Decisions, decisions

So let's say, hypothetically, that you were going to Hawaii, specifically Oahu. Would you stay in a downtown hotel near Waikiki beach or rent a condo on the North Shore?

Waikiki beach is crowded and touristy, but is right in the middle of everything. The North Shore is isolated and quiet, but beautiful (it's where they shoot Lost) Both cost about the same, so that's not an issue.

In this hypothetical situation, you have use of a car so you wouldn't be "stuck" at the isolated place, but you'd have to drive about an hour to get to the touristy areas. If you stayed at the touristy areas, you'd have to pay for parking at the hotel, and you'd have to drive about an hour to get to the pretty part of the island.

Let's hear it people.

Highly Recommended, Two Thumbs Up

Wow, what a great little overnight trip! We got up really early (5:10 am!), and got to the Clipper for check in with plenty of time. The Victoria Cipper was a really nice way to ride over to Victoria, and we wound up sleeping for a good part of the trip. When we arrived in Canada, it was a quick trip through customs and then out to the parking lot to meet our tour. Turns out that there were only 4 of us signed up to do the tour that day, so they brought the "small" limo:



The other couple on the tour was Annie and Storm. Annie is originally from Virginia, Storm from South Africa. They both work on a private 175 foot luxury yacht. The Battered Bull, based in Ft. Lauderdale, but they travel literally all over the world...France, Monaco, New Zealand, Tahiti, everywhere you can think of. They were such a great couple and we had a blast traveling around the wineries with them. Check out the link for the boat....man what a way to travel.

Our first stop was at a cidery called Merridale Cider House. Our guide was Roz, and she showed us around the estate, how they pressed the apples, and then we had a tasting of their hard ciders and apple wines. They were all delicious, and we bought the Cidre Normandie, a very dry white apple wine, and the Winter Apple, a fantastic dessert port that was wonderfully sweet and buttery, along with a bunch of smaller bottles of various hard ciders which we drank in the limo throughout the rest of the tour. Who could imagine that they could make apples into such yummy drinks! Here's Jay and I posing in front of some of the apple trees:



We piled back in the limo for short ride to the Oceanfront Grand Resort, where we had a lovely three course lunch that included a wine pairing with each course. It was a beautiful day, and we sat overlooking the water while we enjoyed our food and wine. We were a little late getting back to our limo because we spent so much time talking over lunch that eating took a little longer than usual I guess. Once in the limo, Storm opened the bottle of Normandie white that he and Annie had purchased at the Cider House, and shared it with Jay and I while we traveled to our next destination, Cherry Point Vineyards. This was a lovely vineyard with some truly wonderful wines. Here's our tasting host Thomas:



We tasted several whites and reds at this vineyard, all medal winners for them. We purchased a blackberry port, a really sweet dessert wine, and their Ortega, a slightly sweet white that we both really enjoyed.

Next stop was the Godfrey-Bronwell Vineyards. This is a relatively new vineyard, and the most "laid back" of all the places we visited. Bill, the owner, was our host for the tasting. Here he is with Annie and Storm:



We purchased the Colette here, a white that was a mixture of Bacchaus, Chardonney, and Pinot Gris. Not as dry as some of the others, it's a crisp light white.

Our last stop of the tour was Silverside Farms, where they make sweet wines made entirely from berries, no grapes. Bill and Jean Aten are the owners here and Jean was our host for our tasting. We loved this place, not only because of the delicious wines and the lovely location, but because Jean provided a great big bowl of dark chocolate buttons to enjoy with our wine tasting. We purchased a bottle of the blueberry wine, and Annie loved it so much that she bought 4 bottles! It was a nice place to end the tour, as everything was kind of like dessert.

When we got back to Victoria around 6, we made plans to have dinner with Annie and Storm at a restaurant right on the harbor. There was a yacht race the next day, so there were lots and lots of boats to look at while we drank mojitos and ate dinner.



After dinner we walked around the harbor for a little while, hugged Annie and Storm goodbye, and went back to the hotel. We were in bed by 10, tired from the tour, the food and the alcohol, but we had a fantastic day with great weather, great wine, and great people to hang out with. We were back home by 2:30 the next afternoon, so a short but absolutely wonderful little holiday.

Wine for everybody!

