GO Sounders GO

Last night Nisha's company had their summer event and since Sushil was out of town I was the plus 1. Have I mentioned that I love Sushil traveling and I will love it even more when Nish moves to the West side!?! Anyway, the event was dinner and drinks at the Sounds FC v El Salvador game. The Sounders are our professional soccer team BTW. The play at Qwest Stadium which is the Hawk's Nest for you American football fans. It was a ton of fun especially since we won! Afterward we went to a bar for a nightcap and some dancing after which we were offered jobs...yes, the general manager gave us his card if we were interested in dancing there Wednesday nights. I guess it's good to know we don't suck!

Thanks Nish for taking me, I had a great time :)

outside the stadium looking at the city

right after we won, we had GREAT seats

Jannel dancing

CUTE VIDEO HERE

A day at the Dog Park

Our dogs are completely different. Beast loves other dogs and does not care for people where as Belle loves people and pretty hates other dogs (besides Beast). It makes it hard to do anything because Belle hates dog parks and Beast hates stores/city noise BUT since Belle is a dog we have decided that she needs to learn to like other dogs so we try to socialize her as much as possible.....and by socializing her I mean this

Yes, this is how she acts at dog parks. She is always right beside one of us and if we stop walking she stands between our feet well mostly dad's feet!

On the other hand Beast completely ignores us!

This is Golden Gardens Park in Ballard. It is a beachfront park with a dog park, beautiful :)

this is Belle actually playing because we were the only ones in the "small dog" park
she loves her (well not really hers, we found it on our roof) ball
Beast checking out the place
the marina

Summers in the City

As another wonderfully BUSY week comes to a close.....

This week Davis was traveling Monday - Wednesday so not much happened. Monday Freddo and I went for a run and then a strolled through the market which is always nice. Wednesday night was girls night cooking and we all brought our favorite summer recipes/food. I love to make pizzas in the summer so I made a homemade tomato basil mozzarella pie that was pretty delicious if I can say so myself.
Thursday night we had planned on going to see Inception with Sushi, Nish, Em, and Ali but NOT 1 but 2 theaters were sold out so we ended up at our place with tons of candy watching a movie in! of course there were DP and crowns involved so it was a great night!

at our Thursday market

I finally found my sunglasses that I thought I had lost but only misplaced

soooo exciting, I love these shades!!

Friday Inception was again sold out at the IMAX 8pm showing so we went to the 5pm showing and I have to say it wasn't that great. It was decent and had great potential, but I think they ruined it. The rest of the night involved pizza and awkwardness (we won't get into the details on that one).

Saturday, a great day of hiking and eating. I learned the great thing about hiking is the amounts of food you can consume, it was awesome! This was mine and Davis' first "real" hiking experience and I thought it was great! Our neighbors took us and it was wonderful. It was the perfect day, you could see Mt Rainier and all her glory perfectly! What a great Saturday :)

posing in my hiking gear

trekking

we can see it

the avalanche lillies

perfect rock for lunch and what a beautiful view while eating a PB&J

fantastic
Davis being Davis, snow in July and 65 degrees

sooo pretty
crossing the bridge or log to see the falls
found it

Spray falls, might have beat Mt Rainier in my opinion. It was stunning!

Just Another Day in Paradise

Summers in Seattle are the BEST. There are festivals every weekend and I literally mean every weekend. This weekend was called Bite of Seattle, it's where a bunch of food vendors set up shop/tents at/around the Space Needle. It's called bite because the vendors sell smaller portions so that consumers can try different foods all in one place. They also have about 3 different stages with live music. We partook in this Friday night with Freddo, Emily, and Ali (and they had a friend in town, James). Davis had fish n chips and I had pulled pork sandwich. We watched some music and then devoured some frozen custard, yum! After the festival was over, we headed to the Bensons for games and DP and crown. What a night! I/Davis didn't take any pictures of the festival.

Now I feel like I should back up a bit......since summers are so beautiful here and you can't count on this weather any other time, many things are planned in the summer, hence why we are sooo busy.

Monday night Davis and I went to see Eclipse, which is the 3rd movie in the Twilight saga. Personally I think it was the best out of the 3 so far. I loved the books, if you enjoy reading and haven't read them, I definitely suggest them. The movies are a bit cheesy and not near as good as the books, but worth seeing. I love seeing them in theater just to hear the teenage girls "ohh" and "aww", it really makes my night :) Thanks Dave for taking me!

Tuesday night I interviewed for a new family. I hope to have an accounting job this fall but I need a back up plan just in case and since Viv is starting pre-school I need new kiddos. I already have started with 1 new family. The child is a 4 month old girl and I have her 2 days a week. I think we are going to be great together, I am excited to see another infant change daily and reach new milestones.

