Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

On Saturday we headed north to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. During the entire month of April this little valley bursts with color and we just had to see it ourselves. It was rainy and so so muddy but as we rounded the corner and this field came into view all of us gasped at the gorgeous colors and field after field of beautiful flowers. We ventured for a walk around the fields but we were cut short by a downpour. Luckily I was able to get a few pictures before it really started to rain. 

 One of my favorite things was seeing all the different tulip varieties. I had no idea there were so many different styles and colors of tulips.

After visiting a few more fields we made a quick stop at Snowgoose produce for ice cream. All of their ice cream is homemade and these gigantic cones were only $3. I was very skeptical that the kids would be able to finish their cones but all 4 of them ate it all (and we had some tummy aches to prove it). 

We also got some fun local artisan foods at the market and had a delicious dinner after coming home.  I know I say it often but I love where we live. We could literally do something different every weekend of the year and still not even scratch the surface of all that Seattle has to offer!

December Festivities

We had a busy and wonderful December full of lots of different activities. These pictures cover most of our pre-holiday activities this year. We always kick of the month of December by giving the kids a new pair of Christmas pajamas. It's getting harder to find cute jammies for my older kids! They also receive their chocolate advent calendars and we start our tradition of reading Christmas books every night.

Our ward held a wonderful Christmas party. The theme was Christmas around the world and each auxiliary had a  booth that highlighted a country. There was a traditional craft or activity, traditional treats and decorations from each country. Each child received a passport that was stamped at each booth they visited. The YM were in charge of England so we did lots of prep work to get ready for their booth. The other countries were Japan, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands and the Holy Land. At the Holy Land booth families could dress up in traditional costumes and have their pictures taken. I still haven't received a copy of our family's picture but here is Makenna with a couple of her cute friends:

After some time to visit each of the booths we had dinner and a short program. It was a great party!

We took the kids to visit the festival of the Nativities that one stake in the area hosts every year. It was extremely well done and it help set the tone for our holiday celebrations:

 Our family in the dress up booth at Festival of the Nativities:

 We took the kids to downtown Seattle to attend the Gingerbread Festival. Companies donate gigantic gingerbread houses as a fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes research. This year the theme was fairy tales and the houses were incredible!

 I was able to attend the Nutcracker with Makenna's school class. It was a shortened version but still fun to see. I always love going with my kids on their field trips because i love watching them interact with their peers. Her class had a fun winter party after the performance that I helped organize.

We attended 2 different work parties at MS. Man, they really know how to throw GREAT parties. I've never seen anything like it and they go all out. Our kids had a fantastic time at both parties - there were games, crafts, delicious food, rides, arcade games, face paint/tatoo/balloon animal booths, gift bags, and more. 

Party #1

Party #2. Makenna and her friend showing off their henna tattoos:

 Addie playing a life-sized game of Connect 4:

A few days before Christmas my parents and brother Steve flew into town to spend the holiday with us. We did some fun sightseeing while they were here. We spent a day in downtown Seattle. Our first stop was Pike Place Market. With the brass pig:

Before we headed to the market we gave everyone in the family $10 to spend on someone that we encountered during the day. It was our way to do some random acts of service during the holiday season. The kids opted to buy flowers from one of the vendors and pass them out to people on the street. It was so much fun to watch people's expressions as our kids approached them with a flower and wished them Merry Christmas. Priceless. They had the best time too. Our intent wasn't to have them all pick the same thing but it worked for this year and we will definitely do something like it again next year. My mom and I used our money to buy Starbucks gift cards and passed them out to people in line. My dad loved giving his money to the different performers on the street and Allen used his to buy balloon animals for some kids. It was a really fun way to bring the holiday spirit into our day.

We made a stop at the famous Top Pot donuts to get a treat.

We ended the day by attending the Festival of Ships that Seattle is famous for this time of year. You can stop at any number of beaches throughout the month and watch a procession of ships that are decorated for the holiday that cruise the lake. There is also live entertainment on some of the ships and they make scheduled stops to allow the performers to perform for people on the shore. It was SO neat and definitely worth the effort to see it.

One of the ships:

It was freezing but there was  a bonfire on the beach that we huddled around:

 Our crew huddled together trying to stay warm:

 We had a great month and did lots of other little things to celebrate the holidays but we tried to focus on some things are unique to the Seattle area. We only scratched the surface this year and I can't wait to explore more things during the next holiday season!

Makes me Laugh!

A friend of mine posted this the other day on Facebook and I think it is hilarious. Except it's also kind of depressing.

I have loads of blogging to do next week but we are busy soaking up the amazing spring/summer weather around here and putting in some quality family time before we do our first stint apart!

Back soon!

