Gabby's Birthday Celebration

Although today is the day Gabby turns 25, we celebrated her birthday earlier on Saturday.  We met up at Cafe Flora, which is a vegetarian restaurant near the Washington Park Arboretum. The wait was long (almost an hour), but the food was so yummy.  Afterwards we walked around the arboretum which was nice.  It rained on us a little bit at the beginning but was dry for the rest.  Hard to believe our girl is now a quarter of a century old! We sure love her and wish her the best year yet!

While we were waiting to be seated Gabby opened up her gift from Gamma, who bought these bird sponges when we were on Vashon Island.  Gabby loved them but declared them too cute to use!

Sitting patiently on Gramp's lap.

She didn't enjoy this lemon quite as much as the last one she tried. Her sour face was so cute!

Practicing with the sippy cup.

Gabby's food. I was so hungry I devoured my waffle before I remembered to take a picture!

Ethan's

Bridge photo at the arboretum.

Yesterday & Today--The Interactive Beatles

On Friday night Scott and I attended our first live event of the year, the Yesterday & Today concert in Kent.  We had seen this group perform 10 years ago in Olympia at the Washington Center and have been waiting for them to return to this area.  Such a fun group and they really are great musicians.  Their show is very interactive in that people can request certain Beatles songs and they will play them.  Hope they come back again before another 10 years goes by!

The 3 brothers that head the band of 6 members.

Yoh! Hike @ Millersylvania State Park

We had to pivot a bit with our first scheduled Yoh! hike of 2024 to Big Creek. Last weekend’s bitterly cold temperatures caused us to push it back a week and move it a little closer to town. This morning the group met at Millersylvania State Park for a cold and foggy hike. Teresa led us from the main parking lot by Deep Lake through the campground and along the Perimeter Trail and back. In all we completed 4.43 miles with just 166 feet of elevation gain. The trail was in decent shape except for a few spots of mud. It’s a nice little park and made us wonder why we didn’t go there more often when we lived in Tumwater. 

Bridge photo! I think this was the only time we saw the sun for the entire hike. The fog was relentless. (L to R: Teresa, Miranda, Pam hiding in the back, Tammy, Scott and Michele)

    We weren't quite picture ready yet in this photo.

That's better! L to R: Tammy, Scott, Teresa, Miranda, Susan & Michele

10 Months Old

Nova is 10 months old today!  She and Corey stopped by to wish Scott a happy birthday. So fun to spend some time with her. We had her on the floor. She is super mobile and so close to crawling.  She can crawl backwards, and she does a sort of one-armed Army crawl that’s super cute. The puppies aren’t quite sure what to make of it. Harvey likes that she’s on his level and all he wants is to lick her face. 

40 weeks 

41 weeks

42 weeks

43 weeks

10 months!

Go Cougs!

They're making good progress through the Harry Potter series.

She's a little explorer.

A new squishmallow!

Already a Target shopper!

West Seattle Stair Walk

This morning we met up with Gabby & Ethan to do another stair walk in the West Seattle area.  On the way there it was raining, but luckily it was dry for our walk.  It was a strenuous walk with lots of big hills.  The description from the book said it was 3.5 miles with 495 steps down and 69 steps up.  We ended up extending it a bit by walking down to see the new Thomas Dambo troll, which added an extra 1.26 miles and potentially more stairs, but we didn't count.  We saw lots of wildlife on our walk including 4 bald eagles, a Pacific Loon, and some Harlequin Ducks.  We also saw a large rainbow over the water which was super cool.  Another fun day!

The walk started with lots of uphill until we reached this point, where we headed down many stairs.

The stairs went on and on. Total count is 367 stairs. 

I thought this house with giant skeletons wearing mittens was funny.  Two holidays in one!

A very cute free library.

At Solstice Park. Elevation is 520 feet.

Beautiful views of the Puget Sound at Lincoln Park.

Rainbow!

Harlequin duck on the left with beautiful markings.

Just a cool garage we walked by.

By the time we climbed up these stairs we were exhausted and ready to be done!

Description from the book.