This Is What We Did

Too much fun for one family: that's how it feels sometimes!

As you may know, Washington's National Park Fund called and interviewed Emily recently about our experience monitoring marmots in Olympic National Park.

But did you know they also made a video? Take a look:

WNPF Celebrates Volunteers from Clatter&Din on Vimeo.

See what happens there around 2:35? Oh yeah, it's Franklin! (And us of course.) Woo!

Less important to the future health of planet, but equally fun: blue raspberry lollipop after a haircut:

Yummy Sunday! #barbershoptreat

A photo posted by Yancy Hughes Dominick (@yancy9) on Apr 19, 2015 at 11:41am PDT

Surprising amount of fun representing the Philosophy Department at a recent open house for accepted students who are considering attending Seattle U. Fun mostly because of the super helpful and enthusiastic philosophy majors who helped out:

Back again, this time with industrious students to help! #ilovemyjobagain #welcometophilosophy

A photo posted by Yancy Hughes Dominick (@yancy9) on Apr 18, 2015 at 10:59am PDT

Speaking of philosophy, Peter Singer has to be the most popular one in the US, no? I mean, this event packed a whole movie theater!

Couldn't resist the photo and signed book:

#themostgoodyoucando

A photo posted by Emily Hughes Dominick (@emily.dominick) on Apr 10, 2015 at 8:54pm PDT

What else? Oh, have you seen the movie Microcosmos? Franklin highly recommends it:

I mean, it distracted him from wanting to watch sports!!

Trailer:


All right, I have work to do. Okay okay, one more from playing in the gym at the Y during Emily's yoga class:


Sigh. I'm tired.

Ahh...

Play Ball! ... Or, I Love You Too, But Spring Is Here

So much fun with so many sports with Franklin. He's pretty committed to seasons lately, and spring is for soccer and baseball:

He also told me that he wants to go to Wrigley Field and see a Cubs baseball game. So... Grandpa Ray? Aunt Merrica?

Speaking of spring (the title of this post is one of his inexplicable but hilarious recent sayings), some delicious spring dining:


And tulips from last week's outing:


Last week's outing being the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We went in 2012; fun to return, and to see the fields in the sun!


Still nice and muddy though:














Long, full day:


Back at home, Franklin has really been enjoying watching 20-minute bits of Sweetgrass, one of my very favorite movies:


I mentioned it here back when we first saw it; such a great movie!


Also had some fun playing soccer, baseball, and a little frisbee with Jen at the beach last weekend:






And of course, as you may have heard, we attended our first Sounders game:


Pretty fun time.


And they won! And it was because of a beautiful 360-spin-move goal. Take a look:






All right, that's more or less it. (I really need to post more often and shorten these up, huh?)

Oh, a little fun today on Instagram, which Emily and I recently decided to look into after hearing how much Magen enjoys it:

#marchmadness in April

A video posted by Emily Hughes Dominick (@emily.dominick) on Apr 5, 2015 at 11:49am PDT

No Jayhawk gear in that basketball clip, shockingly, but here's Franklin's current favorite ad:

Over and over lately he's been saying, "Rock Chalk, baby!" :)

All right, a little more Instagram:

Lamb chops

A photo posted by Emily Hughes Dominick (@emily.dominick) on Apr 5, 2015 at 5:48pm PDT

And that's it. Cheers, reader! Hope you're having a wonderful spring!

Happy day all!

A photo posted by Yancy Hughes Dominick (@yancy9) on Apr 5, 2015 at 6:51pm PDT

We Laugh and We Laugh and We Laugh

Lots of carrying on around here lately.

Get it? ;)

And not just at home. Here's a glimpse of singalong at Mt. St. Vincent:


And, let's see, back at home he's been working on his jump-shot:

I'll try to get better video one of these days. Not sure if you can hear it, but when he's off screen, he's saying "I'm Frank Mason." (Emily and I also represent various KU players, but the roster is always changing...)


Meanwhile, highlight of 2015 so far (and honestly, one of my highlights of our nearly eight years in Seattle) was seeing Sherman Alexie at Seattle U this past week:

One of my book clubs very recently read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which is excellent.

