Three Down, One to Go

fall/winter holidays that is. (I'll figure out what number happy days they were later.) Only two represented here. Christmas will get its own post. 

It was really important to me to make the Peanut a costume for her first Halloween. I finally decided to go as classic as it gets and whip up a bed sheet ghost using one of her crib sheets that didn't fit the mattress very well. It was a no-sew affair, I just used iron-on transfer paper for the eyes and mouth and did  a sort-of drawstring neck so that it would fit over her noggin but still stay on. She wasn't too sure about the whole thing, as is obvious above. I couldn't manage to get one shot where you can actually see the costume and where she is not flailing and wailing. Honestly, I love that picture that picture though. I think it captures the gap between real life and staged for social media-perfect nicely.

Then there was Thanksgiving. We decided not to fly with baby quite this early on, so instead of being back in Illinois for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we celebrated at home as a family of three. 

We managed to make a proper Thanksgiving dinner, though between talking to family on the phone/video chat and keeping up with required baby maintenance, we ate about three hours later than planned. Delayed dinner time aside, for a first attempt at cooking a turkey, it came out quite well, as did all the sides. And baby slept while we ate, so we actually got to enjoy the meal. As Greg's t-shirt indicates, it was not a formal affair, still it felt good to mark the "firsts" this season, even if doing so in this particular instance only directly benefited Mommy and Daddy. :)

Atmospheric Conditions

(Happy Day 56)

being just so were the cause of this spectacular sunset. We see a lot of wonderful sunsets here in West Seattle, but I hadn't seen one like this before and haven't since. It was a little bittersweet as Greg was away on business that particular evening. Luckily the pictures do it some justice.

Back to Vashon

Happy Days 54 & 55
We took both our friends and Greg's family, who were our next summer visitors, over to Vashon Island. Both times we returned to Point Robinson Lighthouse. 

Like I mentioned before I really, really love Vashon. Occasionally for kicks I go looking at real estate online wherever I happen to be curious about at the time. So after being on the island with our friends I checked out what was on the market there. I came up with a four bedroom 1914 farmhouse on just over two acres, the asking price of which was the same as we paid for our little two bedroom on a postage stamp in West Seattle. (Above photo isn't of that house, these are the keeper's quarters at Point Robinson. Unfortunately I didn't think to take any pictures while we were viewing the place.) The listing made no bones about it being a project, but as it sounded like just the kind of thing I desperately want to take on some day, I made an appointment with the agent and we went and saw it. 

Not that we could have taken anything like it on two months before becoming parents, even if our bank account came anywhere close to allowing it, which it does not. But it was fun to practice walking through a house with an eye towards restoration. It was truly everything I could have hoped for, enough original detail remaining to make it totally worth saving (down to the original, gorgeous wood burning stove in the kitchen), yet enough of a hard case as to be uninhabitable as is (one of everything needed in the new systems department). And a beautiful setting to boot. No view (mountain or water), but surrounded by meadow and woods and complete with a pond. It will definitely go down in the "ones that had to be let get away" category. Though I don't think it actually sold, just got taken off the market for winter. If nothing else, it gave me something to obsess about until baby came along. 

Both days that we went visibility was excellent. The view of Mount Rainier from Point Robinson is pretty spectacular.

Mount Baby and Mount Rainier. 

When we were there with Greg's parents, there was a little tiny car show going on downtown. I wish I'd taken more pictures of all the different models. I kept picturing anthropomorphized animals driving them out for a picnic. :)

Snoqualmie Falls

Happy Day 53
We expanded the being-tourists-in-our own-town-for-the-sake-of-our-guests effort to the state level and took the quick trip up to Snoqualmie Falls one day, only about a 45 minute drive up into the Cascades from Seattle.  

Puget Sound Energy has a hydroelectric plant at the falls and maintains the whole site very well. It's quite accessible (compared to my previous experience with hydroelectricity in Washington state) and therefore was packed to the gills with people on this particular fair summer Saturday. 

We made the steep trek from the upper observation area to the lower one.

Given the fact that I was seven months pregnant at this point, there was definitely some huffing and puffing on the way back up, but I remember feeling pretty proud of myself for not being on my bum eating bonbons anywho. :)

Own Backyard

Happy Day 52

After a trip to Pike Place on our friends' second day in town we wandered along the waterfront to Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. One of the best parts of having visitors in a place like Seattle is being forced to be tourists ourselves and actually get out and see and do all the things we've not yet gotten around to.

Written On Stone

Happy Day 51
Our first visitors of the summer were friends from home (Illinois) who came over the Fourth of July. They arrived pretty early in the morning so we fed them and then took them straight to Lincoln Park here in West Seattle for some instant PNW gratification. Lincoln Park is right on the Sound with lots of nice wooded paths in addition to the walk along the beach. Down by the water someone had left this nice sentiment behind.