Opportunity Knocked

Ahhhh… I’ve been waiting to write this post for weeks and have been so anxious to share our news! A little background: Allen has been looking around for work for about the last year. He is contacted pretty frequently by head hunters so he has been looking both inside his current company and outside. He has interviewed quite a bit and received a few offers but nothing has been a perfect fit. The location wasn’t right, job wasn’t right, salary wasn’t right… etc. At the beginning of this year I told him I was done looking and that I wanted to commit to staying in NM for one more year and then really focus on finding a new job. Allen agreed. Less than 1 week later he was contacted by an acquaintance he met about a year ago through his current job. They had hit it off at an industry event and exchanged contact information. A year later he had switched companies and was looking to recruit a team for his new company. He immediately thought of Allen and contacted him to see if he was interested.

Allen was very interested and did some phone interviews later that week with the HR team and some other people he would be working with. They wanted to fly him to the company HQs as soon as possible to formally interview. It took us a couple weeks to work out vacation time for him to get up there. They loved him and we had a job offer in hand 2 days after his interview. After quite a bit of negotiation I am happy/nervous/excited to announce that we are moving back to….. SEATTLE Washington! CRAZY! Our heads are still spinning that we have made this decision in less than 6 weeks! Allen will be starting his new job in 2 weeks and will be commuting back and forth until school is out here. I won’t mention the company he will be working for but will say that it is the software GIANT of the world and let you figure it out from there. We have talked to every single person we know that does/has ever worked for the company and have heard nothing but glowing reports about the company culture and benefits. His new job is very cool and he will be providing expertise that the company currently does not have (call me if you want more details). To say he is thrilled for this opportunity would be an understatement.

I honestly never thought we would ever be back in the PNW. We loved living there for the year we were there right after business school. It will be a huge, huge change climate wise but we are super excited. Of course it is bittersweet to leave a place we have grown to love so much. Even though we have always known NM was a short stopping point for us we have made some of the most wonderful friends of our lives here. We will miss it so much.

We will be renting a home for a short time while we figure out where we want to be permanently. We’re not thrilled with that but we want to try to buy a foreclosure/short sale and if that doesn’t work out we will probably build a new home. Neither option is a quick solution but we don’t want to make a snap decision based on the current state of the housing market.

Things I will miss about NM: Living close to my parents, our friends, green chile, balloon fiesta, sunny weather year-round, C&M's school

Things I will not miss: The wind, the drive to the kid's school, brown EVERYTHING

Things I am looking forward to about living in WA: Living near my sister again (2.5 hours away), GREEN, Homes with character instead of stucco, Great neighborhood schools, great shopping/restaurants/culture

So that is the BIG NEWS around here! It is going to be a crazy couple couple of months while we wrap things up here, Allen commutes and I do a lot of single parenting! Wish us LUCK!

Living in Seattle

Last night the weather was amazing and we took the kids to the park to play. While they were playing Al and I were lounging on the grass. He turned to me and said, "You know, living is Seattle is a lot like golf." I waited for him to expound. Then he explained, "You get one gorgeous day like this every once in awhile and it almost makes all the rotten, rainy days worth it. Kind of like golf, every once in awhile you get one good shot and it almost makes all your crappy shots worth it."

Such a guy. And such words of wisdom.

A day at the Farm

Lots of pictures, but not a lot of time. I just don't want to get too behind on my pictures. So here's a bunch of stuff that we've been up to this week.

Yesterday we went with Carter's preschool class to Farrel McWhirter Farm. The kids had so much fun. They made crafts, practiced milking a cow (by far Carter's favorite part of the day), played farm games and then were able to hold and feed some of the farm animals. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.

Milking Bossy the cow.
Carter's little friend and his first crush, Kaitlyn.

Going Away BBQ

Earlier this week our friends the Egbert's hosted a going away BBQ for us for our close friends. It was such a fun night and we're so grateful for our friends here. Our ward here is a wide mix of people but there are a lot of older, established people here. So the young couples have really stuck together and gotten quite close. The hardest part about moving is leaving our friends. Here are a few pictures of the night:

Take me out to the ballgame

Last night we watched the Seattle Mariners stomp the Los Angeles Angels 11-3 at Safeco field. The weather could not have been more perfect and we all had a great time. I love going to pro baseball games. There is just something about being there that makes it so fun. Not so much fun to watch on tv, but being there is an entirely different story. We were surprised by how much Makenna loved it. She danced and clapped and generally had a great time. Carter leaned over to me at one point and told me he wants to be a baseball player when he grows up.

Leaving Seattle

Al and I have compiled a list of all the things we want to do before we leave here. Seattle is such a great city and we're having a hard time squeezing it all in. On Saturday we took the kids to the Ballard Locks and botanical gardens and walked around the very cool neighborhood. I know it sounds like a weird thing to do but it was really fascinating watching the boats go from Lake Washington down into the Sound. We ended up randomly running into some friends from our ward while we were there. It was a really fun afternoon. On the way home we stopped at the famous Seattle eating establishment, Dick's Drive In and had their tasty burgers, fries and shakes. You'll just have to bear with us while we have lots of touristy posts for the next month or so. Here are some pictures from the Locks: