Reason to Celebrate

Come On In!

One year ago - Diana, our realtor,and her husband, also our mortgage broker, on the day the house was officially ours. (her and I used to drive around forever getting lost as we tried to find the homes on our list)

It's been a whole year that we have been in our new house...and we almost didn't even realize it! As keen as we are at remembering our special occasions (or at least making them up as a reason to celebrate), this one almost blew right past us. How shall we celebrate? We're gonna try out the meat smoker for the first time, kick back, and enjoy the place ..at some point this weekend anyway! Diana gets a special note too.
Bless our Happy Home! (and yours too!)

Hump Day

Happy Wednesday Ya'll! Another great day to give thanks, of course. Tonight we hit Happy Hour at a newly opened lounge in West Seattle, then headed home for some home-made pizza and good conversation. Joe and Shawn joined us for HH, then Joe joined us for dinner so it was a great night.

Dos Equis, Dos Amigos

So much better than it may appear in this picture.

PS - Thanks for the ice cream Joe!

I was also happy today as the Red Cross approached me to do some volunteer work with a new emergency preparedness team who participates in workshops and fairs around King County, educating the public about disasters, community plans, etc. In the past, I have volunteered there as a coordinator, where I interviewed new candidates wanting to be part of the ARC. It was a great gig but the weekly interviews were cramping my style and I had to step down temporarily until something else worked with my schedule. The art of preparation is very interesting to me, so I think this new opportunity will suit me just right. It is a flexible and valuable position where I have an opportunity to excel as one of the team leaders so I look forward to it!

Austin Was A Hit!

We were so lucky and happy to be able to fly down to Austin for a long weekend with the Texas Turpins! Thanks Dan, Kristen, Jack, Kate, Finn & Murph for having us! We had a blast and loved our time with all of you -- but Jack and Baby Kate really have us missing you guys now!

Arriving in Austin on a warm sunny day

Look Out! Six Turpins in Texas!! Lunch at Shady Grove


Irresistable Kate - she is perfect.

The One and Only Murphy - our weekend shadow. I really did want to take him home!

Chillin in Austin

Uncle Andrew and his favorite nephew

The Turpin Boys

Happy to be here...

We love Kate!

Jack loves cupcakes

The hottest rock band in Texas - practicing during an afternoon trip to the Children's Museum.

The 'Bat Tour' from a pontoon on Ladybird Lake -- this was fascinating as an estimated 800,000 bats dropped from their sleeping quarters inside the Congress Street bridge at dusk. It was amazing to watch thousands of them endlessly swarm above us and fly into the night. I highly recommend this for anyone visiting Austin.

Texas was a blast! We were able to have family time, eat a lot of good meals and ice cream, do some babysitting, dog walking, game night, family happy hour, and lots of play time too! Wish we could have stayed longer!!

Happy Birthday Sis!

Happy 29th Birthday to my Sis-In-Law, Erin!! Hope your day was wonderful! We miss and love you!

Earth Day Every Day!

I think I am taking this Pacific Northwesterner thing pretty seriously because we do get out to the parks pretty often and I love every minute of it. Happy Earth Day everyone!

Thanks tree!

Look closely and you can see the sea lion who floated along with us on our walk tonight.

It was nice to stick around the house tonight, order a pizza, and shower the animals with love since tomorrow we have to drop them off at the doggie kennel for our trip to Austin this weekend. We miss them already, but the Texas Turpins are waiting for us!

Go Limes!

Andrew's softball team, the Liquid Limes (named after their sponsor), went 2-0 tonight in a chilly double-header in the burbs!! We had a fun time and what a way to start off the season! Go coach!

More junk food today as we made a lunch date and headed to the Pike Street fish fry for some cod, chips, and tempura. Not part of the diet plan but it was oh so good.

Yum

It was a flip-flop, shorts-wearing kind of day in Seattle today so after work we ventured the 8 blocks up to Joe and Heather's for a beverage and a brat, the perfect way to end a Monday in style. We hope that everyone else had a happy night too!

Another Great Weekend

As I am trying to be better about blogging our days, I sit and listen to the new Andrew Bird CD and realize that I should share our weekend here. So, here we go. Saturday morning began with a waltz around the 5k loop at Seward Park -- check out the view of Mount Rainier. It almost looks like a painting here.

My favorite walking partners as always...

Double-O Turpin....with his dreamy Aston Martin. Wowsa.


Lunch down at the junction was very much needed and enjoyed as we had fasted all morning for our life insurance exam, which occurred in the comfort of our very own home, right at the kitchen table. Weird.



Then it was off to the Baby Burt shower, where we had a great time celebrating the soon-to-be arrival of Nick and Kate's little son!! Congrats to you both!! We will be thinking of you this week and send positive thoughts!!
After the shower, a group of us headed to Capitol Hill for a night cap at the Elysian Brewery -- what a fun night!