Good Things in Small Vases

Happy Day 50 
This was the point in the summer when things got a little hectic. I was trying to finish up with my last bit of work before baby-induced retirement which I was hoping to begin before we played host to a series of summer visitors. Though there were plenty of happy moments and things, I just didn't always get the chance to document them. And then came baby. But I do have lots of pics from the rest of the summer and fall, some I actually tagged, some I didn't. So I'll just keep counting happy days here and am going to try to resume formal daily observation of the good stuff till I hit 100. Gratitude seems like a good thing to be reminded to practice regularly this time of year anyhow.
I think I'd been without flowers on the dining room table for awhile so I decided to fix that right quick by gathering this tiny little arrangement of astilbe, cosmos, and salvia from the garden. 

Date Night

Happy Day 49
Pizza in Seattle is bad. All but five places specialize in wood fired pizza and three of those five (estimates based on my own meticulous research) do some sort of kinda-New York style. Wood fired pizza in and of itself isn't bad, but being from the midwest, we desperately miss the deep dish and the thin and crispy and cut into little squares varieties. The remaining two pizza places here that don't do wood fired do deep dish, and one of those just didn't cut it for us. The other, Kylie's Chicago Pizza in the Fremont neighborhood is actually quite good. This was our first time trying it out and we've gone back whenever the opportunity has presented itself. Desperately wish it was located in West Seattle instead of up north (see previous post for reason).     

Besides discovering (in our humble opinion) the best pizza in Seattle, our evening also included a stroll under the Aurora Ave. Bridge to visit this guy,

the Fremont Troll.

Unexpected Happy

Happy Day 48
Traffic in Seattle is bad. Every single day. When I worked at the office of the company I was with, I had to commute from West Seattle to the northerly neighborhood of Ballard via WA 99, a good chunk of which is part of a massive construction project to take the road from elevated freeway to tunnel through downtown. And while there is technically more than one way to drive to West Seattle, the only way that makes sense when you're going to or coming from the north is over the West Seattle Bridge and onto 99 or Interstate 5, so in and around those interchanges can be a real bottleneck. On this particular day, if my memory serves me, 99 was completely shut down through downtown due to an accident so I was in the midst (along with all other 99 commuters) of trying to get to Interstate 5 to get home. I was still really hoping to not miss a happy day at this point, but pretty convinced I wasn't going to find something to be happy about. But, happily, in the Mercer median right at the on/off 5 point, one of the Department of Transportations got it right and sowed some stress relief. Maybe someone did a study that showed wild flowers in medians help prevent road rage? Worked for me.

Working Conditions

Happy Day 47
One thing I loved about my job in cultural resource management was NOT being chained to a desk in a dreary cubicle day in and day out. I got out in the field regularly, usually a construction site of some sort, but on this particular day the field consisted of the Central Seattle Public Library to conduct some research. I must say, the post-modern structure is pretty cool to behold inside and out. Though some of the earlier editions were definitely worthy of mourning the passing of. 
I am not working currently (that is, as an archaeologist). I am very much enjoying stay-at-home-mommyhood. Baby update coming up. 

Best Supporting Plant Material

Happy Day 46
Farmers market peonies and greenery from the garden. Obviously the peonies are gorgeous, but those ferns are nothing to sneeze at. Can't beat the PNW for ferns. I swear I've seen some off in the woods the size of cars. 

Day's End

Happy Day 45
This was the color we decided to paint the fence around our deck and patio. (I wrote about the details of our outdoor space spruce earlier here.) I knew I wanted a charcoal gray and in addition to the fact that this one was just the right shade, the name seemed appropriate. :) You can see the odd blue and tan the fence was before. Our house is light green with white trim, a brown/gray foundation and a charcoal roof, so it just didn't tie in whatsoever. I never got around to taking the "after" pictures I meant too, but I do have at least one that shows how it all turned out, or rather how one corner turned out. It's a happy day pic, so it will appear here eventually!

Fitting Sentiment

Happy Day 44
Found the perfect card for my Dad this year as I am still aka Bear on occasion.

Best in Show

Happy Day 43
My favorite garden in the neighborhood. (Just a reminder I am still catching up on my Happy Days. This was taken round about the first half of June, lest someone think we moved to the southern hemisphere.) The house sits on the corner and all the area between the sidewalk and the curb has been turned into beds with the best mix of perennials, and bulbs in the spring too. It is full of blooms all season. Envious. Especially of the roses and peonies. I am still hoping to get some peonies in place this fall/winter. I read they do better when planted fall vs. spring. Hopefully, as the ones I planted earlier this year all succumbed to something. Maybe some bulbs too, if I can find the time. We've been having unusually crystal clear days for the past week or so, but hands have been too full (happily) of baby for gardening. If I don't get around to things this year, I suppose there's always next. Hopefully I'll be training a helper by then! :)

Room With a View

Happy Day 42
I finally got around to cleaning our bedroom windows, sashes and all, and was feeling relieved to be able to enjoy the view (you can see little pieces of the Sound and the Olympics from our bedroom, the living room and the dining room) and the window box without having the nagging thought that I really needed to clean the windows.