Tomorrow morning, Jason and I are taking off on a wine tour of southern Vancouver, and then spending the night in Victoria. We are taking the Victoria Clipper from Seattle to Victoria, which is about a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour. Then we'll board a chauffered "luxury" bus (haha) and visit 4 different wineries in Vancouver, have lunch at a resort by the ocean, and get back to Victoria around 6pm. We'll spend the night and come back on the clipper the next day at 11:30. So, just a short break, but one we are very much looking forward to. I'll post pics when we get back.

Kelsey is going to stay home with the doggies, since you have to be 19 to go on the wine tour. I think she'd be pretty bored anyway. Hopefully Ayla can stay over with her so she's not completely alone. The dogs don't talk very much and so are not great company.

Comp time

Jay gets to have almost the whole week off because of the absolutely insane hours they've been putting in at work. He had to work yesterday, but was home by dinner, and now he's off until next Tuesday, Monday being a holiday and all. Of course I put him to work right away on the bathroom :-). Right now, he's busy scraping the door trim. We might actually have a completely finished bathroom by the end of the week. I really did want to start on the backyard this week, but I don't think that will happen. There's just too much to do.

Kelsey is so looking forward to the end of school. One month from today and she's done. They seem like to they have to go so much longer than PA (I think they're done June 6 or something like that), but then again they get much longer breaks throughout the year, so it really does even out. She doesn't see it like that of course, she just sees that she has to go longer.

It's been kind of cool and a bit rainy here the past couple of days so we've been really lazy lately. I have to start cooking again now that the whole family will be home for dinner. Tonight is pork loin braised in milk. With mashed potatoes for the vegetarian.

Time for Meg to leave

I'm taking Megan back to the airport this morning, in about an hour. We really enjoyed her visit with us, but it was way too short. Last night at dinner she talked about how short it was and we had a difference of opinion as to why she didn't stay a week. She claims I only offered these few days, while I claim I asked her if she wanted to go home Wednesday or stay until Saturday, and she said Wednesday. Either way, it's too late now since she has to be back at work on Friday for a mandatory meeting. We all wish she was staying longer though. Oh well, we'll see her again in about 6 weeks when we go on the cruise.

The doggies are enjoying the lovely Seattle spring sunshine. Ignore the backyard, that's next on our list for fixin'.

Bathroom update

Okay, I finally got some pictures of the bathroom remodel to share. Here we have a couple of shots of what the bathroom looked like before we started. Note the very small space between the toilet and the tub....a knee breaker.

Construction time. We took everything out down to the studs, including the ceiling. Yuck!

Here's the finished product. Keep in mind that we still have to finish the trim around the floor and the door, but it's so much better, and we're happy we did it every time we take a shower.

Happy Mother's Day

To all the Mom's I know, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day. Both of the girls are home with me today, so I'm already having a great one. Megan was up very early today, no doubt because of the time change and the fact that she went to bed pretty early last night. When everybody else gets up and ready, we're going to the Rusty Pelican for brunch (mmmm, cranberry mimosas), then we're going to go see a movie. This morning is kind of chilly and damp, so a movie will be great today. It's supposed to warm up later so maybe we'll get to go to the dog park.

Yesterday we took Megan around to her old work spots so she could see if anyone she knew was still around. There was one at Zeek's and just a couple at Best Buy. I guess everybody is moving on. I still think she enjoyed talking to those few that she saw. I did get some batteries while we were at Best Buy, so now I can post pictures, so later I'll put up the bathroom picture, I promise!

Springtime in Seattle

We got our new couch on Saturday...but we think it's wrong. We specifically wanted three cushions, but there's only two large ones. Jason hates that, because he doesn't like anyone having to ride the hump in the middle when three people are sitting on the couch. So I called our sales lady from Dania, and she looked it up, and apparently, yes, we did get the wrong thing. She's supposed to let me know tomorrow when we can get a new one. Meanwhile, this was a special order, and she said to just use what we got until we get our replacement, dogs and all.

The weather has been so beautiful the last few days, and we're finally seeing the sun. I'm taking full advantage of that by working hard in the backyard. We have a nice corner lot, but the backyard is kind of not attractive...it's basically just a fenced in place for the dogs to hang out. But we'd really like to make it a nice little area for sitting outside, grilling, and enjoying the sunshine. We're planning on putting in a nice little brick patio, but we can't start until Jay is done working these crazy hours. So I started by digging all the weeds out of the one corner and laying some landscaping edging, planting grass seed, cutting and trimming the out of control tree that comes over the fence from the neighbor's yard, and trying to make a little rock garden thingy. I've been working all week just one the one corner, and it's starting to look much better. The patio is going to take some time, because there will be lots of digging to do.

