Birthday Palooza, The Big Peak, and Springtime in Seattle

I hate it when I get behind working on the blog.  I get behind mostly because of work responsibilities taking over and not so much fun stuff, but this time, it's a nice mixture of both.  Since the last blog entry, we had Lorelei's birthday at the Oregon coast, a visit to Mt. Rainier, Mariners baseball game, I went to Dallas twice for work, and a couple of visits from old friends.  It helps that we had a string of 10 days or so where it was 75 degrees and gorgeous.  After the long dark of winter, it was just what the doctor ordered.

That picture above is Lorelei at the Oregon coast again.  We can't seem to stay away from there.  It was amazing as usual.  With that place, I really just have to let the pictures do the talking.  It's too beautiful for words.  We arrived toward evening and had a nice dinner at the pub and then watched the sunset on the beach.

The next day, we climbed this crazy tall dune (maybe a football field high) and the pictures above were the view that we had.  From that vantage point we also watched the morning mist roll in and out from the ocean, and a para-sailor and hang-glider take off from the dunes.  There's nothing quite like it.

We then did some exploring on the far side of the dune that juts out into the ocean.  It was an unusually low tide, so I decided to jump the fence and head into the inlets and cliffs that disappear into the ocean.  It was wonderful.  Beautiful sandstone cliffs and tide pools and being right up next to the wild Pacific.  I can't get enough of it.

That's my happy place.  Shawn's too.  Lorelei also feels the call of the beach.  I imagine we will have to do something more permanent involving the Oregon coast at some point.  My only hesitation is that I can't bear the thought of Lorelei going to Oregon for college and being a Duck.  That's a disgusting notion.  University of Washington is just fine (and an excellent school), but Oregon...uh, not so much.  Maybe it won't matter and my "gentle encouragement" for her to go to The Ohio State University will pay off.

The low tide was great for getting out on the rocks and checking out tide pools, too.  These rocks that we are walking on are usually underwater.

All in all, it was a fabulous birthday weekend for Lorelei.  She even had celebratory rootbeer float (her first rootbeer float!).

I went for a more traditional type of celebration:

Anyway, so in thinking about moving to the Oregon coast, I think I want to learn to surf.  Lorelei would make a great surfer, right?  Check out these high school kids going for an evening surf; we could do that, right?

Birthday palooza fell right between my two Dallas trips.  It was work stuff and entirely boring, but for the part when I got to see Brian, Ted and Megan from MDK.  Nice to see some friendly faces!  Dallas isn't so bad, but I wish I had some time to check out the sites.  Unfortunately, it was all work and no play.  I managed to find Lorelei some bitchin' boots though:

During the stint of glorious spring weather, we decided to take a trip to Mt. Rainier.  It was 80 degrees in Seattle that day and about 50 at Paradise, which is about 5,000 feet up and the highest we could get this time of year.  Mt. Rainier is over 14,000 feet at its highest peak.  Paradise got 723 inches of snow this winter.  It was melting when we were there, but the snow pack must have been pretty high still.  We had a blast having a snowball fight in our shorts.

Those are the tops of trees that Lorelei is playing in.  It has to be a pretty deep snow pack.  There were also some gorgeous shots of Mt. Rainier's peak in the background.  It was nice to be so close for once!

The drive was gorgeous too.  We stopped at one of the viewing sites to observe the glacier run-off.

We'll go back to Mt. Rainier in August when that whole snowbank in Paradise is a meadow full of wildflowers!  That will be cool - seeing it packed with 10 feet of snow and then again with the wildflowers.  I'll take some pictures.

Lorelei found some snow to slide down while we were there, of course.

I had to sneak one in there with Shawn - I have barely posted pictures of us this time!  Mt. Rainier was a great success.  My work and Shawn's school/work will keep us from having too much fun in the coming months, but my work should calm down some by the end of June, and Shawn finishes this semester in August, when we'll have some time off.  Hopefully we won't have to wait that long to have some more fun around town, though.