After a hearty breakfast at Endolyne Joe's this morning and a quick run to Target, the coffee shop, book store, and the local fruit stand, it was home for some more work on the raised beds and remaining planting that needed to be done. You gotta love a guy with a tool belt on.
I was also able to sneak away for a quick lunch date with Lois at one her favorite hang-outs.

Here is one of two of our new raised beds that we are making....our list of attempted veggies this year: spinach, carrots, radishes, onions, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes and strawberries. And some new dahlias, poppies, and other flowers for the front. We hope that all this love will get our garden to grow a bit better this year!

We swung over to Rob and Erin's for some brats and Koob tonight -- where I was part of a winning team (a total Midwesterner) but who's counting.? Always a blast when you combine games, food, and great company.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!!

Spring is Here!

Happy Spring Everyone! It has been quite an eventful couple of months for us, filled with the usual dinners, movies, marriages, birthdays, competitive game nights (my first turkey at bowling!), happy hours, parties, and bbq’s (finally) and so on!! We are hoping this finds you well – since we haven’t blogged for several weeks there is no way we will capture everything, but here, in no particular order, are some more recent highlights!
I think our last blog entry ended the week before we went to the San Juan Islands for an escape from the city. This was a perfect trip where we stayed in a B&B complete with entertaining animals that of course made us feel right at home. We also toured the entire island, where we sampled their locally brewed ales, tasted some great food, and truly had the feeling that we had found the very edge of the earth. The nature around us was so beautiful! And the views from the long ferry ride were spectacular!

The alpacas loved us...or was it the carrots?

One of many beautiful views from the ferry

Windy fairy ride...never a dull moment with this guy!

One of our last indoor house projects was the den. We went into HGTV-mode one day and basically did a 48 hour make-over of our family room. See for yourselves! We love the new look, especially the Alki Beach sign that pretty much sums up our experiences in Seattle. Now, every room is complete, except for the third bedroom. I wonder what we'll use that for!

Before... After.

Since we last wrote, we took part in just a couple of our ‘monthly’ must-do dinners with our usual crew which is always great. Everyone loves this because it is good quality time spent in each other’s homes.
We even got to tie in our weekly Taco Tuesday to one of them, a Turpin favorite. Erin was matched up with a new senior citizen whom she volunteers with through ElderFriends Seattle. Lois, a Wisconsin native, is now 80 and living in our neighborhood so this was the perfect match. She is always excited for our trips to the sandwich shop, Target, the drug store, or her kitchen table to discuss life. She might be mad at me if I post her picture because she hates her new haircut.
Hampton, our beloved brown dog and sweetest critter alive, is now down to attending West Seattle Doghouse Daycare only one day a week. KNOCK ON WOOD! For anyone who knows our situation this is equivalent to a miracle so of course we are more than thrilled. Plus, our budget has been increased by $320/month because of this. Thanks Hamps!
Big News on the Anderson homefront!! Big Brother Casey and his girlfriend Jen Reger tied the knot in Vegas on 3/13. To quote the brother, it was “the coolest thing” he has ever done and we could not be happier! Case and Jen also added to the excitement by winning $2700 while they were there.

Congrats to the Newlyweds!

We celebrated Elizabeth’s birthday in March by going up to the Whidbey Island to spend some time with the Turpins. We hope that the Obama shirt we gave her was her favorite gift.

The view from Deception Pass on Whidbey Island

Andrew is a traveling fool these days, returning from a big project in North Carolina in March, then adding another visit last week for the final launch of the project. Next, he will be off to California for a few nights in May to do it all over again. This guy means business and I am proud of him for all the great work he has been doing (at his job and at home!)
This same husband of mine was also the lucky nominee to be the manager/coach for his spring softball league this year, and of course is taking on the challenge with open arms. I am excited to get to his games. He runs really fast and he uses my old softball glove from high school - so fun to watch!
We hosted a dinner at our place on Friday night and also had the West Seattle crew over for a BBQ on Sunday. As our weekends tend to fill up pretty quickly, we made it a point to celebrate one of our anniversary dates on Saturday by heading down to Alki and enjoying dinner at Duke’s.

Our view was divine...

All that studying paid off….We also recently celebrated the passing exam score for Erin on her ACRP Clinical Research Coordinator Certification….a big accomplishment for her which got her a promotion and extra week of vacation! Woohoo!

Some more pics as of late...

"Anroo" and Fritz for his second bday party - one of our favorites to be around!

The girls over for some good bbq

Go Turp!

We hope everyone had a great Easter - thanks to Joe and Heather for cooking a great meal that day and I give thanks that my husband got home safely! We had lots of fun with Rob and Erin at the Mariners game last night too. What a bonus to be able to see Torii Hunter - I think he winked at us in the stands. Dinner at The Tin Room was great tonight - I think the best fish tacos I have had in Seattle! Tomorrow we start the building and planting for the new flower beds and veggie garden so hope the weather cooperates! More soon!!