Meg's here in two days!

Out to dinner

Tonight Kelsey's guitar teacher came over to the house to give her lesson, and then the three of us went out to dinner afterwards. It's absolutely amazing how much Bronwyn and I have in common. She's almost my age, and tonight we found out that we're both Star Trek fans, specifically Voyager and Janeway, both science fiction fans in general, big fans of dragons and dragon related stuff, like the same kind of books and music...it just goes on and on. She wants to start walking too, so we're going to get together a couple of times a week to walk around Greenlake. I've been wanting to do that, but I hate to walk it alone....it's so much more fun with someone to talk to.

I took some pictures of the bathroom to post before and after shots, but then the batteries died before I could get them uploaded. I promise to do that soon.

Go Blake!

Kelsey's new look

And now her friend is going to the same guy today to get it done. Nose piercings used to be out of the mainstream, didn't they? Now it's just like...eh.

And We're Back!

Beaglehaus has recovered from its unfortunate incident, and we're back up .... finally. I know all of our regular readers (both of you) have been just dying to know what's up in Seattle. Here's a quick update.

• Bathroom remodel is 95% finished...just some trim work to do. It is fantastic, and we love our new shower and tub more each time we use it. I will say, it will be a long, long time until I want to do another tiling project. I hated it. It looks pretty good for first-timers, but it was absolutely no fun at all.

• I got into the Radiology program! I won't hear from about the ultrasound program for another 6 weeks or so, but we can breathe a huge sigh of relief that at least I was accepted into one of them, so my last two years of school weren't a waste of time. I'm kind of leaning towards Radiology right now though, because it starts sooner, I can graduate earlier, and there's less of a chance I'll have to do clinical far away from Seattle. Lots to think about.

• Kelsey got her nose piereced. It's really cute.

• Jay has been spending outrageous amounts of time at work....I'm talking not coming home until 3 - 4 in the morning, and then leaving again at 7:30 the next day. Blah. One or two more weeks of this and then he should be done. There's so much to do around the house, and we barely see him so it's really tough right now. Now that the bathroom is almost done, we want to start working on stuff for the back yard.

• Meg is coming to visit for Mother's Day! Yay! We miss her terribly so we sent her a ticket. She only gets to come for a few days, but it will be great to see her.

• We're finally all moved into the new house, out of the old rental, got 100% of our deposit back, and we don't have to worry about going back and forth anymore. What a pain that was. We used every last second of the 6 weeks we had to move too....we got out just in time :-)

• I'm going to be an aunt again! My brother and sister-in-law are due sometime late November/early December. Kirk says that Krispy is feeling pretty bad these days, poor thing. Here's hoping that she's feeling better soon.

Hmmmm....after almost a month and a half of no updates, turns out I don't have as much to say as I thought I did. Have no fear though, I'll think of something soon.

Pictures

Well, if you've got a spare hour or two, the pictures of San Francisco are up in the gallery. There's a bunch, especially of Alcatraz.

Cleaning the old house most of the day, so I'm pretty tired and I have a headache. I'll let the pictures speak for the blog today :-)

Sweet sweet craigslist

Back from California, where we had a wonderful long weekend with lots of shopping and eating and walking, and the weather was gorgeous. Also got to see Mark and Keith again from TimeSink which was really fun. I will try to post pictures tomorrow, especially of Alcatraz which was way cool at night. Kelsey is pretty obsessed with that prison and the prisoners. She could probably tell you most of the worst offender's names and what they did, and I'm sure she could also regale you with tales of escape attempts.

In the meantime, we're back home. I saw somebody's craigslist ad today asking if they could come pick up any stuff you didn't want anymore, as they were trying to raise money for a down payment on a house by doing these yard sales of whatever they could get. I emailed her and they came over tonight and cleared the old house of all the stuff we didn't want to bring to the new house but hated to just throw away. So that's cool, they were really happy to get everything, and I think they're coming back tomorrow night to pick up the couch too. So there's not too much left in the old house to bring over, thank goodness. I'm so ready to live in only one place!

