Balls...

We weren't too halloweeny this weekend, but more just completely exhausted from working on the house. Maybe next year when we actually have a house we'll do some sweet decorations and dress up for trick or treaters! We did go to a pumpkin carving party on Friday night though. Only a few people actually carved pumpkins though, the rest of us just enjoyed the pumpkin soup and delicious fall cocktails. Sunday night I did get to be a little festive though. I did my first attempt at cake balls! Today we had a fund raiser 'bake sale' at work with 'spooky treats', so I decided to donate some spooky cake balls that look like creepy eyeballs. I think they turned out pretty awesome, although verrrrrrry rich. I started with the chocolate cherry cake recipe (which was super hard to resist just eating as a cake instead of making balls) then mixed it with a chocolate frosting and dipped it in white chocolate coating. I used blue and green M&Ms for the Iris of the eyeball and a red food coloring pen to make the veins...gross but super delish!

Updates on the house: We finished tearing down all the lath and plaster walls so the electrician can finish rewiring the whole thing. This will also allow us to insulate the whole thing which is awesome because I think I would have died in there with no insulation in the winter. I have a feeling it's still going to be pretty chilly. I may be moving the bed next to the fire place if I get desperate!

Another fun surprise for the weekend was a skype date to everyone in San Francisco! Jordan skyped us in on his iPad and brought us into the room singing happy birthday to mom, almost like we were there too. Technology rules!

Padres in Seattle!

More visitors last week! This time my parents came into town for a quick visit before heading down to SF to visit the rest of the kids. They came in late Wednesday night and by the time we got home it was sleepy time. Thursday morning we took our time getting moving (yay for being on vacation!) and headed over to Top Pot Doughnuts for breakfast. Looooove me some Top Pot. The downtown store is such a great space and the coffee and baked goods are so delicious. So after we got hopped up on sugar and caffeine we headed out into town to be tourists at the Pike Place Market. We just wandered around for a while, then wandered around a little more at the waterfront and eventually wandered back to the apartment to get ready for our next bit of fun...yard work! I promise I didn't force my parents into involuntary servitude, but they wanted to see our new house and help out with it. My mother also happened to have smuggled a few wonderful Michigan plants into her suitcase for us to plant! My favorite is the Rhubarb! Straight from my mom's garden which makes it even more awesome. Hopefully next spring I'll have some good plants to harvest and bake into all kinds of rhubarb goodness! No more buying it from the store for me...woohoo! She also brought some Iris plants that have been spread around my extended family starting with my Grandma's yard, so now they're transplanted into Seattle, which is awesome! So we spent a few hours planting those plants and weeding out a bunch of the overgrown mess of existing plants while letting Ben run sprints around the house to get rid of some of his energy.

Top Pot!

Pike Place Market

Planting Rhubarb!

After working hard we headed back to the apartment to get primped up for a fancy dinner at the space needle! Although it's super touristy, it's actually a really nice restaurant and obviously has awesome views of the city. It's so pretty at night to see all the lights of Seattle. We went a little early to get a few views at the sun was setting, then had our delicious dinner in the rotating restaurant to get some more good views and brews ;) We walked around the observation deck a little more after dinner before heading home for the night.

Space Needle Observation Deck

Space Needle Restaurant

Friday it was forcasted to rain pretty heavily most of the day in Seattle, so we took the opportunity to chase down the sun shine on the eastern side of the mountains by driving over to Wenatchee for a day hike on the dessert mountains. It's amazing to watch the change of scenery as you drive east. When we got to our hike it was sunny and mid 60s! The hike was a few miles up a mountain right at the edge of the Colombia River, so we got great views of the river on the way up. We didn't quite make it all the way to the end of the hike before we decided we should probably turn around, but we had great weather, great views all over, and great exercise for the day! On the way home to Seattle we stopped for a few hours in Leavenworth to check out the cute little German Christmas shops and grab some more delicious dinner. 

Saturday we did a lot of relaxing...or I guess really we did a lot of football watching which doesn't require a lot of effort. Although for Auburn it was a pretty disappointing game to watch. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around to a few of Ryan's projects so mom and dad could see all the fun things that he gets to work on. It's always fun to see what kind of progress has happened since the last time I was there too. That evening we stayed in and grilled up a delicious dinner and watched a movie which was a nice relaxing way to wind down their Seattle vacation.

Sunday morning we headed over to Ballard to Mars Hill church for their service. I think when we move to Queen Anne we'll try to go to that church a little more often since it'll be closer. They always have such amazing music which is a great way to get the day started! After church we grabbed some brunch in Queen Anne before having to head back to the airport so mom and dad can start their next vacation in San Francisco! Hope they had/have fun! I can't wait to have my vacation in SF too in about a month!

