The Winter Months

This photo should be called "Every Morning in Washington". Dewy drops covering the grass, dew coating everything. But these days the weather has been quite nice and sunny so the dewiness doesn't last long.

We finally have internet in our place so I am going to re-welcome 21st century living with a new blog post. Ah, it feels so nice to be reconnected.

 So here's what we've been up to lately...

Lots of trips to Portland looking for housing. We try to break things up by hanging out with friends there, finding new places to eat and exploring new parks. This was from one of our visits to one of our favorite parks in January. I couldn't believe the beauty of the

 day...no coats!

Even flowers in bloom.

From a day of hanging out with friends in Gig Harbor.

Here's Lucia's 'stage' in our back yard. "Let it Go" has been performed here many times.

And these are the rock yards behind our house where Lucia loves to play. There used to be actual play sets there but she doesn't need to know that.

So way back in the beginning of February there was a little game called the Superbowl. And we all know it didn't go well for Seattle. We'll just say that the food and the company were good.

Visiting Daddy at his office

Lucia has been taking a tactile art class. She has been loving it and I have been loving leaving this kind of mess at the classroom.

 Although we will be living in Oregon, we still needed to update our plates and licenses in the meantime while we're in Washington. And I never even fully memorized the old plates from Illinois, oops.

Recently our car's brakes started malfunctioning. After bringing it to a mechanic and finding out the brake line rusted out, the guy asked if we and the car had been living somewhere else. When I answered 'Chicago' he said that the salt on the roads helped to rust out the brakes. So glad we don't have to deal with that anymore. Getting it fixed felt like leaving Chicago winters behind for good...and good riddance.

Lucia spends much time in the yard playing with Daddy, mostly playing baseball, throwing balls over the house, running around and playing with the mole-made dirt piles.

Then coming to the window to say hi to Mama.

Scoring some serious V-Day loot

Hanging out at the Olympia harbor, one of our favorite spots.

And we love the park by the harbor too

Recently there were some days where the water in the harbor was jam packed with jelly fish. Like, one of them every single square foot throughout the water from top to bottom. You can see just a few of them above in a picture from a later day.

The sunset was so beautiful last week that I just had to drive out to a clearing to get a better view of it and Mount Rainier.

Lucia has made great progress in potty training these days, yay! Not all good yet but much progress.

Hanging out at our friend's downtown Seattle apartment.

 Check out that mountain view in the background. I love it!

 Last weekend we had the chance to do some touristy things in Seattle like going to Pike's place market. It may be a touristy place but I got the best plums I've ever had there as well.

 That same day we headed to Discovery Park and started out by the playground chasing bubbles. And of course I wasted my camera battery at the stupid park and then had none left for when we got down by the water and had THE-MOST-BEAUTIFUL-VIEW-EVER of the water and surrounding mountains. Ah well, we had fun and the images live in my mind. Plus the pictures of Lucia playing below are pretty cute.