The beagles were great while we were gone, and very well taken care of by Ayla and her mom. They are so very spoiled, they don't even know what it's like to go to a kennel when we go on vacation.

Off to California

Kelsey and I leave for San Francisco tomorrow, to join Jay at the Game Developer's Conference, already in progress. It was so nice here today that I almost hate to leave just when the city is starting to come into Spring. It's supposed to rain by the weekend though, so we won't miss too much.

Ayla and her mom are going to stay with the beagles, so I have to write up a schedule for them tonight. We got the new dryer today, and I did my first load of laundry - it's so nice to not use that scary one that came with the house anymore.

I made mom's reservations to come see us in June, and I made Kelsey's reservations to go to Austin in April. Ray is coming to see us early April, and then I can't wait to go on the cruise in June with the Weilers and the Churchills. So much to look forward to in the next few months.

Talk to you from California - if I can find a wifi hotspot, that is.

Oscar thoughts

How cool that we're on the West Coast so we can enjoy the Oscars at 5:30 and not have to fall asleep waiting for them to be over.

I hate the pre-show. Everyone just seems so overly fake about everything. We skipped most of it.

Nicole Kidman's face looks totally frozen and plastic and scary looking. Way too much botox.

Jack Nicholson gets more bizarre every year. The shaved head, the sunglasses indoors....yeah, he's weird all right.

Good for Alan Arkin. I didn't see it, but I heard Eddie Murphy got really pissed that he didn't win and stormed out of the theater. Or maybe he just wanted to leave early. Whatever, he didn't stay for the rest and I think that's pretty rude either way.

Poor Peter O'Toole. The man looked like death warmed over, and I think his last chance of getting an Oscar before he's gone went by the wayside.

Forest Whitaker's eyelid is seriously creepy. Dude, have that fixed.

Ellen Degeneres was funny but seemed really subdued. I think she was nervous, but I still liked her.

Al Gore got big since his election. Tipper too. I think part of their global warming campaign consists of clearing every plate put in front of them. Good for him though for being there and being so personable. Too bad he couldn't show that side a few years ago.

Meryl Streep obviously goes for comfort over style. I still love her.

Gwyneth Paltrow looked fabulous. Reese Witherspoon too. Great dresses on both of them. Kirsten Dunst however looked like she hadn't washed her hair in three days. Kelsey and I both laughed at the look Toby Maguire shot her when she elbowed him away from the microphone.

Where was Brad Pitt? So disappointed he wasn't there.

Kelsey thinks Leo DiCaprio looks old...like in his 40s old. She was amazed to discover he's only 33. I think he looked and sounded very poised.

Yay for Martin Scorsese....I was happy he finally got his Oscar.

What the hell is wrong with George Lucas's neck?

I don't think little Jaden Christopher yada yada yada Smith can read. Love Will Smith, he looked great. Jada Pinkett Smith looks robotic.

I was happy for Jennifer Hudson, but Kelsey doesn't think it's fair that somebody gets an Oscar for their very first acting role.....says she hasn't earned it yet. I did feel bad for her doing the musical part though when her right boob kept threatening to escape. It made me very uncomfortable to watch her.

All in all, not bad...not that exciting, not horrible either. No terribly stand out moments. The best line of all the winners goes to Melissa Ethridge, who said the next morning on Good Morning America that the Oscar would be the only naked man to EVER be in her bedroom.

Gaming

Once in a while, we need a little break from the moving. (maybe it's not such a good thing to have so long to move...especially when your entire family is made up of procrastinators)

So, we got the Wii the other day (courtesy of Nintendo and a special offer to Midway employees). Jay also went and got Zelda to play on the Wii and Crackdown to play on the XBox 360. So now we officially have 4 game systems set up. Oh, the wires.....the wires.

Anyways, the Wii is pretty fun, 'cause it came with Wii sports and we've all been having fun bowling and playing tennis, and testing our "fitness age". I don't want to mention what my fitness age is, because I think Nintendo is smoking crack. (it's freakin' 68!!!) Obviously, I have some work to do on my reflexive gaming moves. Kelsey started out in her 50's but is down in her 20's now. Jason started out not far from his real age, so good for him. Too bad he has osteoporosis. (or so the lady at the fitness fair at his work told him the other day) I think he's just trying to get out of beagle-proofing the backyard by using brittle bones as an excuse. What a whiner.