October Showers!

The back deck is officially cleared out. Next to be demolished is the silly lean-to next to Ryan. It's already partially cut up, we just need to finish taking it apart piece by piece so it doesn't collapse into the sliding glass door right behind it.

It's not too noticeable, but I did a lot more trimming to the unruly plants in the front yard. Now they're not poking up all over the place above the fence, so that's a good start. Next up, I'm hoping to get rid of the massive juniper bush in the middle of the lawn to make a little more open space. So much work to do!

Another baby shower this weekend! This time for Leigha and little Max (soon to come). I had some more fun making another little diaper cake, and I now officially have all the diapers out of my house, so no one will be getting any ideas when they come visit ;)

Leigha's shower was on Sunday and strangely enough I think the majority of the people there were from Michigan. I still think it's so awesome that I get to be back with some of my favorite people from middle school. Here's Sarah, Cheri, Leigha, and me at the baby shower. Can't wait for little Max to pop out of that cute belly!

Stephensons in Seattle

Ryan's parents came out for about a week for a visit in Seattle. We were both able to get the time off of work to hang out with them the whole time which was a nice little vacation for us too! They came in last Wednesday afternoon and we spent the rest of the day wandering around Seattle and relaxing after their long day of traveling. We started out with a nice little mid afternoon lunch on the waterfront, it was a perfect day out for sitting in the sun and smelling the breeze off the water.

Thursday we packed up and headed out for a day of fishing! We headed over to Cle-elum about 2 hours east of Seattle and found a few rivers around the city to try out. There weren't a whole lot of fish caught that day, but it was a lot of fun hanging out on the river.

On Friday we took Ryan's parents up to Queen Anne to show them around our new hood ;) After brunch at one of the local diners, we went over to the house to show them around. Unfortunately a couple of days before we ran into a little snaffoo in our construction. Apparently our neighbors (the ones we haven't met yet because they keep running inside their house every time we try to introduce ourselves) are mad that we had construction debris in our yard, so they called the city to complain and after several complaints the inspector finally had to give us a stop work order. Luckily we were able to go into the city and get a permit for our work to make it all legal (which we probably should have done to begin with but were hoping to get it done before anyone really noticed). So until we were able to get the permit, we had a nice bright stop work order on our front door. Oops! Anyway, things are all back in order now and hopefully our plumbers and electrician will be able to get in there and get some things done in the next week so we'll be moving along again.

After dealing with that and showing off our house, we went around to a few of Ryan's other projects. Last time Ryan's parents were visiting, we took them to this house (the Z House) and it was just getting walls up, so it was fun to show them the final product too.

Saturday we cooked up a big breakfast and spent most of the day watching football games. Saturday night we took a walk around Lake Union to check out all the awesome boats...maybe some day we'll be able to buy one of those too! One step at a time I suppose!

Sunday, football time! We had told Ryan's parents that if they came out to visit this weekend we'd buy them tickets to the Seahawks/Falcons game. They're all big Falcons fans, so I had to represent my city all by myself! On another note...way to go Detroit Lions on their win that day too! The game ended up being awesome! It started out looking like it would be a blowout, but the Seahawks came back and for a few minutes almost looked like they could take the lead! In the end, the Falcons pulled it off, so all the Georgia Stephensons were happy.

One of the awesome parts of the games here is how much the fans get into it. The field is apparently one of if not the loudest field in the NFL and actually registered on the Richter scale last year when the Seahawks had a huge upset win against the Saints. Here's a little video of the fan's excitement in this game. It was literally non stop screaming almost the entire game. So much fun!

Later that night we played a few sports of our own on the Kinect. Once again after a few hours of some intense gaming, I ended up getting more and more sore on the following days. Apparently video games can be a pretty good workout!

Monday we took a trip on the ferry over to Bainbridge and then onto the Olympic Peninsula. We took a drive up the mountains to hurricane ridge to get some great views above the clouds. Although it was a little chilly and foggy out, it was still really beautiful and the air was so crisp!

We stopped in Port Angeles on the way back for some supper and to enjoy the views on the water there. We also drove past the Bremerton Naval Base to see a few of the HUGE ships out there. I'm always amazed at how massive they look even just from the road. It's pretty impressive. We got on our own ship in Bremerton taking the ferry back into Seattle for the night. Tuesday morning I had to get up bright and early to head into work again and Ryan's parents headed to the airport shortly there after. Somehow that little week of vacation went by really fast! Just a few more weekends till more parents come out to visit for more vacations! Can't wait!