last!?
The late afternoon sun gave us a brief treat with the mountains and then the sunset on another year:
As it was a chilly evening it was time for a lovely dinner of slow cooked beef followed by trying to find something to watch on American TV. In the end we sat and watched the movie Despicable Me and stayed up late enough to see the New Year in for New York. That was as close as we got to seeing the New Year in though and by 9:30pm we were all in bed! This was an impressive effort by Harry and Toby but a bit pathetic from Tracy and I!
On New Years day we woke to bright sunshine and a heavy frost – it was a lovely morning to start 2013.
Because we were in bed so early, we were up and at it in the morning. I hit the treadmill and Tracy went to the gym and all this by 9am! We’re clearly early birds! All that exercise meant we were starving so off we went to Ray’s for our, now traditional, New Years day lunch.
We stuffed ourselves silly with burgers, steak and pasta before heading up to the Golden Gardens (where we saw the seal and beavers last week) to see another Seattle New Years day tradition – the burning of the Christmas trees! Every New Years day everyone (well almost) brings their finished with trees down to the beach and they burn them.
It was chaos down there so we didn’t get out and walk – plus it was very cold! So after driving round a couple of car parks to see if we could find any good American licence plate numbers for the boys new game, we set off home for the final afternoon before going back to work tomorrow.
How sad – still in 43 days we’re off to Sydney – it’s all go, go, go round here!
Happy New Year!
Christmas Day!
Christmas Day started at just after 7am which was nice! It had clearly been a busy night for Toby though who had heard lots of noise on the roof and also claimed to have seen the red of Father Christmas’s coat in the bedroom plus heard him say “ho ho ho”. Despite seeing him when Toby woke he couldn’t see any presents in a stocking by the side of his bed so he thought he’d been naughty this year. As it turned out, the stocking was at the end of the bed and he’d actually been quite good!
The stockings were bought into our bedroom and were demolished in next to no time which could only mean one thing – it was time to go downstairs and see if there were more! Clearly everyone had been particularly good in 2012 as Santa had apparently made a bed out of all the presents he’d left! Nice work Santa!
The first job – aside from opening champagne – was to sort all the presents into piles. tracy takes charge of this and runs a very tight ship:
httpv://youtu.be/fTedyw_49k4
With the presents in piles it was time to start unwrapping. We all took a turn with Harry targeting all presents shaped like Xbox games first. He was desperate to get FIFA 2013 and eventually he found it. He was very excited when he opened it and managed to hit Toby in the face as he waved it around! This was clearly not the season of good will to all and Toby responded with a swift kick in the nuts which poleaxed Harry but he still kept a strong grip on the game!
The present unwrapping went on for some time – far too long for the children’s liking but they did very well with all their gifts (as did the parents!).
httpv://youtu.be/0NwK7jhpA0A
Before long it was all done and all that remained were two happy boys, three happy adults and lots of new toys!
Merry Christmas!
There is a carrot and a drink for each reindeer. Some sherry and a mince pie for Santa (freshly baked not a left over from the squirrel – who ate all bar one by the way!). There are two very excited little boys. Everything is set. We are counting down to Christmas! Not long now, he’s on the east coast!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Christmas Eve
Finally Christmas Eve was upon us. We spent the morning on the treadmill, making emergency mince pies to leave for Santa, watching the squirrel eating the burnt ones from yesterday and then making ourselves beautiful for a Christmas lunch at Ray’s.
We arrived at Ray’s at 12:30 and duly stuffed ourselves full of calamari, hummus, burgers, chicken, shrimp sandwiches, cheesecake and cookies. It’s a tough life but we managed to tuck it all away! As we all felt a little on the full side we decided to take a walk along the beach at Golden Gardens – just up the road from Ray’s. After having a quick play in the playground, the walk turned into a wildlife extravaganza!
First there was this rare sighting on the beach – lesser spotted beach bums or something:
Then as we got further up the beach we heard the sea lions barking away in the Sound before we came across this little fella:
He wasn’t dead, he’d just had a big lunch and was having a rest! He had apparently been there for the last 24 hours or so and the seal rescue people weren’t rescuing him because he was ok. Apparently. Anyway, someone had made a sign warning people to leave him alone and he did start moving closer to the water so I’m sure he was fine.
After the seal, we walked back through the park towards the car. On the way we saw a beaver. Well we didn’t see the beaver but we saw all the signs. First there was his house over the other side of the pond:
Then there was a tree trunk that had had a good old gnawing:
And another one. He’d clearly realized the error of his gnawing on this one – it was going to fall straight on his head. The trunk gnawings here were a lot fresher – I think we’d missed him by moments:
After leaving the beach behind we took Aunty A to see the Fremont Troll. The troll is obviously a very popular place on Christmas Eve – there were lots of people there, including a bit of a troll photo shoot – all very odd:
From that popular Christmas Eve location we set straight off for another – Kerry Park and a view of the Space Needle. The top of the Needle has been repainted from the 50th anniversary orange to green trees. It’s not that easy to see the new design but you can just make out the trees on top:
Although the trees on top probably look great from above I think we prefer the orange top for now – certainly from the ground. After leaving the park and the views of the city it was time to head home – it had been an exhausting afternoon – poor us!