***okay, really...that diagnosis was a little surprising and scary, so he's going to get a follow up by somebody who wasn't trying to push their alternative medicine services on scared, brittle boned people.****

The bathroom contractor was here today, and we ordered us a new tub. If all goes well, the bathroom should be done by end of March to mid-April. Mostly depends on us, as we're doing a lot of the work ourselves to save $$$. I can't wait.

Yay! Officially moved in!

It's been a busy few days, and we just got Beaglehaus back up and running so I can finally update everyone on the move.

The movers came bright and early 9am Friday, and worked pretty steadily through until 5pm. We couldn't bring the green couch from my old house, and we couldn't bring Jason's maroon chair, because we couldn't get either one of them up the stairs to the loft where we had the "lofty" goal (hehe) of placing them. So they went back to the old house. We were all in bed by 7:30 Friday night, utterly exhausted.

Comcast came right at 8am on Saturday (we had one of those sometime between 8 and 12 appointments). I had a touch of panic when the guy said he wasn't going to be installing any outlets, it wasn't on his work order. I told him I made it very clear when I set up the appointment that we needed three outlets installed, because there is basically no cable set up in the house. He made some calls and cancelled all his morning appointments, and he was at work from 8am until after 1 pm, even after calling in some reinforcement. Up on the roof, dropping lines, drilling through walls, and we were set up with our triple play :-) Cable, phone, internet all courtesy of the Comcast monopoly.

We don't have everything moved yet, but we're working on it a little every day. It's mostly books anyway, so it won't take that long to pack up. The NY professor is taking the house, starting April 1, so we still have all of March to get stuff out. The landlords will come over March 18 to do the walk through and start some painting, so our goal is to have most of the stuff moved out by then.

Whew....long post. I'll keep updating later.

Last night at the old house

Just finished taking the beds apart, so things will go faster with the movers tomorrow. They will be here at 9 am to start, and they've got 4-6 hours scheduled. I think that should be plenty of time, since we live so close and we're basically just having them move furniture. Kelsey and I moved all the kitchen stuff today, which fit a little better than I thought it would actually.

Things we need:
Microwave
Chest freezer
Throw/Area rugs

Things we have way too much of:
Furniture
Glasses
Coffee mugs
Books and bookcases
Knick-knacks
Spices
Washers (1 too many)
Computers and computer parts
Board games with missing pieces
Curtains/various window treatments
Crockpots
Dogs

Tonight we sleep good - tomorrow we work hard. It would have been awesome if we could have bought the house we're renting, then we wouldn't have had to move at all :-) Oh well - we'll miss this place but we're excited to sleep in the new house tomorrow. I'll post pictures as we get organized.

NY visitor

The professor from NYC came today to look at the house. We think it went pretty well. He said he had been looking at quite a few, and had some more to look at yet, but he said he really liked the place, and we were probably in the top 2 of what he had looked at so far. We should know one way or the other sometime Tuesday, so we'll still cross our fingers until then.

We've all been working so hard this past week. Jason has one gate almost finished, and he's going to start working on the second one tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have them done before we move in officially on Friday. We tried to go meet the neighbors today and ask about putting in some green wire fencing along the property line, but they weren't home. Kelsey and I painted the remaining two walls in her room, and we'll finish the second coats tomorrow. I bought the pot rack for behind the stove, so I'm hoping to put that up tomorrow too. That should save us a lot of valuable cabinet space, if we can keep the pots on the wall. We still have to find a small microwave somewhere, and would like to pick up a used chest freezer for downstairs if we can find one on craigslist. We're all exhausted, and I can't wait until we're all moved in and settled. At least the weather has been really nice lately. I sure hope it won't be raining on Friday.

Moving update

We got the keys and we've been busy moving stuff back and forth between houses. It's nice that we don't have to move out of the rental right away so we can take our time moving. The furniture gets moved next Friday, and the goal is to have most of the other stuff moved by then.

This past weekend Kelsey and her friends were busy painting her room while Jay and I took inventory and made a trip to Lowes. We were there over three hours, trying to make sure we got everything we needed so we wouldn't have to go back. Of course, we had to go back the next day to get outside wood screws for the gate that Jason is building for beagle containment. But now I think we're set.

The guy from New York is coming this week to look at the house and decide if he wants to take over the rental. Please please please please please please please please please. oh, and please.