Outdoor Space Spruce

Happy Day 41
We decided we needed to give a little attention this summer to our backyard, which consists of a wooden deck and a brick patio surrounded by a privacy fence. The deck wood was starting to get really dried out and we hated the color of the fence as it didn't really seem to match anything else about the exterior of our house. First step was power washing away all the moss from all the surfaces. Pretty satisfying to watch them magically change color as they were hit with the spray, but it was also extremely time consuming and a little back breaking. In fact, the power washing took many more hours than anything else we did. After it was clean, we brushed a coat of water sealer onto the deck. I kind of wish we'd used a brightener on the wood before the sealer to even out the color and get rid of some stains, but oh well, live and learn, it still looks much better! We had the whole project priced out and it was over $1000 to have it done, so the whole time we were working on it, we kept patting ourselves on the back for being frugal DIYers.

Iconic

Happy Day 40
Downtown for some reason and got stuck at the light. Just appreciating this landmark.

Glow in the Dusk

Happy Day 39
It was one of the first really warm nights of the summer and I was out walking the dog and these daisies really popped out at me. White is the best choice for evening garden attire. :)

Brunch Beauties

Happy Day 38
Sweet little table arrangement at our go-to brunch spot Fiddlehead. Love that they always have fresh flowers out.

Evening Stroll

(Happy Day 37)
pre-dinner, on Alki, way back when (June-ish). Just going to keep making my way through my very happy summer here. Someday I might catch up. :)

Pretty in Pink

Happy Day 36
Some beauties from either the farmers market or the grocery, I don't remember which. 

Sprout

Happy Day 35
When we got home from our visit, I was really excited to see that the dahlias I planted had come up. I got a good little bunch of tubers as a thank you for donating to Sunny Meadows Flower Farm's greenhouse campaign. (Sunny Meadows is located in Columbus, OH, we toured the farm two summers ago when I was dabbling in the flower farming thing.) After one of their greenhouses was collapsed by too much snow this spring, they crowd-sourced some funds to purchase and put up a new one. 
Unfortunately this year's planting didn't measure up to the  big, bloom-laden ones I grew back in Ohio. Ironic, considering this is the Pacific Northwest where growing flowers supposedly couldn't be easier. But it was really due to my own negligence by way of not preparing the soil well enough before and not watering enough after this photo was taken. One variety, Barbarossa came through with some lovely flame-y orange blooms despite my gardening failings. Photographic evidence will eventually be provided.

Opposite World

Happy Day 34
After growing up there and then having lived elsewhere for over a decade, I am always a little struck when we go back by just how flat central IIllinois is. I didn't appreciate it at the time but I honestly think now that the prairie is just as beautiful as the mountains we're now surrounded by, for all the ways it contrasts. Maybe partly because it will always be home to family, friends, countless memories and all that love. A great visit was had, can't wait to take Ida there and show her where her mom and dad are from. Technically she's already been twice, but she couldn't see much from her vantage at the time. :) 

And Even More Love

Happy Day 33
Getting to see the race was great, but getting to see great friends was the best part of all. And they saw to it that our little peanut had a souvenir or two from her first race.

Back at the Track

Happy Day 32
We hopped over to Indianapolis during our trip to go to the 500 with our legacy ticket-holding friends. The weather was absolutely perfect and it was an exciting race. It'll probably be a few years before we go back as race day can be kind of a marathon for spectators as far as getting in and out goes, not exactly conducive to really little kiddos attending. Which makes it kind of neat-o that ours got to go this year no fuss, no muss. :) 

Showered with Love

Happy Day 31
While we were in Illinois over Memorial Day weekend we were the lucky recipients of two baby showers, one given by family and the other a surprise given by friends. So grateful for all the wonderful people in our and now the little one's lives. Can't wait for her to meet them all.

Introducing...

Ida Evelyn. Born August 30 at 3:14 a.m., weighing 8 pounds 15 ounces and measuring 19 inches long. We are totally in love! She is so perfect and is worth all the effort that was required to bring her into the world. She's proving to be for the most part a pretty easy baby, we can usually soothe her without too much trouble to get her through her grumpy times (which includes almost every diaper change). Otherwise she is eating, sleeping or looking around either wide or sleepy-eyed. 

When speculating on what baby might look like, the possibility (one in four, I've since revisited Genetics 101) of red hair was discussed as we both have family members with this trait. And sure enough, we have a little redhead!

So far we know she likes motion (the more jostling the better it seems sometime), being held and cuddling, noise, being outdoors, eating (of course), and sucking on our fingers.  At least these all seem to facilitate her not crying/snoozing. She hates diaper changes, as previously mentioned, and being cold (the second probably helps explain the first). She doesn't seem to mind being in her crib, or at least waking up in it and she'll sleep pretty well there if she goes in already in a nice deep sleep. 

These pics are from day one through last week. That's about all for now. Will catch up on everything else eventually. 

Tastes Like Home

Happy Day 30
A trip back to Champaign-Urbana in the summer wouldn't have been complete without a stop at Custard Cup. They've been in business in Champaign since I was old enough to eat ice cream and I've been a loyal customer since. Lemon is the best.