Been years since I've seen it, but this great movie is based on one of the stories:

But all that aside, so many excellent, challenging, and hilarious comments. Great experience.

Just the comments about the Seahawks alone were worth the day. He said that even though he knew the conspiracy theories about the end of the Super Bowl weren't true, he approved of them because the myth was better than reality. Especially because Marshawn Lynch refuses to perform and entertain all the white people who think football players—and especially black players—are supposed to act a certain way. Yes.

But as if that weren't enough, he followed it by asserting that given the rates of brain trauma and eventual dementia, when we watch professional football we're watching poor people and black people kill themselves for our entertainment. Yes and yes.

And then of course he said that he watched the Super Bowl, all the while dipping his tortilla chips in medium-hot hypocrisy. Yes and yes and yes.

Meanwhile, so, yeah, we had fun watching the Super Bowl too (at least until that last play):






I even got Emily to wear a Seahawks t-shirt!


What else? Good times at story time lately:


And great food, like this vegetable soup and apple pie, made with apples, pinto beans, kale, carrots, and delicata squash, all from the farmers market:





Delicious!

You should come over for dinner some time, reader!

Until then, cheers.

Awards Season Buzz

Now that awards season is in full swing, here'a quick word on some of our 2014 favorites.

I was thrilled to see that Gina Rodriguez won a Golden Globe for Jane the Virgin. Great show:


Having trouble finding good links, since in many cases the rave reviews—like the one in the New Yorker—came in articles about more than one show, which doesn't seem quite fair... But, well, I guess that's what the awards are making up for :)

And no harm in noting that the average from 21 "top critics" on Rotten Tomatoes is, yes, a not so shabby 100%.

In many ways it's quite different, but my other 2014 favorite is Mozart in the Jungle, which shares a kind of dreamy a-bit-more-than-realist tone.

Such a great show. We already watched the whole season (in barely a week), and I'm already looking forward to re-watching it, the sooner the better!

We recently read a pile of lists of the best albums of 2014, and picked up a few, all quite good. Hands down, though, my favorite is the New Pornographers:


Haven't seen quite as many movies as we'd have liked, but recently saw a couple of solid entries.

Birdman:

Very good. Not my favorite ever, but definitely worth seeing.

And the Imitation Game:

A movie about a computer scientist and philosopher? Named after a section of a philosophy paper he wrote? Yes. Doesn't hurt that the cast is great and the story is incredible either.

Almost as fun as the movie was returning home and reading the 1950 paper about whether machines can think. Good stuff. And free online: http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/LIX/236/433.full.pdf.

Also fun at first was the cryptic crossword referenced in the movie (solve it in 12 minutes or less and come help the British crack the German enigma code!). Fun at first, until I realized that there was no way I was going to solve it any time soon...

Well, that's about all for now. Meanwhile the award for best Halloween costume of 2013 (yes, 2013) goes to... the bee! Franklin spotted it after his bath tonight and insisted on wearing it for a while:

Cheers, and congratulations to all the nominees!

Just your average, restful weekend with Franklin...

But seriously, who wouldn't want to spend a long weekend with that guy?
(Pictured there in the hat Emily made & the scarf I made!)
(Sounders colors, by the way, at Franklin's request...)

So, okay, Wednesday before Thanksgiving it was volleyball, UW vs. Stanford:


Souvenirs too:



Thanks for suggesting it, Pete!

Back home, we were all about the pumpkin pie:

Butternut squash to be specific, but pumpkin's pumpkin, right?








He was so into it he ate it for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving. Rightly so!



Small party, but it was great to spend the holiday with family & friends:


And I'm also grateful that we had the chance to talk on Skype with even more family (not pictured, alas).



This video was actually from a few days before the holiday, but what the heck, I'll include it here too:


Rain came in on Friday, but luckily we found out that our local YMCA does a kids' gym setup most days. Awesome:








Saturday, at long last, we took Franklin to see his first movie:

He loved the popcorn and pink lemonade. And did laugh a couple times at the movie (including that bit in that trailer with the crunchy snacks...).

Sunday we got our tree:


I worked on the scarf pictured up top:


We finished the leftovers:

And then, finally, we relaxed... and got ready for Monday. Well, there you have it. More soon!