The 10' House

One of the first projects that Ryan got to work on at his current firm was a pre fabricated home that was only 10 feet wide. The lot that it was to be placed on only allowed a teen foot wide buildable area so that was the biggest challenge of the house. Obviously Ryan did a fabulous job and overcoming that. They had been working on constructing the house in a factory about 2 hours north of Seattle, and they just now brought it down the the site to be placed. Here's a little video of it being placed on the site. After it was placed it just needed it's finishes applied so it should be completely finished shortly! It's really amazing to see Ryan's drawings coming to life. At least I get to live vicariously as an architect through him right now, and he does a great job!

Stones

My poor pitiful old lady puppy is having issues again. It all started when she started peeing uncontrollably around the house. She used to be able to go out twice a day and that was it. Now we were taking her out about once and hour and she was still having accidents. At first I thought it was because of the move and living with the puppy now, but after a while it was just getting ridiculous. Finally I took her into the vet to see if she had an infection. Sure enough, she did, so we got some medication for that. She was still having quite a few accidents, so I decided we'd try out some doggie diapers on her until the medicine kicked in. That helped a little to avoid such large messes. One of the first times I took off the diaper to clean it though I noticed a stone in it. I was super confused and tried to convince myself that it was already in there or just fell in there somehow. Then I decided to google it and see what the possibility of Tara having kidney stones or something was. Turns out she was having all of the symptoms. Monday morning I called the vet to ask them about it, and they said she should come in as soon as possible. Ryan was able to take her in during the day and they took some x-rays to find about a fist full of little stones in her bladder...ewwwwie. It's definitely a good thing we found them though before they turned into anything more dangerous like a bursting bladder! Over the next couple of days Tara was still peeing out stones which I'm sure was rather painful for her. We now have her on a canned food diet and several medications which seem to be helping so far. We're still taking her out as often as possible, but she's not having nearly as many accidents. Hopefully she'll be fully recovered by Christmas so we can leave her with a friend without feeling bad for them with her peeing everywhere!

Visit from the (future) In-Laws!

The day after Thanksgiving, Ryan's parents came into town for a visit! It was the first time they've been to Seattle, so we had lots to show them. First things first though, as soon as we got back from picking them up from the airport, we settled in for the Auburn/Alabama game...as if there was any doubt, Auburn kicked some serious booty ;) Once we were done winning, we headed out into the town. We immediately ran into a huge mob of people huddled around the Westlake Center. Turns out they were having the Christmas Tree lighting celebration. We decided to continue on to the Pike Place Market to get a taste of that, and of course get a coffee at the original Starbucks ;)

[ryan and his parents at the original starbucks]

We wandered around the market a little more, but by that point most of the booths were closing up, so we continued on to the waterfront for a delicious seafood feast!

[crabpot seafood feast]

Saturday Ryan got to show off one of his projects! He took his parents on a tour of it, and needless to say, they were very proud!

[in the doorway of Ryan's project that's being constructed]

After that we went on to the museum of flight. And saw all the planes. I had been there once before with Jordan, but it was a first for everyone else. There was so much to see, we barely made it out before they closed!

[in front of Air Force One]

By the time we got home from the museum, it was about time for supper, and since the Space Needle is obviously a must see in Seattle, we decided to combine the two by eating at the Space Needle restaurant! I've been wanting to go to it for a while, but never had a good opportunity. The restaurant is right below the observation deck, and it rotates around so if you have a window seat (which we did) you're able to see everything while you're eating delicious food!

 [space needle supper]

Sunday was our snow day! We drove out to Roslyn, WA and rented some snowmobiles for the day and took them up the mountain. It was a perfect day for it with more sunshine than we've seen in a while ;) When we came back down from the mountain we made our way down to the beach of Lake Cle'Elum where we could do some nice fast snowmobiling on the long straightaways!

After a long day of snowmobiling, we headed home with a stop over in Leavenworth. It's a super cute little German town that especially festive in the winter. We walked around all the little shops and even did a little wine tasting! All the lights were super pretty. We ended up having supper there before heading back to Seattle for the night.

Monday we spent the day seeing a few more sights around Seattle. We went back to the market again to see it during the day while all the shops were bustling.

After the market we headed down to Pioneer Square to partake in the Underground Tour (another super touristy thing that I've been wanting to do since we got here!) It was fun to hear a little bit about the history of Seattle and get to go through some of the original (now underground) sidewalks of Seattle and imagine what it used to look like.

Tuesday was pretty rainy, but we were able to drive around to a few other sites like Gasworks Park, Golden Gardens and the Ballard Locks (there was a HUGE boat coming through the locks while we were there). Tuesday night Ryan's mom and I went shopping for a dress for her to wear for our wedding. We ended up finding a super cute little number ;) Meanwhile the boys were cooking up some brats at home, so we got to come home to dinner! Wednesday Ryan and I had to go back to work, so his parents did a few more touristy things around town. When we got home, they had some great seafood ready for us! I wish I could come home to a ready meal every night! That was their last night in Seattle, so we hung out for a while and I had to say my goodbyes so I could get up bright and early in the morning to go back to work. I'm so glad they got to come out for a few days and can't wait for our next visitors to come out (*hint hint to everyone*)!

