evan, lindsay, nina, elena and esther

This is a bit delayed, so bare with me. Things have been crazy busy for us. By some stroke of magic or luck or what ever you call it, Lindsay and I still find a way to brave the our doors. Thanks to some absolutely necessary help from our pals, Emily and Joe (and Vaughn, their 2-year-old), we were able to leave the kids behind and climb a mountain. We climbed Mt Si.


click to make it big!

Lindsay and I are trying to climb some mountains these days (more on that with future installments of the blog here). Mt Si was a great choice for us. It's a difficult 4 mile up climb. Then you go back the way you came making it a total of 8 miles. Total elevation gain is 3,150 or 3,700 ft (depending on who you ask). It's one of the local favorites for people who are training for Mt Rainier (one of the most technical Mountaineering summits in the US, and it's right in our back yard!).

Because of our plans for the day, we had very little time to hike the 8 miles. We were a little nervous about the hike since it's supposed to be so difficult. We knew we had to rush so we simply went. We trucked up that thing in well under 2 hours. Once we'd eaten our sandwiches (and shared with an alpine chipmunk), we made the trail pounding decent.

We had a blast. The view from the summit was kind of lame. Lots of fog, but it was cool to feel like our heads were in the clouds!

Here are some photos from the hike..








Our view from the top

Labels: hiking, Mt Si

We were here:







And here (not in that order, but I put the temple first because it was the most important place we went and we've been wanting to walk around the grounds for a long time with the girls):









Can you seen Elena and her daddy?

Lots of good moments at together at the temple grounds, and picking up Evan at work, and eating dinner out. Evan is going to Chicago for 3 days for a package design conference and we're going to miss him!

One of my favorites tonight - other than Elena dancing on Evan's shoulders, and them both being munchkins, Elena whispering little noises "conversing" with herself in the backseat on the way home, and Nina thanking me for dinner (which I didn't make tonight but I still appreciated her kindness) - was when kexp played beachhouse and Nina said "I love this! I love this new song." haha A happy night, just phone pics.

It's been three weeks. I think we'd all agree that it's feeling like home. It's where we sleep eat and where Nina throws tantrums. Here is our "you don't feel you're at home till" list, including but not limited to:

We've attended our new ward three (now four) times

Nina adjusted to her new nursery class (but still talks about friends from Kenmore a lot)

I met our postman Willie just today

Nina was rescued by another mom after falling into a pond at our first playgroup last week

Our first friendly treats brought to us by our neighbors

Our first treats we offered to a neighbor were rejected (they were pretty gross looking hahaa)

We finally put up some frames!

Our DVDs are alphabetized

Evan has his bus route down pat

We had our first fruit fly

Our first neighborhood shooting was a few days after we moved in

We've visited all parks including a beach within a 3 mile radius

We've had a guest stay over night (Nice to see you Scott we're glad you came!)

We held a slammin fathers day party with both sides of our family.


From a trip to the beach a couple of saturdays ago:











"You can hold your applause" - I think that's what Elena is saying in the picture above