Pooped Puppy

Tara got her first "camping" experience this weekend. So, it wasn't really camping, but we went to the Rolling Huts in middle northern Washington this weekend. The huts are a series of structures designed by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen (who Ryan works for). Because of a land use issue not allowing permanent structures to be built in the land, they were put on wheels. They don't actually move anywhere, but theoretically they could.

We drove up there Saturday morning. There were 8 people going, so I had 4 in my car, and Tara got to hang out in half of the trunk. It's a good thing I've got my wagon now! She did really well back there. The route that we took went through a mountain pass that had just been opened the night before, so there were huge mounds of freshly cleared snow on the sides if the road. It was a really beautiful drive. It took about 4 hours to get out there to the middle of nowhere. Tara was thrilled to get out and run around the huge field where the huts were. When the other car got there, we played a little Frisbee and Tara decided to play monkey in the middle. I've never seen her run so fast! You go girl! I think that's what made her so sore the next day. We wanted to do some hiking before it got dark, so we headed out to find a trail head that had been recommended to us. It was supposed to be halfway between where we were and the next town. Apparently we missed it and ended up in the town. It was a cute little touristy town done up to look like an old western town. We figured we would find the trail on the way back, but missed it again and just ended up going to a river bank and walking around for a while. Every view in this area is unbelievable.

Back at the huts that night, we grilled out and hung out on the back deck for the rest of the night. It was an amazingly clear night, and being out in the middle of nowhere, the stars were soooo bright!

Sunday morning we met with one if the people who works for the huts who was going to give us a little tour of the owners' vacation home which is also on that site and designed by OSKA. The inside is pretty small and cozy. The highlight of 

this project, besides the breathtaking location, is the movable panels on the outside of the house. When the owners are gone or want to close up for a while, there is a mechanical system that closes panels on the exterior to make it a solid box. while we were there, the panels were open, and there were massive windows to frame all of the amazing views in the mountains. After the tour we walked around the area and Tara decided it would be fun to go on a swim in the strongly currented river at which time Ryan got to run in after her, getting lots of clothes wet, and save her. She's not the smartest puppy ever.

When we got back to the huts, we decided to go for a little hike in the woods close to the camp. I don't think Tara was very good at this either. She wasn't amused by the lack of a path most of the time. She did however enjoy swimming in a much calmer part of the river. We took a break and played fetch with Tara into the river. It was mostly snow melt, so the river was freezing! Finally Tara realized that and I had to rub her down to warm her up, after which we headed back to camp. The ride home a little later was, one again, breathtaking. We stopped a few times to snap a few good shots of the landscapes.

To see many many more pictures, go here.

Oh the yumminess...

I had a little baking frenzy last night :) We're going on a little trip this weekend to The Rolling Huts, so I wanted to make a few snacks for everyone, but I may have gone a little overboard. I ended up making M&M cookies, Banana Bread, Applesauce Muffins, and Cinnamon Scones. The night, however, was almost a disaster when about halfway through cooking the cookies I lost power. Apparently someone had crashed into a power pole on Hwy 20 and all of Skagit County and parts of Whidbey Island lost power. I actually thought I may have blown a fuze or something, but I checked that and called in my power outage to find that several other people had called it in as well. Luckily in came back on within about and hour. So I took a little break from the cooking, snacked on a little cookie dough, and read a little of the 4th Twilight book. I made quite the mess in my little kitchen, but I think the results were worth it. Hopefully I can get lots of people to help me eat all the goodies! If not this weekend, I have training all next week that I'm sure I can get rid of the leftovers at!

Girls Weekend #1! [seattle style]

We had a fabulously girly weekend in Seattle! Mom and Tara arrived Friday afternoon. Tara did a great job on the plane. No barking at all, but she was definitely excited to get out of her little crate! After packing up my car, we headed back to the apartment where we had to sneak Tara in the garage door. Dogs over 35lbs aren't technically aloud in the apartments, but i suppose she's not 'technically' living there either. Hopefully we won't get in trouble for it. We just need to teach her not to back when she hears noises in the hall. She's not so used to the apartment life. After getting the dog settled, mom and I headed out on the town to grab a good seafood lunch by the sound and then head to the library (cause mom's a nerd) and several bookstores. The Seattle Library is actually a pretty famous building by Rem Koolhaas. I have been less than impressed by it's appropriateness as a library, but i was excited to come across the 4th floor this time which is completely different than the rest of the library. It has bright red walls, floors, and ceilings and feels like you're walking through someones stomach. It's very confined and provides a nice contrast to the utilitarian openness of the rest of the building.

