Fruit Snowman

Jack was proud of the fruit snowman he built. I liked it too.

Weekend with friends

This weekend we went with the family of one of Jack's preschool friends to the Olympic Peninsula. It was lots of fun. The four kids played and my kids fought much much less than normal. Parents had fun too. We visited fort warden, the pool, and ran around outside.

The mom from the family has a background in early childhood education. It was so interesting watching her parent. Her son is very verbal and so is she.. She uses lots of incentives to motivate him but he already seems really motivated to me. She also intervenes a lot to teach good social skills. I learned a lot too.

the kids

Sonia and I at ft warden.

My little virgo

When Kim was closing her business she encouraged me to take a stack of colorful fleece squares. I told her I didn't know what I would do with them and she told me that Sonia loved them. She was right. Sonia loves these squares. Mostly, she just folds them into different shapes and lays them out neatly on the floor or on a table.

The Willows Inn

This weekend, Ryan and I went to the Willows Inn on Lummi Island to celebrate our birthdays. Ryan planned the trip after reading about the restaurant at the Inn in the new york times. Last year, it was one of ten restaurants in the world that the food critic from the times thought was worth flying to in order to eat there.

In a word, the experience was sublime. My vocabulary is not good enough to describe this place so I'll just show a few pictures of the food. They served 16 different dishes.

Terrible picture of our amazing table -- lovely view of the San Juan islands in the background

Crispy crepe with salmon roe

Crab and pickled kelp

Smoked sockeye salmon

Bread with pan drippings / homemade butter

Charred frisee with homemade capers

Huckleberries with woodruff and malt

One of the reasons this restaurant is so amazing is that they grow all of the food they serve on a farm located a half mile away. The seafood is from the water that surrounds the island. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience and well-worth the trip.

See you soon grandparents!

My mother and step-father are returning to AZ this week so we visited this weekend. We had promised Jack a trip to the pool but sadly, when we arrived, the pool was closed. Jack was miserable. There is another club pool in the area and mom my decided to appeal to them to see if they'd let us swim even though we weren't members. They said no. Luckily, some members walked in and saw Jack's cute face and offered to sign them in as guests. What luck! Plus the club had an indoor and outdoor pool. We were all happy.

We also had a nice ferry ride from Bainbridge and got to see the new ferris wheel all lit up. Every time we see it, we relive our ferris wheel ride in Liverpool.

Here's some footage of Sonia and Elmo dancing