Wednesday is "girls night in cooking" officially. Hazel Grace, a neighbor has been hoping to get ladies together every Wednesday and cook for some time now and it was official this past Wednesday as 16 wonderful women showed up to eat some veggies. We actually had a guest cook this past week, Patty James. She started the 1st organic cooking school in the US and has been traveling the nation over the past year in an RV gathering data about kids and nutrition. You can read all about her story and passion here. She cooked a delicious meal for us and we enjoyed it over many great conversations. This Wednesday it will just be us Seattle girls cooking, eating, and talking.

Turkey meatloaf with veggies and oats

Wednesday was also my dad's birthday, I hope you had a fabulous day! I miss you and love you bunches!
Thursday was the opening day for the Olympic Sculpture Park Market and of course we were there because it is 2 blocks away. I have been so excited for this because since we bought our condo, we are now roughly 1 mile away from Pike Place Market and don't get down there near as often as I would like. So having a market 2 blocks away is GRAND! I am going to live it up of Thursdays for the rest of the summer!

I have already talked about Friday above.

Saturday was exercise and eat too much day! It was a volleyball, frisbee, soccer, football, corn hole day at Alki beach. Davis and I loaded our new packs with snacks and balls and biked over to West Seattle for a wonderful fun in the sun day! Alki beach is beautiful for many reasons but the main reason is because it has a wonderful view of downtown Seattle. There are always a ton of people over there playing ball, rollerblading, biking, kayaking, scuba diving, or just hanging out and so it's a different scenery from the hustle bustle of downtown and I love it. Our bike ride was great but proving to be very hard on my bottom today. We beat some people at volleyball which really shocked me because we haven't played since we moved out here. It was nice to know that we still had it in us, go team! After exhausting ourselves we headed over to Cactus, a mexican joint on the beach for some drinks and then biked it home.

taking a breather

view of Seattle crossing the bridge, I didn't take any pictures of Seattle from West Seattle, sorry.

Mt Rainer, we will be hiking there next Saturday

After refreshing showers, we drove to 3 different places to eat before settling down at 5 Spot. I once again had a delicious pulled pork sandwich. Something about the summer time makes me want pulled pork. We sat at 5 spot until midnight talking and then all headed for bed. I am sure we all slept wonderfully at least I know I did.

Ali and Emily finding out we had a blog and looking at it on the phone

water in mason jars, I am a fan of 5 spot

Seattle

We landed in Seattle last Monday and it was cold, but not for long as it warmed up to 80 the following day. Summer is here and it arrived with us thank goodness! Sushil and Nisha picked us up from the airport which was extremely sweet of them because they live sooo far away, but they are fixing that soon as they are currently looking for somewhere closer to buy, yay! It's always nice to know someone is excited enough to see you that they want to pick you up, thanks guys :)

Since we have been back in Seattle our lives have been busy of course, working during the days and fun stuff at night. Thursday night we cooked out on our roof and it was beautiful and HOT, not complaining though! We have steaks and grilled corn, yum. We of course also played dominoes.

Friday night we went over to the Gupta's for dinner. We had a really yummy pasta and very chocolatey cupcakes (I made them from Barefoot Contessa)...they were really good but Freddo and I were the only ones to destroy 1 whole cupcake! Afterwards we talked and played Catch Phrase.

Ali seeing how many HUGE marshmallows he could fit into his mouth, he thought 3 and was defeated.

us all laughing with him, and Ben to the left could only do 1...yes these marshmallows were bigger than normal

that's 2

Saturday our neighbors toook us to REI to buy hiking gear. I have been wanting to hike for a while now and I mentioned it to our neighbors on Tuesday.....and they were super excited that I was interested and decided to take us to get our equipment and already have 2 hikes planned for us. The first one is in 2 weeks and we are excited to break our gear in! Davis is waering his boots to work in right now.

his pack and boots

only pair of boots I have ever seen him in besides the others he tried on in the store

working with his gear

my pack
my boots

After shopping and I mean shopping, we came back and they cooked us dinner and once again it was delicious! Salmon, rice, and marionberry pie. After dinner, they taught us a new game, hand and foot. I really liked it and I think Davis did as well, it might have something to do with us killing them. We talked a lot of trash and did end up winning by a lot. We are lucky to have such good neighbors :)

Saturday was still not over as we then went to Nisha's co-worker's birthday bash and then Taco Bell, much needed!

Sunday morning started with baking banana muffins for the world cup championship. We watched the game with neighbors in the sky lounge with delicious food again. After the game we went to Farah's for a cookout...more food. It was a beautiful day and we soaked up the sun.

Davis starting the grilling at Farah's

we really enjoyed that this girl fell asleep...we didn't know them but I guess Farah knew her boyfriend, she must have been bored or exhausted or both

Gupta's

Freddo, Farah, Andres, and Carolina

us with Farah

After writing this post, I realized just how much yummy food we have had this weekend! All we did was eat and play games, what a great weekend! We love our Seattle friends!