I just want to preface this next part with the fact that I'm still a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.  They are my sort of hapless baseball team, but I love them all the same.  HOWEVER, I live in a baseball town now, and I can't help but cheer for the Mariners.  They kind of remind me of my hapless Pirates a bit.  We went to a game recently with Lorelei's school, and it was great fun.

Just like last year, Lorelei got cotton candy.

Pretty sure I have an identical photo from last year's Gatewood Elementary Night at Safeco Field.  It was mayhem with all these elementary school kids eating all this cotton candy.  Yikes.

I do love the baseball game though.  Just like hockey, it's a lot better in person.  We hope to make a few more games this year.

In other news, Lorelei is an orange belt now in Tae Kwon Do, and this is Lorelei receiving her belt after the last belt test.

I also got to enjoy some time with Megan and Dan (I worked with Megan at MDK) and Daniel Hammer (my lovely Sarah's husband).  I love that Seattle draws people for vacation and work things. I struggle lately with homesickness because I don't really have the option to go back to Ohio.  Work has been in a bit of a tailspin for the last several months and will remain that way until the end of June at least.  Eventually we'll figure it out, but for now, we just power through and when we have a few free minutes, check out some of the great things to do around here.

Here's some parting words to ponder:  I found out a couple of days ago that the grandson of THE Boeing, the guy who founded Boeing, has put together an Aviation High School.  Right here in Seattle.  I think you can rest assured that if Lorelei is not learning to surf on the Oregon coast during her high school years, she may be spending them at the Aviation High School.  :)

This post is dedicated to Mr. Krueger and Shelly Clay.  The world lost a little of its shine when you moved on.

Love to all,
Becky

Spring Greetings & Hoppy Easter!

This is what we look like.  I know it's been so long since I've updated the blog you've all probably forgotten. So here you go.  Hopefully the picture helps you remember who we are.  It's all my fault; winter is pretty bluesy out here in the Pacific NW.  It's like that most places though.  In Ohio, I would feel downright murderous if we got snow in March, and well, yeah.  The only snow I saw this year in Seattle was flurries on my way to work a few weeks ago.  In March.  Don't get technical on me with the Spring Equinox being March 20 or whatever.  You know it and I know it that snow in March is less pretty and fun and more a total pain in the ass.

Enough about that, though.  Spring has sprung in Seattle and the clouds are parting for longer and longer intervals!  That picture above was taken at the coffee shop down the street (where I'm pretty sure Mom met Eddie Vedder) a couple of Saturdays ago.  It was nice!  That was also the day that Lorelei discovered BASKETBALL.  Oh, how my Siefert blood sings when she talks about playing basketball!

I think she has the WNBA written all over her!

She's also doing really well in Tae Kwon Do.  I promised pictures of her belt test (moving from white to yellow), and here they are:

It's kind of grainy but that's Lorelei breaking a board that Shawn is holding.  Needless to say, she passed!  Her next belt test is in May.  Fingers crossed she can advance to orange belt.

We spent Easter weekend hanging around the house.  We did some yard work and some cleaning mostly.  But it was a gorgeous weekend and Lorelei and I walked down to the beach and had some play time.

Someone had built a fort out of driftwood, so Lorelei had some fun.  I just enjoyed the serenity of the water and the mountains.  Mornings like that remind me why I wanted to move here.

Those are the Olympics out there in the background.  Not too long from now Hurricane Ridge and most of Olympic National Park will be open.  I think it closes Oct-May in the mountains because the passes are snowed in.  I'm sure we will get out there again this summer!

It's also been birthday season here - Shawn's Birthday, our friend Vianney, mine, Ed's and of course, Maya turned 1!  Isn't she a gem?

The girls took me to a wine tasting shop for mine!  Lovely!

Otherwise, we've been busy with our day-to-day.  Shawn is wrapping up another semester, Lorelei is getting ready for the homestretch of the school year, and I'm ever-busy at work.  This weekend I signed up to do a 5-mile race in Skagit County, it's called the Tulip Run.  They have an annual tulip festival up there.



Hopefully the weather holds and we have a good run.  If it's nice, we may head over to Deception Pass.  If you map it, it's in kind of neat area on the north Sound.  We wanted to go to Whidbey Island, but they've had a lot of mudslides and parts of the island are in bad shape.

