I Want to Be Big Like You, Okay?

Title's a recent favorite Franklin quote. Happening pretty quick too, though maybe not from his perspective...


Just a few bits of the last couple weeks:

Playing at his favorite park, Hiawatha:

Hard to spot with all the action, but note that as he's kicking the soccer ball he's also holding a tennis ball, ready to throw it :)

Snack break:


Followed, as you may have heard, by a tasty dinner at Circa:

Tasty, and diaper-free! Exciting times!

Calmer moment at home last week:

He's really into matching lately, so here he's trying to replicate the block towers on the box—glad we hung unto the box long enough for him to enjoy it on this level!

Less calm moment at daycare last week, as he and his classmates invited us (and Grandma, per Franklin's request) to a potluck and a play:


Goldilocks, with the kids trading off parts. Franklin ended up in a lead role, but as you'll see he missed a cue:

Or was he hamming it up for the crowd? Hmm...

Lest this end up being Franklin's blog, here's a bit from a couple of weeks ago:

Cocktails at Vito's (cool place!) before hearing some Baroque music at Town Hall.

Fun night, and I saw my first theorbo, so that's cool:


Otherwise, well, as you probably know the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl, and Franklin is excited:






And the Jayhawks are looking great lately too. Fun time watching them beat Texas today with Wendy and Roman and the rest of the Seattle KU alumni crew:



Rock Chalk, dear reader.

Things Are Getting Weird... Or, Go Hawks!

You know things are getting weird when someone like me comes home from his favorite natural foods co-op with these items in his bag:


And by "someone like me" I mean someone who's pretty sure that at the end of the day the answer to the question in this headline is Yes:


Anyway, what choice do I have? As I'm sure you know, our house is now in the hands of a thoroughly committed fan:

And so, ahem, Go Hawks!

As Holidays Approach

Couple of guys in fleece hoodies, bravely facing the brightness of the coming holiday season:

Thanks to Pete for the photo!

Lot of cooking to be done this week. Franklin got in some good practice the other day:

Emily was out of town and it was way too cold to go out for a walk, so we made black beans together. He peeled the onion himself, helped me rinse the beans, and helped get everything into the pot.


He also really likes adding salt, but tends to get a little, well, excited...

But hey, they tasted great, so I'll take it!


And now we're on to Thursday's feast. First step: roasting some pumpkin for our pie:

Going to try the recipe on the Times' cool Thanksgiving page.

I may have said this before, but Melissa Clark is awesome.

You know what? See for yourself—here's the video:




Meanwhile Emily was working on the advanced preparations for one of the most important parts of the meal: spiced vermouth for the Holiday Manhattans!


All right, I should run. Little more work to get through before the rest of the cooking. Speaking of work, my Greek reading group met yesterday, and I discovered this wonderful line by Plato:

ἅπτει γάρ πώς μου τοῖς λόγοις τῆς ψυχῆς, ὦ Σώκρατες
somehow you touch my soul with your words, Socrates
(Ion 535a)

I mean, that about sums it up!

So, back to the words... and I'll see you soon with more food.

Happy Thanksgiving reader!

Welcome Home, Grandma!

Hectic few days, but we're all thrilled to have Grandma Christine here in town!

I flew back to Illinois to help with the final stages of the move:

Or really to stand around while the movers cleared things out, but, hey close enough ;)

Luckily we decided to stay at a hotel in Lake Zurich once the house was empty, and it was just around the corner from Hackney's!

Onion loaf! Yum!

Meanwhile Franklin and Emily were getting ready to welcome Grandma to town:


And of course they had a little fun too:



Okay, much more fun coming soon. But now I've got to get to the store—grandma's coming over for dinner! :)

A Friendly Review

Lot of fun we're trying to squeeze in this week—can you believe it's the last weekend for the wading pool??—it's been tough to find time to post much lately. So, here's a quick attempt to get caught up:

Great seeing so many friends recently! Deron and Haley spent a few days in the area, and Franklin enjoyed showing them around Capitol Hill:


And we even convinced him to stay home with a babysitter one night so we could show off a couple of spots he's still too young for, like Sun Liquor:


The extra, exciting twist was that Jeremy and Aiko were also here at the same time, scouting out possible jobs and neighborhoods:

Sure hope it works out—would be great to see everyone more often!