Yummy Yummy Turkey Day!

I definitely have lots and lots to be thankful for this year! In celebration of that, I spent most of the day on Thanksgiving cooking delicious foods. It was great fun trying out all the recipes and putting together the whole dinner myself! It also meant we ended up with A LOT of leftovers! So guess what I've been eating this week?!? Here's some of the deliciousness that I made.

Ben and Tara also got to enjoy a little rawhide Thanksgiving treat.

Snowy Seattle

One of these days life might slow down, but until then we had lots of things to do this weekend! Friday night I rushed home from work to get ready really quickly before heading to my first wedding dress fitting! I had gotten the dress in a few weeks ago, but brought it back to the store to have it altered a little and have the bustle sewed in. I really hope everything turns out well, I always get nervous when she started talking about tearing out seams and cutting off fabric and such...I hope it doesn't mess anything up! I'll go back in a few weeks to try it on again, then have a final fitting late January. I still LOVE my dress!

In other wedding news, this is what I sent to the flower lady of ideas that I want for the wedding. I can't wait to see what she comes up with! And yes, I'm a huge nerd and made a pdf of my wedding flower ideas. 

After my dress fitting on Friday night, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie!!! It was killing me that I couldn't see the first midnight showing of it. I figured it wouldn't be the best idea since I would have to be up at 4:55 Friday morning to get to work. So I held off till Friday night. As always...soooooo good! This one was definitely much more dark than some of the previous ones, but it was broken up with just enough humor and lightheartedness. I might have to go back and read the book again now. I'm definitely ready to go see it again, and can't wait till the DVD comes out!!

Saturday morning even after a late night of Harry Pottering, I woke up at 7:30am. I have a feeling that my weekdays wakeups around 5am everyday is going to make me not be able to sleep in on the weekend either...boooo. Oh well, I had a few other things to get done that morning to return my wedding ring (which didn't match up properly to my engagement ring) and send off forms to get reimbursed from the Navy for my move. After I got all that taken care of, I had to take my car in for a maintenance. Saturday afternoon/evening we got a few more wedding things done including screen printing a bunch of our gift bags! I think they're turning out pretty well. We still have a lot more to do, and I can't wait to start filling them!

Saturday we also went to go check out a house that Ryan has been working on designing that is now in the construction phase! It's so much fun to see all the stuff that he's working on that is now starting to be built. I'm so proud of him!

Sunday we went to another job site of Ryan's. This time it was to demo an existing house! This client bought a property with a small house on it, so they're tearing that one down then rebuilding a new house on the existing foundation. We went this weekend to help them demo the existing house so spent a few hours sledge hammering dry wall and ripping down porticos and fun things like that. I can't wait till the new house starts going up!

Starting on Sunday, Seattle got it's first snow for the season. Monday it got even worse. Ben got his first little taste (literally) of snow. I don't think he's a huge fan of it yet...he seems to get chilly when it's in the 50's so snow might not be his favorite.

Hello Yellow

One of our many tasks for this weekend was to paint our bedroom wall yellow! All of the walls in the apartment are white, which is nice and clean looking, but I was aching for some color, so now I have it and I love it! It was really super easy since it was just one small wall. We also spent a good part of the weekend unpacking my stuff, which there is still a lot left to do. I think next weekend we'll have to get some organizational units to make spaces for all the rest of my things to go.

Elfed

Moving Day!

This weekend we made the big move of all my stuff down to Seattle! I headed up to Oak Harbor on Friday to meet with carpet cleaners and my landlords to finalize everything for terminating my lease then started packing up. Friday night Ryan rode his motorcycle up to Oak Harbor too to help me out. My roomie and her bf also came up Friday night to start packing up her things to move out as well. 

Saturday morning we picked up the uhaul and started loading everything up. Luckily most of my things fit into boxes that stacked nicely into the truck. After we got all of my stuff loaded in the truck, we put a bunch of Sarah's larger stuff in the truck to drop off at her new place in Anacortes.

After packing and cleaning all morning, we headed out to drop off Sarah's stuff first. We had a nice little caravan of Sarah, Allan driving the uhaul, Ryan on his motorcycle, and myself and the pups in the GTI in the back of the line. We ended up dropping of all of Sarah's stuff at her house and left Ryan's motorcycle in the garage so he could driving the truck down to Seattle Saturday night. We made a quick stop in Mt Vernon to drop off my washer and dryer and a few other things at the Salvation Army before making it down to Seattle and offloading everything there. By that time it was pretty late, so we just parked the truck and called it a night.

Sunday morning we dropped off the truck at a place in Seattle. Ben was pretty helpful riding shot gun in the truck cab.

From there we drove back up to Anacortes to pick up Ryan's motorcycle from Sarah's house. Luckily the rain held off for most of the afternoon, so it ended up being a nice, although rather chilly, ride down the island back to Seattle. Clearly the pups were pretty helpful on the ride as well. Ben really likes to cuddle with Tara and take up as much space as possible.

Sunday night we were pretty beat, but instead of unpacking I thought it would be more fun to bake. I still had some leftover pumpkin, so I made some pumpkin cranberry scones. So that's what I'll be eating for breakfast all week on my way into work bright and early in the mornings!