It's been a while. A lot has been happening though - we've been finishing up our time in Seattle, my internship with Amazon has been winding down (meaning things have been getting busier and busier up until last week), Tiffany's been incubating our unborn son, we provided fruit for over a thousand people, and we packed up all out stuff for our summertime highway inspection back to Cambridge. So here are the highlights, in no particular order:
Our Garden
Gardening out of an apartment isn't the easiest thing to pull off. At least for us. Really I don't know if our single tomato plant in a biodegradable pot can be called a "garden" in the classical sense - but it's what we could pull off on a 2nd floor apartment. I'm not sure if it was the people smoking on their patio below us, the lack of natural sunlight available in the Seattle area, or the lack of any type of attention during our 4th of July vacation in Tahoe... but we didn't have what would be considered a "bumper crop" - 4 tiny tomatoes on a dead vine. But hey, it's a start.
New Tenant
As soon as we cleared off things from our balcony, this little guy decided to move in.
The intricacies of the web built over night was incredible. A veritable wonder of natural engineering, a suspension bridge built of spider sputum. Unfortunately for our creepy little eight-legged friend - not a lot of bugs on our balcony. After 24 hours he was still in the same spot, his web had started to fray, and only a few tiny gnats had been captured in the web. Not quite the all-you-can-eat buffet I'm sure he was imagining as he poured all of his efforts into creating his web. Not at all unlike some people with a tomato plant I know...
Fruit
The reason the neighborhood arachnid probably thought our balcony would be a great place to stuff his face was that all of this was in our living room up until the night he built his web:
As a result, there were about a billion fruit flies in and around our apartment. We were partly in charge of getting all of the fruit for the summertime Hawaiian Luau/Picnic for the church. This was about 1/4 of the total fruit outlay, as we fed 1000 people or so kalua pork, rice, fruit, cupcakes, and snow-cones. Cutting it all up so it was fresh for everyone worked like an assembly line, with all of the people that volunteered to help working like a fine-tuned assembly line of knives, cutting boards, watermelon rinds, and pineapple juice. It was a successful operation, with no reportable injuries, everyone getting plenty of food, and only 2 watermelons and a few bananas left over after it was all said and done.
Moving
The day prior to this event, we packed all our stuff into a moving container for our move back to Cambridge. Luckily my brother Randy came over to help so we could get everything in - it was like a real life game of Tetris. All of those hours playing video games as a kid finally paid off, as we got everything into the container with everything stable and room to spare. Kayla was the task-master with here favorite big stick, and then had a seat in the mud.
And she loved playing in all of the newfound playspace... inside the cupboards.
Since we've moved out of our apartment, but are still in Seattle, we're vagabonding it for two weeks. Thanks Randy and Mel and Gavin and Amanda for letting us crash in your homes while we're homeless!
Canada
Finally, this weekend we had one final adventure in the Pacific Northwest and went to Canada with our friends the Ripps. We put the little girls in the back seat of the pilot, and it was surprisingly comfortable for the four adults. Honda Pilot = Awesome Vehicle. Seating for eight, four-wheel drive, and a comfortable drive. What more could you want?
We went to the Granville Island Market, saw a totem-pole workshop, visited the famous Stanley Park and took a walk along the sea-wall and checked out the totem poles, and got awesome Canadian Slurpees. My Canadian friends at BYU always claimed that their Slurpees were better than ours - I always dismissed them as crazy and figured that all of the flannel somehow affected their logical reasoning. It turns out I was wrong - Canadian Slurpees are awesome!!! Why you ask - a whole lot thicker, and somehow they stay frozen longer. After an hour my Slurpee was still mushy and delicious. The only problem was that the spout of Slurpee-dispensing goodness was too big, so you couldn't fill the Slurpee with the lid in-place. As a result you had to mound the frozen goodness above the top of the rim and then place the cap, but that was a small price to pay. Canada - you have awesome Slurpees. Unfortunately I was so busy enjoying mine that I forgot to take a photo, but I think you can imagine the goodness.
Soon to be a Totem-Pole
Actual Totem poles
Little Friends
Big Friends
The Fam
The Float-Plane
Tiffany has a deep-seated love for ice-cream
Walking on the Seawall
A Sea lion and her pup in the harbor
And we'll soon be on to our next adventure - Cross-country road trip with a recently potty-trained toddler and a pregnant Tifferoo!
