It was a whirlwind of fun times having the fam in town!
Steve & Lauren arrived late Saturday, no thanks to the fellow who went out with a blast stealing that plane from SeaTac. Mary and I went out blackberry-picking while they were recovering from the late arrival.Lunch at Pike Place Market.D’aw.The fam has arrived!
Google tour!
This fridge will not look this nice again till y’all come back.
Riding the monorail.
Fun times at stand-up comedy!
Some morning calisthenics, a la Dan in Real Life.
Our tree friends.Christmas card pic all ready to go. I had to edit out the drone reflection…At the Bainbridge Island community garden.Last call for crepes.
It was finally time for most of the fam to part ways. Mattie stayed over for a bit more adventuring around Seattle. I took a brief break to go up the Space Needle with Mary & co. – thanks for the city passes!
Chillin’ and cookin’.
I decided to avail myself of Mattie’s green thumb and go shopping for some backyard color. Mattie had some serious professional envy when visiting the local nursery.
Best click this one for the full effect.
Ta da!
Sent Mattie off on Wednesday morning with a Google breakfast. Since then I’ve just been living off the residual left-over food, puttering around a strangely quiet living room, looking forward to seeing y’all in November. Love ya!
Counting down the hours till y’all turn this place into a party pad!
Two Thursdays ago we had a low-key game night for a returning missionary. Among other things, we played “What’s In Your Milk”. The rules are simple: when you’re it, you pick a phrase, and that must be your answer to any question anyone in the group might ask, with the goal of keeping a straight face as long as possible.
This next little story spans several days, but I’ll present it all up front. There was a tree branch growing against the fence line that separates my yard from my neighbor’s. It was putting a strain on it, so I figured I’d saw the branch off to prevent the fence from snapping.
Weelll, I didn’t fully appreciate the weight that branch was supporting. 3/4 through the cut, the whole thing tipped over and ended up snapping the top of the fence slat right off, the very thing I was aiming to prevent.
The branch fell into my neighbor’s yard and did a number on some bushes of his. I apologized profusely and went over there to chop up the branch into manageable chunks to hurl them back over to my side.
A trip to Home Depot yielded fence slats of the perfect size. The screws were of a weird variety but luckily I have a collection of exotic screw attachments.
The end of the saga came with the branch remnants awaiting their new home in a wood chipper or mulcher or what have you.
And that is the end of that tale. Back to the regular program. On Friday I attended a friend’s 30th birthday party, and came across a blast from the past.
On Saturday I went furniture shopping and picked out a couch and loveseat from Costco. Haven’t opened them up yet, still waiting on the fam to get in town. Will probably end up returning them for a sectional.
On Sunday I attended a good friend’s farewell party. She’s attending grad school in Virginia. Only the latest in a line of friends shooting off for the wide open world this summer.
Met this furry friend before church.
Monday FHE was a pool party at a friend’s place. A friend’s very very nice place. Went straight from work so Mary and I just played some card games.
Nothing of note on Tuesday. Wednesday was the debut of West Wing Wednesdays. Started off with Celestial Navigation and then went back to the pilot episode. Haven’t managed to get much traction yet on it, but I’m hopeful.
Cheese platter at work on Thursday.Got to introduce some work friends to Castle Panic. Had to cheat a bit to help them win, but it was fun!
After work on Thursday Mary and I went on a double date with a couple of mutual friends to the Seattle Art Museum.
This last Saturday I headed on out to catch the Blue Angels air show. Left a bit late and saw them fly in to their aerial theater from the freeway. Rolled my windows and sky roof down to get a better view and to hear them roar around. It was incredible fun. Parked and got to enjoy another half an hour or so of acrobatics.
That evening we went to a friend’s wedding. One of their relations looked an awful lot like Harry Potter…
It was still daylight so Mary and I went off to see a random lake, then strolled by a river, catching a bit of an outdoor movie.
Sunday was a potluck dinner followed by another Harry Potter game night.
On Monday Mary and I went out to see Christopher Robin. It was really fun! There were some funny outbursts from kids in our theater, they had a blast.
Tuesday and Wednesday I had dinner at Mary’s place; her family’s in town and so things are preeetty hectic at their place. We were always perfectly behaved children, weren’t we?
Yesterday evening was round two of West Wing Wednesdays, but unfortunately I didn’t do as good a job of getting the word out, so only one person came. I’ll give it a rest for a week then try again, on a different day perhaps.
Tonight there was a party at a park to give our bishop a send-off. He’s getting released next week. For some people I know, he’s the only bishop they’ve ever had, so it’ll be quite the adjustment.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Next week is gonna be so much fun!
It’s been too long for an exhaustive update, so here are some highlights of the last however-many-weeks-it’s-been.
Mary’s roommate got an adorable little pet!Kira loves hanging out on a full head of hair.Ahhhhh the mountains. It’d been too long.
Grandma gettin’ her patriotism on.Hayden rockin’ the rock ‘n roll.
Gathering ’round to watch About Time.Scout’s feelin’ the love at the mini-golf range.Back on the reservation, one of the last World Cup games broadcast over lunch.School’s in session.Game night with some new faces.Met a friend! He came waltzing on in during the World Cup final match.Impromptu road trip to Yakima to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I prefer the movie. Just can’t live up to Adam Pontipee.The Thomases were in town! Uncle Dan doing his thing in the back yard.Deeeelish cooking all week.
Trip out to see James & Karen at their new place. Their kids are spoiled rotten with all that nature out back for them to play in :pCastle Panic. Mucho fun.Libby serenading us a goodbye.Libby got gifted a personalized message written in Dwarvish runes.*sniff*This weekend was a massive singles conference, people came from as far out as Canada.Got the National Parks to come by; apparently they’re like a big thing.Jeff mis-uses a buff.Jeff keeps mis-using the buff. Now we know how creepy Jeff would look if he only wore a mustache.One of the events of the conference was a Questival-type thing, with over a hundred challenges worth various points. This one was, “Take a bite out of an onion as if it were an apple.”“Decorate someone’s face like a cake and then eat it off.”“Find a Washington state quarter.”“Attempt to pack someone in luggage.”“Form a boy band with kitchen utensils.”“Eat a cricket.”“Mail a potato.”“Take a group pic.” (As you can imagine, worth one solitary point)Good crowd that Sunday.
Game night at my place that evening.
Trying out my new pressure washer at its maximum power. Turns out it cuts through wet cardboard like… like a water jet through wet cardboard.After Ward Temple Night tonight, we gathered at a froyo place to celebrate a birthday.
That should do to clear the back-log, hopefully I’ll get back to being more timely with this stuff. Ta ta for now!