Once home, we started tracking Santa’s progress (he’s two minutes from London as I type this) and got nice and comfy ready to ease our way into the Christmas spirit!
One more sleep to Christmas! Whoo hoo!
Garden D’lights
Although Aunty A had done well on her first couple of nights, it had been down hill ever since. She was going to bed and waking up 3 times before we’d even reached midnight! By the end of her first week we decided to go take her out in the evening to try and keep her up late and hope that the fresh air made her sleep once she got to bed.
As the forecast looked good for Friday night (good = not raining) we bought tickets for the Bellevue Botanical Gardens light display, Garden D’Lights. We arrived at about 7pm and set off round the gardens. The boys oohed and aahed but Anuty A had the Christmas grumps (or was very tired) and didn’t think much of it all! The next day she claimed to be feeling unwell but we think she was just being the Christmas Grinch!
Either way, the rest of us enjoyed it and the lights looked lovely. Not tacky at all!
It still didn’t make her sleep any better. Oh well, at least we tried.
Piano Recital
After many weeks of waking up early on a Wednesday morning and getting into school at 8am for piano lessons, the end of term piano recital was upon us. With some last minute practicing completed on Tuesday evening we were up early and into school.
We went into the school dining area, had a last minute panic looking for Toby’s music book and then we were off! First up they each had to play one song each. Of our two, Harry was first up:
httpv://youtu.be/rAj5-IYmZ64
Followed soon after by Toby:
httpv://youtu.be/Wqu3-BJzETo
The teacher then invited any students up who wanted to play a second song. Harry got up quite quickly but Toby took a little more time to decide. Harry’s second performance went very well:
httpv://youtu.be/OUQsC98BGb8
As did Toby’s:
httpv://youtu.be/3cz_0ueTB1I
At the end the teacher said a few words and gave out some prizes and certificates. First up was Toby who was one of two students who got to choose two prizes for “being inspirational”. Harry also got to choose two prizes as he was in the top 5 students in the class – which was pretty impressive considering there were some two handed piano players on show!
What clever, musical children we have. Not sure where they get that from!!
Chihuly Garden
With the boys on the bus and on their way to school it was time for the grown ups to hit Seattle. As Sally had seen and done the usual Seattle sights it was time to introduce a new one into the visitor schedule – The Chihuly Garden. It was developed as part of the Space Needle 50th anniversary celebrations. It opened earlier in the year and this was our first visit but certainly not our last.
The rain held off for us but the wind was icy cold however that did not stop us from enjoying the glass sculptures. They were very impressive as the following should show.
The Glass Forest:
This boat was my favorite:
Two shifty looking characters:
One of the many chandeliers:
Very, very expensive vases:
Some outdoor creations:
It was definitely worth the visit and makes it on to the “things to do in Seattle” list for visitors!
Lots more pictures here…
Jetlag? What Jetlag?
Aunty A arrived again and the big question of everyone’s mind was “how much chocolate has she bought with her?”. The answer to that question is lots! The drawer has never looked so healthy – particularly considering that I had also just returned from London.
The other burning question is “how is the jetlag/sleeping going?”. Now as Nanny proved earlier this year, there is no such thing as jetlag – it’s all just in the mind! In addition to this, this is probably Aunty A’s 5th visit (or something like that) so she should be used to the whole timezone situation. And that is what we all thought at the end of night 1. Having arrived back at ours at about 6:30pm, having survived a grilling from US border control, Aunty A managed to stay awake, eat some pulled pork and guzzle some wine before heading off to bed at about 10 ish.
After a brief read she fell asleep and stayed asleep until about quarter to 4 the following morning. Not bad at all but there was more! After flooping about for a while she then fell asleep again and slept until 6:45am. That was probably her best nights sleep in about 4 months!
As we all know, night 2 is always the worse and so it proved to be. Despite the sisters stocking up on plenty of shopping and wine across the day (plus a visit to Cheesecake Factory AND Red Robin) the night did not go well. The excitement of the mall made Sally very tired and she went to bed at about 9:30pm. After falling into a deep sleep, imagine her surprise when we she woke up at 10:30! After falling asleep again she then woke for a second time – on the same day that she went to sleep! A night of tossing and turning followed but she did get a decent amount of sleep all in.
Hopefully night 3 will prove more successful and signal complete adjustment to the new timezone but we shall see!
Thanks Giving
It was our second Thanks Giving day in America and this year we thought we’d move away from the traditional American experience.
After a day of presents for all, roast pork, watching the Macy’s parade and game playing I decided that we ought to go for a walk and get a bit of fresh air. This met with multiple objections from all people in the house. The only way to get them to agree to leave the house was if they could all go for the walk in their pj’s.
So off we went in pj’s, boots and coats:
We drove round to Timberlake park and walked down to the lake. It was a lovely calm evening after several days of rain and the water looked so still and inviting that Toby and Tracy were both tempted to go for a swim. Toby took his coat off ready to swim but then changed his mind.
As it started to get dark we went back to the car so that we didn’t get attacked by wild bears, raccoons and beavers. Fortunately we got home ok and then settled down for a nice relaxing evening of TV and stinky smells! That’s brussel sprouts for you!