After that, I head to Dallas for a work thing April 15-17.  Once I get home from that it's going to be time to start thinking about how to celebrate Lorelei's 8th birthday!  Where does the time go?

I will try not to be so long between posts!  In the meantime, relax, have some coffee and remember to smell the tulips.

Take care,
Becky

Castle Panic, Pizza, and The Fog

Greetings!  The above pictures is Castle Panic.  It's a board game that Lorelei received for Christmas from Daddy.  We have been playing it like mad and I think Lorelei and I are fairly obsessed with it.  In an age where games are mostly digital and require gaming systems, it's wonderful to see a resurgence of board games.  I grew up on board games, after all.  Castle Panic is premised on the players working together to defeat monsters and protect the castle.  It's a cooperative game, meaning the players work together and not against each other.  It's hours of fun.

You may have heard that the weather in Seattle is less than ideal.  The fall and winter months are dark, cold and wet.  Usually by this time, the end of January, we are seeing the days get longer and the sun makes a few appearances here and there, but it's still pretty miserable.  One thing that is kind of strange is to see the trees still with leaves on them.  It's cold, but not cold enough, I guess.  Many trees still have green leaves.  Here is one tree downtown:

We have been coping by investigating many board games (Ticket to Ride is my personal favorite), and conducting cooking experiments.  If you know us, you know that pizza is its own food group with the Shraders.  Unfortunately, good pizza is hard to come by in Seattle.  I don't know why, but they cannot get a good New York style pizza right, and nothing even comes close to Rotolo's in Columbus.  It's tragic.  We have tried many different places and have found some pizza that's passable, but it ends up being overpriced for a mediocre pie.  We decided to take matters into our own hands.

The top picture is our pizza dough rising, and the bottom one is a little piece of heaven.  Thanks to the Cooks Illustrated cookbook, we've been able to make our own pizzas from scratch, which are a thousand times better than anything we've bought out here.  Problem solved!

Of course, one thing that Seattle manages to do pretty well is beer.  Another way we've been passing the time is to explore the city a bit.  A few weeks ago we stumbled on the Georgetown Brewery.  As it turns out, it's fairly close to our house.

That is a growler.  Growlers are bottles of beer that are refillable.  Once you finish the growler of beer, you can go into pretty much any bar or specialty store or brewery and have it refilled for a reduced price.  As we are fans of the Georgetown beers, this growler idea seems like a stroke of genius.

Same growler, two hours later.

Among other activities we have to pass the time are Lorelei's Tae Kwon Do, and I've been running, hoping to do another 10k in February.  Shawn has started a new semester of school also.  Sometimes we complain about being so busy, but it's good that there is a lot going on.  January is rather bleak in Seattle, as it is a lot of places, I think.  People out here try to go away this time of year, to Mexico or, in many cases, to Hawaii.  When Shawn is out of school and doesn't have to worry about studying, we'll probably try to arrange for such a getaway in January or February.

We had this week or 10 day period of fog.  It was foggy every single day.  Pea soup fog.  I didn't see the Puget Sound for days, and I drive right over it on my way to work every morning.  It was crazy.  It wasn't Carl Sandburg's Fog, coming in on little cat feet.  No, we could watch it roll in from the Sound and it was more like a wall being slammed down.  One minute I'm looking out the window at the church across the street, and the next, BAM.  We are in the middle of a Stephen King story.  It was beyond creepy.  The meteorologists out here are generally challenged in terms of forecasting, but during the fog they just sat around on TV saying, "Yeah, that's a lot of fog.  Huh."  I kept trying to take a picture of it but there was seriously nothing to see.  Like all things, though, it finally passed and we are back to a more normal climate.

We had a nice time during the holidays.  It was just a quiet Christmas, but I took a day off and we explored. Lorelei got an American Girl doll from Santa, and then received some of the accessories from her Grandma Shrader.  It was a wild success, along with Castle Panic:

As we get through January, we head into the Birthday Season, with all of us having spring birthdays and lots of loved ones as well.  Of course, I will be preparing for the most wonderful time of the year, March Madness.  Until next time, love to all!