Trying to help them fall in love with the Emerald City, we took them on the water taxi and spent a nice afternoon in West Seattle:


Franklin suggested some activities:


But we opted for more delicious food from Marination Ma Kai instead:

Great setting, great food, great company!



And of course Franklin did his best to make our little apartment look like a charming place:







Hope to see all of you again soon!


Bonus photo! This is from almost a month ago, but I love this photo that Monique sent us from her & Jamie's wedding:

Rosé and string cheese: yeah, we know how to bring the party :)

Congrats, Jamie & Monique!

Beautiful celebration for a beautiful couple.

Huzzah!

Weren't able to get any good pictures of the two of them ourselves, but luckily we have an anonymous source:

Thanks, Facebook!

Hopefully we'll eventually see photos of the ceremony, which took place at the very charming Parsons Gardens.

In the meantime, I love this shot Emily got of us:


Great summery spiked lemonade on offer at the reception:


Also saw Wendy and Roman, which is always fun:


Even Franklin put in an appearance at the reception:

Cheers, Jamie and Monique!

Bubbling with Excitement

Three hours of work and a trail of recycling in our wake, and we've nearly got the room ready for our little guy. Hope you like his new dresser, reader (hope he likes it too!).

Also swung by Tricoter for some yarns and some ideas. If things go according to plan, this will soon be a hat:



And, on a more or less completely unrelated note, I heard about this on CHS the other day, and I think you need to see it.

A guy riding around our neighborhood on a bike delivering antique seltzer bottles full of sparkling water may sound a bit like a Portlandia sketch, but I sure hope we can sign up soon!

Down the Coast II: Damnation Never Looked So Good

I mean, look at that tree! You can hardly even see Emily next to it! Amazing stuff.

This leg of the trip started out in Crescent City, which is somewhere in between a working fishing town and a tourist spot (sort of like Newport, actually... pretty cool...). That mix is nicely captured by the Curly Redwood Lodge: it clearly caters to tourists, but it's pretty handsomely low-key. And affordable!

And here's a nice looking salon:


Crescent City is also where you'll find the Crescent City Information Center, the main visitor center for Redwood National and State Parks. We stopped there on our way out of town, got some great advice from a ranger, and headed down to Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park looking for the Damnation Creek Trail.

Great hike. Best of the trip, I'd say. (Name's not bad either!)

Begins around 1,000 feet elevation, in redwoods like the one at the top of this post, and then makes its way through probably four different ecosystems, ending with tide pools on the beach. Highly recommended hike.

Here's a map, in case you're interested:

Plus, if you get on the trail at 8am (so that you can be on the beach for low tide), you should basically have the place to yourself.



That tree stands next to this bridge:


And right across the bridge, after walking in various forests for a couple of miles, we got to this view:


Trail behind us:


Damnation Cove:




After the hike (did I mention that it was great?), we continued down the coast:

View Down the Coast II in a larger map

Made a brief stop in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park:


Our final destination was the Elk Cove Inn. It sounded like a great place when we were making our reservations, but when we hit the first bit of Highway 1 we started to doubt our planning:

View Larger Map
Twenty miles in about an hour! Sheesh! At least it's kind of pretty once you get back to the coast :)

And then we arrived, found out we got an upgrade, saw the beautiful view of Elk Cove, and were greeted by this great surprise in our room:

So glad we made it down there! My only regret might be that we didn't stay another night!



After a nice sunset and a good night's sleep, we got to enjoy more beach and tide pool fun at Elk Cove.






Video panorama of the cove:


Can't see the Inn too well, but it's up on the hill behind Emily:

Hope to make it back there soon!

Okay, that seems like plenty for one post. Thanks for reading, and cheers!