Mom passed out in the hotel after a long day of traveling and not adjusting to the time change while I went to pick up the rest of the girls Friday night! It was already pretty late when they got in, so we just hung out at the apartment for a little while with a little wine. Luckily Saturday morning didn't come too early. We headed out around 11 to hit up several of the parks in the outer edges of Seattle. First was a bit of a hike through Discovery Park in the Magnolia neighborhood. We hiked down to the beach and saw an old lighthouse at the point of the park. There is also the historic grounds of Fort Lawton. By the time we got back to the car, we had worked up quite an appetite. We headed over to the Ballard neighborhood to find some good/cheap seafood by the water. We ended up eating right by the Ballard Locks which was another thing on my list of things to do! After we ate, we checked out the Locks and even got to see a boat being lowered into the sound. I'd love to go back when the salmon are traveling to see them jumping up the Locks! Next we headed over to Freemont to check out the Freemont Troll! We ended up just parking the car in Freemont and spending most of the rest of the day there. We walked down by the water where there are a lot of houseboats. It's the area that the houseboat from 'Sleepless in Seattle' is supposed to be. I don't think we saw that one, but we saw lots of other ones! It's amazing how much they look like normal houses that just happen to be floating in the lake.

A little further down the water front is the Gasworks Park. There's a little hill there that a lot of kids like to fly kites on, and it was no exception when we were there! The actual park used to be an industrial park where there was a gasification plant for the city of Seattle. Now most of the machinery is still there, but fenced off, and some is accessible to play on. The rest of the area has been turned into a grassy park. I think we pooped ourselves out with all the walking around all day, so the rest of the day was very relaxed...starting with a riveting viewing of 'The Holiday' in the hotel room. Still one of my faves! Mom was out for the rest of the night, so the rest of us got some good Mexican then took a bottle of wine back to the apartment for a few mean games of uno! I think Kimberly rigged the deck cause she won most of the games!

Sunday was another big day of walking around. This time we just walked through the city. We started out making the rounds through the Pike Place Market. We had to stop by the first ever Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee!
Then we just wandered through the market. It's tulip season so there are all kinds of gorgeous flowers out at the market! I ended up buying a dozen tulips later that day. They're so pretty! We headed over to the Space Needle after the market. I'm so glad Ryan and I got our annual passes. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of them already! It makes it free for each of us and one guest to go to the observation deck which is normally $18 per person each time and we only paid $30 for each membership. Needless to say, I am quite proud of the purchase :)

After the needle, we just happened to be close to one of my favorite pizza places, Zeeks! So we had to sample the goodness and K&L needed a taste of some of Seattle's finest micro brews :) Then we headed towards the water via the sculpture park and walked along the sound for a while. We ended up meeting up with Ryan at the architecture firm that he works at so that everyone could get a tour of it. It's a really cool office especially if you've never been in an architecture firm before as my visitors had not! We ended up going back to the market afterwards in search of a Swedish bakery that Lauren had heard about, only to finally find it and it was closed. I got my pretty flowers though, and mom got her 'mounds' cookie. By that time it was almost time to say adios to half the girls :( We took Kimberly and Lauren to the airport and Mom and I headed up to Oak Harbor for the night so that she could see my sweet digs.Tara was definitely excited to see grass when we got to my house. She's been really confused in the city, and has so far pooped on the sidewalk every time since she can find enough grass anywhere! I've got her a little poop baggie dispenser now so I can clean up her little mess wherever it happens. Monday morning Mom and I took the ever so extensive tour of Oak Harbor. We drove around the base and I took her down the road by the water where I always see eagles. Not to disappoint, we saw 3 or 4 eagles then too! We drove through the rest of Oak Harbor, which took a whole 10 more minutes to see everything, and decided to pack up and head back to Seattle. On the way out, we stopped by the deception pass park. The bridge that I pass over every time I drive to Seattle is still beautiful to me. This time we went down to the park so I could see the view of it from water. It has beautiful views driving over it too. We stopped by the Seattle outlet mall on the way back too. If I actually needed to buy something it would have been much more exciting, but this time it was just a tease that I had to resist in my efforts to conserve my funds. When we got to Seattle, we took Mom to the Mexican restaurant around the corner since she missed out on it the other night. Then we played a few sweet games of Yahtzee at the apartment! I'm pretty sure I dominated this time. At this point, girls weekend came to an end and we took mom back to the airport.

Now I can't wait to go on my next girls weekend in Gulf Shores in less than 3 weeks!!

