After an exhausting, travel-filled start to the month, April has wrapped up on a high note! Since my sister-in-law was still in town, I was able to celebrate my birthday with both her and my husband over macarons, cocktails, and a delicious dinner in Kirkland. It was otherwise a mostly uneventful week, with most of my time outside work spent prepping for the month's book club outing - a weekend of camping on San Juan Island! After a week of typical spring weather - aka sun, rain, warm, cold - I was a little worried about the conditions we'd be camping in, especially since I discovered dozens of holes in my camping tarp on my last trip and hadn't yet replaced it! Things looked even more iffy when I found myself caught in a hailstorm as I was packing up my car to leave Saturday morning! Thankfully, we didn't see a single drop of rain all weekend. I even managed to soak up enough sunshine to get a sunburnt face! It was a weekend of books, laughter and relaxation. We hiked to a lighthouse, stopped by a farmer’s market, and discovered an alpaca farm with award-winning alpacas where I couldn’t resist picking up a skein of the softest yarn with a photo of the alpaca the wool was shorn from. And to top it all off, my wonderful friend Ashley surprised me with a birthday cake while we enjoyed a sunset from the campground!
Read moreLife: Week 16
Big stuff - this week I started a new job, one where I'm no longer working from home. It’s been a dramatic positive change! Working from home, I’ve so missed simple things like a change of scenery and being around other people, and it’s been a relief to be back in an office, especially one that welcomed me with my favorite snack of chips & salsa! Another nice change - I get off work earlier, and even with a 15 minute commute that means I have plenty of time for post-work walks before going home to cook dinner. It’s an excellent time to be out on the Powerline Trail too, with spring in full swing! Most of the cherry trees along the trail have already dropped their blossoms, but now the trail is lined with fresh new green. Since my sister in law was in town with the niece & nephew, Andy and I headed to Wenatchee to spend the weekend soaking up the sunshine with them. It was a weekend filled with small adventures, kite flying, and reading many, many books.
Read moreLife: Week 14
One of my favorite signs of spring in the PNW is the stormy and unpredictable weather. It can be raining and sunny all at the same time, making everything sparkling and new. The downside of spring squalls is the occasional power outage, and this week we found ourselves stuck without power Friday night, but thankfully not longer. This time, the power outage lasted just long enough to give us an excuse for dinner out, followed by an evening reading by candlelight, but not so long that it really impacted our weekend. We didn’t have much planned anyway - mostly errands mixed in with some relaxing. With all this wet spring weather, it’s been ages since we’ve gone for a hike together, and I’m itching to get back out. Hopefully soon life will give us a free weekend!
Read moreLife: Week 6
What started last week as a light dusting of snow has turned into a full week of actual winter in the PNW, with even more snow forecast to come over the next week. Overnight between Friday and Saturday, the Seattle area saw more snow than we typically get over the course of an entire year! While some are starting to tire of all the snow, I’m loving it! When I moved to Washington with my family as a child, I imagined that we were leaving behind the eternal summer of California for Great White North, where there’d be snow for three months out of every year. Our first winter in Washington was a snowy one - not the three months I’d imagined, but enough that we had an extended winter break with school cancelled for multiple days. I loved every minute of it, with sledding, snowball fights, and cocoa to warm up inside while our soggy winter clothes dried. Sadly, while we had a light snow most winters, that memorable snowstorm in 1996 was a rare event, and since I’ve had to head east for adventures in the snow.
Read moreLife: Week 5
With warm temperatures, sunshine, and the smell of late winter flowers dominating the last days of January, I had given up hope of seeing any lowland snow this winter. Naturally, this meant that just a few days into February, temperatures plummeted and a snowy wonderland descended on the Seattle area! I couldn’t have been more surprised, or delighted, as fat, soggy flakes began to fall on Sunday afternoon. Andy and I were out for a late lunch at Bellevue Brewing when the snow arrived, and the few people not at home watching the Super Bowl all clustered at the windows, phones in hand to document the snow. Happily, we made it home early enough for me to dash out to the Powerline Trail, meeting a friend and her family for a slow ramble through the transformed landscape. After such a warm, sunny winter so far, it’s such a relief to finally get a little snow!
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