Birthday season

Since we're part of a baby group that originated with a group of kids with close birthdays, now we have a 2-month window every year where we celebrate a birthday almost every weekend. We all decided to have a group birthday the first year and have done that ever since, but now many of us are also having our own birthdays. The first year, we had our birthday party at Gymboree, then second year it was at the Carousel Room at the zoo, and this year, the group birthday was at the Fun Zone (bouncy houses) at Arena Sports in Magnolia. It was fantastic - we went back the next weekend.

Today we had a birthday party at someone's house and next weekend will be another one at one of the neighborhood community centers. Whew! Lots and LOTS of birthday cake and tons of fun.

This means a certain little lady is having a birthday - and a birthday party! - next month. We are still deciding where but the theme will definitely be princesses. If you are coming to the party, you will get an invite once we organize the location, and we will specifically request NO PRESENTS (so Layla can focus on the cake and the venue). But for those of you who would really like to send a gift, here are a few suggestions and sizes specifics: Layla is a 5T in Gap and Old Navy, and a 4T in everything else, and a size 8 shoe. She likes Cars (especially Mator), Mickey Mouse (especially Goofy) and all of the Disney Princesses. She likes twirly dresses and fancy shoes and pretty jewelry. She loves doing any kind of art project especially gluing, cutting, stamping, and fingerpainting. She also really likes puzzles (esp princess puzzles) and Duplo lego sets. And she LOVES opening presents!

Tubing at Snoqualmie

When we were in Minneapolis, we learned that winter sports are taken very seriously by Minnesotans. Sledding, for example, was no sport for the weak-hearted. Only teenagers and other people who don't have a good grip on their mortality ever went out to the professional sledding slopes (e.g. where you can rent innertubes and fly down steep hills of hard-packed snow without regard for other people or wild animals that may get in your way, then ride a lift back up and do it again).

In Seattle, it's a whole different scene. Here, if you have a death wish you can find a black ski run just about anywhere, and use a snowboard if you really want to seal the deal. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of people do this every day all winter long so they have a pretty orderly way of doing it (although on a more serious note, and I will never get used to this, at least one person does die every year - usually not going down the black run but driving there or getting lost on their way back up the run).

Sledding is like the toddler version of a black ski run, and it's mostly toddlers who sled, so you can imagine that in Seattle sledding is a mellow event with groomed runs, people waiting politely for each other to go down and lots of hot chocolate afterwards. Today we experienced just that. Layla had a blast. We were quite pleased with both the runs and the hot chocolate. And since all kids are adorable in a snowsuit we almost died from all the cute, but other than that we stayed pretty safe.

The One Sandal

When I was little, a family friend Diane came to stay and left a pair of shoes behind on accident. She got in touch with us apologizing for the inconvenience and hoping we could bring her shoes back the next time we saw her.

It turned out, this simple task became a 10-yr long pursuit of a pair of very elusive shoes. Every year or so, we would find one of them. We would put it someplace 'safe' until we could find the other. When the other turned up, nobody could remember where the mate was put. It went on like this until we finally moved out of the place. Naturally, even then we could only find one of the shoes.

This summer, we had a similar experience with Layla's sandal. She is starting to be a bit finicky about which shoes she'll wear, so when she got attached to this one particular pair we were devastated when one got lost. We looked and looked, and finally gave up and hid the mate as it was turning the house into chaos every time Layla saw it and got upset over not being able to wear the pair of them. When we finally found the missing sandal, we couldn't find the one we had hidden. Remembering my traumatic past experience with this sent me into a panic. Luckily I found a similar pair at a used store and bought them with a sigh of relief. Immediately, we lost the mate to that one too. I believe it is just these sandals that are cursed, as we have been quite good at keeping track of her other favorite shoes. This week, as I was packing up Layla's old shoes to go to Goodwill, I found one of each of the two pairs of sandals and finally had to throw them both away.

Ice cream machine

When I was younger, our family always got together on July 4 at someone's house that had a large yard and we would often make ice cream with an old-school ice cream maker with ice and a hand crank. It was always yummy but often runny (because we were too impatient to churn it enough or to put it in the freezer after it was done).

 

Now we are in Seattle where the weather is fair and they don't seem to take ice cream as seriously. Whereas in Minneapolis we had the choice of two different Dairy Queens to walk to on a hot summer day, we have to actually DRIVE to Dairy Queen (and pay a toll!) if we want some in Seattle. You can imagine our delight when a great ice cream place opened in our very neighborhood, called Molly Moon's. Despite being mediocre ice cream, they became wildly popular because they had the right combination of yuppy flavors (like salted caramel and blackberry sage), organic ingredients and locally-sourced food items. Eventually, they modified their recipes until their ice cream became pretty decent. Over time it became one of our top favorites, although we would never dare compare it to one of the wonderful midwest creameries.

Last year, Molly Moon's ice cream published a recipe book which inspired the appearance of one of the new-generation ice cream makers - made by Cuisinart - under our Christmas tree. For the first flavor we chose cinnamon. It's a surprisingly simple recipe; milk, sugar, cream, cinnamon.You cook it, cool it, stick it in the machine (which cools it some more and churns it for you - no hand crank!), and then voila! Ice cream!

Christmas Newsletter

The annual J&D newsletter - this is our 10th one!!!

Christmas in Seattle

Highlights of our holiday (spent in Seattle):

- Layla in either her princess dress or her swimsuit (sometimes with butterfly wings)
- Santa dropping off an unexpected supply of chocolate and candy canes, and gobbling up some cookies
- RAIN ALL DAY
- An ice cream maker, for making pink and purple ice cream (and a recipe book)
- A large amount of pee on someone's living room floor
- Skyping, all morning
- Lots of holiday cheer and a few holiday tears (particularly at nap time)

All in all, we survived - I'm kind of glad we stayed in Seattle, at least this year. It was all kind of overwhelming for Layla and this way we could take it at our own pace (e.g. it took almost all day to get about half the presents open). We got together with some good friends on Christmas Eve, which sort of made up for the lack of family. We also spent most of the afternoon watching TV (including Sleeping Beauty, a gift from Grandpa K), and reading all her new and recent library books.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday!

All ready for Christmas!

Our tree is up, stockings are out, cards have been sent, egg nog is bought, and... Amazon has delivered. Seriously, we have almost 20 empty Amazon boxes in our living room waiting to be broken down. Is this how every family does Christmas now? This year, I made an effort to buy some presents at local shops... but then I ended up sending them all out in Amazon boxes.

When you have Amazon boxes coming in with presents from relatives, your spouse, yourself for your spouse, and both your spouse and yourself for your kid, and all of them have your spouse's name on them (because you forgot to be clever when you ordered the stuff), you start getting a little confused about who should open what. At first, when there was only one package a day, we made educated guesses that were mostly correct. But this past week we were getting too many to keep track of. To make things worse, we get lots of other stuff through Amazon too so in the middle of the Large Pile Of Boxes were diapers and other things we actually wanted to use. Fortunately we finally got through it all this afternoon and everything is now wrapped - and correctly tagged - and under the tree. Hopefully there aren't a any present mishaps this year!