Easter Bunny Time

We had a very happy Easter here in Seattle! I saw pictures from Aunt Elaine's Easter party and wished I could have been there too! Since it's getting towards the end of the winter season, we did a little snowboarding this weekend again. All of the mountains close to Seattle will be closing in the next week or two. We went to the Summit at Snoqualmie this weekend to try it out. It was a little wet, but a lot of fun.

On Easter, the Easter Bunny hid an Easter basket in the apartment, so I made Ryan try to find it. Despite the fact that it's a 300sf apartment, and the basket had been hiden since friday, apparently it was hidden pretty well. After getting into the Easter spirit, we went down the street to the Mars Hills Church service. As with most holiday services, the church was pretty packed. I still get dissapointed every year that I don't hear Dad's Easter song, but I guess that would be pretty hard to do when no one else knows it! It's one of my faves though. The rest of the day was spent color Easter Eggs (extreamly messy) and enjoying the Easter Basket goodies.

it's flip flop time!

I got super excited on Sunday when I walked outside to find that it was warm enough to bust out the flip flops! Apparently we weren't the only ones to think that either. We headed out to Greenlake Park to enjoy the sun and sights and have a little subway picnic in the grass. It's about a 3 mile walk around the whole thing and there were a ton of people out running, walking, biking, skating, and all kind of other sports in the grass too. There were even a few crazy people swimming in the lake. I'm not sure the water was quite warm enough for that though. But I was thoroughly excited to be wearing a skirt and some flip flops and it made me think that summer is on the way!

~twilight~

yes, i have been sucked into the twilight hysteria. i do enjoy the books, however, i do not think they deserve the ridiculous fan base that they are acquiring. having said that, i went out to forks, wa this weekend, which is where the books are based. our trip destination was actually intended to be the beaches on the la push indian reservation (also a hot spot in the books). we had meant to make it to rialto beach, but after my iPhone lost service, we had to wing it on the directions, and ended up on third beach. after parking, we hiked about a mile through the forest to get to the beach. it was every bit as green as it was written. we spent a couple of hours on the beach. it turned out to be a perfect day for it too. there's a lot of rocks to climb on and little tide pools with star fish and other fun creatures.
we headed back to the cars just before it got dark and stopped in la push and forks for dinner. the town is really super small and redneck. you can tell that they are trying to make it a tourist attraction and are starting to cater to twilight fans. there's apparently even a twilight tour you can take. the town itself, however, is not such a nice sight to see. it is much more fascinating to spend time in the forests or the beaches and leave the town for the 12 year old girls who want to buy twilight paraphernalia.

architects, missiles, and bowling

I got paid to not be on Whidbey Island for half of this week. Thursday, I was fully intending to take a vacation day to head down to Seattle for Ryan's intern presentation to his firm on his Rural Studio project. After asking my boss for the day off to do that, I was informed that since it was an architectural presentation I wouldn't need to take vacation days and that it would just count as training. So I got paid to get a free lunch and watch Ryan's presentation. Just some of the perks of my job :) It was a really great presentation and I'm really glad I was able to be there. There were probably about 50 people or so there from the firm watching the presentation, and they were all really impressed and interested in the project.

Friday all of the Officers from the 4 Navy Bases in Washington were getting together for the day at the Kitsap submarine base. We met up and went on a tour of a facility that they are currently constructing on the base to store big bombs and missiles and such. It was only about 1/4 of the way done, but when it is completed it'll be about the size of a Walmart and buried about 20 feet underground. It was amazing how much steel and concrete was going into the structure to make it safe to store explosives. There is only one entrance to the underground storage, and it couldn't be any larger than a 5' x 9' door. If there was anything explosive that required a bigger space to get into the building, we have a deal with the Russians that they would be aloud to come inspect it. Since we don't want the Russians to see what's going to be inside this facility, we made sure we could prove to them that there was nothing larger that 5x9 going inside of it. Another interested element of the building is the escape route. Since there is only on entrance into the huge structure, there is also an emergency escape route. It is a rather steep tube filled with marbles that leads to the ground level outside. In the event of an emergency, the inhabitants could pull a cord letting out all of the marbles and crawl up the tube to escape the building. I'm not sure if i fully understand the function of the marbles, but apparently they have wasted thousands of marbles to test the escape. After our tour and a lunch a few of us went bowling. Having not bowled in quite some time, I was pretty impressed with my ability to win!

Back in Seattle Friday night, we went out with several people from Ryan's firm and ended up bowling again. To my surprise, I did quite well again, winning one game and coming in second on the other :) I think perhaps I should stop while I'm ahead now.