What Ana Does

This week the girls went back to school. On Tuesday, we dropped off Leah's supplies in her new 3rd grade classroom and met her new teacher. It's so amazing to look around the room and see all the posters and cheers. You can do it! Leah is super happy to be back in school. At Her Desk, Dropping Off Supplies First Day Back - Getting on the Bus. It was 25 Minutes Late! The next day, we dropped off supplies at Kindergarten for Alice. The teacher wasn't there, because she was dropping off her college student. So we walked around the room and checked out all the cool areas. Alice picked out the Purple table and hoped that's where she'll be sitting the next day. First Day for Alice, Second Day for Leah! Hopping On the Bus -- Her First Solo Bus Ride!  It's hard to predict Alice's moods, so I wasn't sure if she'd be reluctant to get on that bus Thursday morning or not. I was ready for both -- armed with encouragement in either ca...

Have I complained about this yet? I'm so frustrated and upset -- my neck is getting that pinched/tightness that I get when I'm stressed over something. At the end of the last school year I decided I was going to get a babysitter to pick Alice up from Kindergarten and get Leah off the bus, then watch them until we got home. Easy, right?  Most importantly, the babysitter would help Leah with her homework -- a task we desperately need help with. Her after-school program was doing nothing to support homework and 3rd grade is the year they start to get "serious."  Now, we're a day-care family. The girls have been going to a day care center since they were both 14 weeks old, so we're all used to the dependability of having a place to drop them off each day and pick them up by 6pm each night. We all loved it (except for the monthly tuition payments - ugh!). So, this babysitter/nanny set-up is out of my comfort zone. But, they're getting older. It...

I still love the paint color in my powder room, so that's a relief. This weekend, I got fancy and hung up some artwork I had hanging around the house. It's getting there... Gallery Wall

What a day! We started our morning at Pikes Place Market, a long 2-block hallway of grocery, fish and craft shops. Starving, I picked up a cinnamon roll and Dave got a pumpkin cookie. We headed to the world famous stall to watch them throw fish. We were not disappointed. It was pretty cool. They were giving out smoked salmon which the girls tried and Leah loved. That made me think of lox, so I easily found a bagel place where I could get lox and cream cheese bagel. Yum! We meandered down the other fantastic stalls in the Pike's Place Market -- lots of grocery items and crafty things. I loved it. This is where my crush on Seattle started. After leaving the market, we started to meander toward the Experience Music Projects -- which is Dave's Mecca. The walk got too long and he got too impatient, so we hailed a cab for the rest of the way there. OK, the EMP is seriously awesome. The kids loved it, we loved it. We played, we laughed, we sat for a while and watched video...

We wanted to be on the road as early as we could, so we packed up the rental car said our good byes to Joe, Rachel and a sleepy Atticus and headed out. But first a breakfast stop at The Tin Shed, a Diners Drive-ins and Dives-featured restaurant that was on David's Must Do list. And it was amazingly good. The biscuits! Don't get me started. It's a three-hour drive to Seattle from Portland, with little in-between, so we made it by 11am. We checked into our hotel and explored the area. We found the downtown shopping area and the Niketown -- as we do in most big cities first -- and plotted the rest of our trip.  We picked a restaurant down by the Public Market called Pike's Pub and weren't overly impressed by it. But the girls ate salmon and loved it -- so they said, so a good start for them.  Seattle isn't at all what I had expected. It's hilly and not that closely tied to the water (there's a highway in-between). I thought we'd be surrounde...

This place is so much different than any place I've visited. I mean , it's not Mars or anything, but think Brooklyn on steroids. And you're in the ballpark. Our friends Joe and Rachel live in the city but just outside of downtown. Picture a large outer-city of small Craftsman and Victorian houses built around the turn of the century. With main streets running nearby filled with independently-owned shops and restaurants. The only chains we saw was a Whole Goods and Starbucks. That's it. People walking everywhere. Creativity abounds. The small yards brimming with flowers and veggie gardens. It was amazing. And the bartering system -- crazy. Joe traded beer he brewed for plumbing services for the house they renovated this summer. I won't dwell. It's definitely worth a visit. Especially if you have locals who can take you around.  We basically walked around a few of these Main Street areas, hitting a fantastic fabric store and street festival. Joe and Rach...

We started day 2 with a morning swim in the hotel pool -- our last morning to take advantage of it so we did. Dave had his event today, so that left me and the girls to entertain ourselves in Tacoma. As luck would have it, the Children's Museum was just next door, so once were cleaned-up from the pool, we headed there. It was a small space but with several pretty cool play areas that kept the girls busy.  Water Room of Fun! More Water Fun Alien Ship was Cool From there we walked to the Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch. I hadn't realized that it was a chain. There was a train caboose inside that we sat inside to enjoy our pasta lunches. Not bad.  Caboose Seating For Us After that, it was frozen yogurt time and we had to decide on our last activity before meeting David. We picked the Washington History Museum just across the street.  It was another small museum with some fun exhibits about the history of the Washington state. They had a s...