Woodland Park Zoo

My Aunt Brooke took her kids to Woodland Park Zoo on Tuesday and since I’m only 5 miles from the zoo, she asked if I wanted to join them. Yes, of course! I brought my camera with and the three pictures above were my favorites.

Caleb liked the elephants, Stephanie liked the owls, and Keegan liked the penguins. My favorites are probably the the tree kangaroo, sloth, and red panda, but they were all hiding like usual.

Marie’s Birthday

Nick and I had planned on visiting Snoqualmie Falls and hiking Little Si on my birthday, but the weather thought otherwise. After weeks of warm sunny weather, we had record-breaking heavy rainfall on Wednesday. It was so wet we cancelled our backup plans and opted for a relaxing day at home instead. Hopefully, we’ll make up our hiking trip soon.

Mom’s Birthday

July is a busy month for birthdays in our family and Mom’s comes just three days after mine. To celebrate, Mom and I met Amanda for dinner at Tutta Bella’s Westlake location. We got a table on the patio, where we ate wood-fired pizza in the sunshine and enjoyed a great view of the Space Needle.

Horseback Riding

Little Marie on a horse

Grandma and Grandpa invited Nick and me to go horseback riding with them on Sunday at Lord Hill Park, a 1400 acre park filled with wilderness trails. Nick, Grandma, and I rode their Norwegian Fjord horses while Grandpa joined us on foot. The covers over the horses’ mouths are grazing muzzles, which keep the horses from getting distracted by the yummy plant snacks along the trail.

Nick has ridden horses before, but I think this was my first time riding a horse (though I have been on horses a handful of times). When I was little, I was sitting on a horse when someone opened the gate to the lower pasture and the horse took off. Dad bolted after me as I screamed. Thankfully, nothing like that happened this time and I now have a much less traumatizing memory about horses.

Mariners Game

Mom won tickets to a Mariners game in a raffle at work, so Nick and I spent Mother’s Day at Safeco Field with Mom and Amanda. The weather was fantastic, but we all got a bit sunburned. For some reason, my nose got especially burned, so I looked like Rudolph for a few days. The Mariners didn’t field the ball very well (5 errors) and lost the game 7-9, but we all had a good time.

One of the awesome things about our house is that we have great bus access. We generally take the bus when we go anywhere downtown or to the stadiums south of downtown, which is great because we don’t have to deal with the stress and expense of driving and parking.

Marrakesh

Marrakesh (photo from the restaurant’s website)

We went to Marrakesh Moroccan Restaurant with Mom and Amanda last weekend. Mom and Amanda had been there before, but it was the first time for Nick and me.

It has a great atmosphere and you eat with your hands, which is traditional in Morocco.

Dinner was served in multiple courses: salad and lentil soup, b’stilla royale (phyllo dough filled with ground chicken and topped with powdered sugar), the main courses, and dessert and mint tea. For the main courses, we ordered Tangine of Chicken Lemon and Olives, Tangine of Braised Hare, Couscous Marrakesh (couscous with lamb and vegetables), and Brochette Marrakesh (grilled lamb), which we ate family style. Everything was delicious. I especially liked the cumin, paprika, and garlic sauce that came with the hare.

Gardening

So far this year, we’ve planted basil, beans, chives, cilantro, cucumbers, dill, lemon balm, oregano, parsley, raspberries, snow peas, strawberries, tarragon, and Thai chili peppers. A lot of these are plants that we had last year, but we’re also trying out some new ones: beans, dill, oregano, snow peas, and strawberries.

Chives (lemon balm in background)

We just discovered we have a peony in our garden

The snow peas are growing quickly

The primrose we planted along the walkway is still blooming, but it requires more maintenance than we were expecting. It blooms frequently and you have to remove the old blossoms and leaves. We love the color it adds to our backyard, though.

Upcoming

Nick and I have been wanting to go for a hike lately, but iffy weather and changes in plans keep delaying it. I hope we’ll be able to go this weekend, but it looks like it might rain. Anyway, expect a hiking trip blog post soon!

This fall, Nick is going to move to a different building at work. He’s looking forward to the walls of floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a great view of Seattle.

But what we’re most looking forward to is that Nick’s mom is flying out to visit us in September. We’re already coming with ideas of things to do while she’s here. By the way, she has a shop on Etsy now, Design by Meg, in case you’re looking for some wire art to decorate your home.

My name badge for the Casual Connect conference I went to in July

Several people have asked me how I’ve been enjoying my new game development job. Well, I really like it and I’ve been learning a ton! It’s a small start-up company, so it’s just me and two other developers. It took a while to get used to the new software, tools, and libraries and I’m still learning new things every day. In addition to development, I’m also involved in the design process and it’s been fun offering my input in the games we’re working on. I also like when we get to spend time testing games (getting paid to play games, darn!). We have a couple of games that should be released shortly, so I’ll be sure to let you guys know when they’re available.

Oh, and one of the neat things about being a game developer I can justify playing video games as “research.”

Nick has been keeping busy in his job, too. He was nominated and recognized for being awesome at a recent annual iSchool retreat. He’s also now on two UW certificate advisory boards. Nick’s been working hard on the new iSchool website, which launches next week. It’ll be a huge improvement over the current website and everyone’s really excited to see it go live.

Last night’s Zaw pizza

Last night, we had pizza from Zaw, a bake-at-home pizza place that uses fresh, local ingredients. We were first introduced to Zaw by Martin (one of Nick’s coworkers) and his wife, Shelly, shortly after we moved to Seattle last year. When Groupon had a 50% off deal the other day, we couldn’t pass it up. We tried a pizza that was half Arugula Patch (prosciutto, cherry tomatoes, basil, parmesan, mozzarella, and arugula) and half Tailgate Feast (bacon, pepperoni, caramelized red onions, parmesan, and mozzarella). Both were really good.

Sean (a friend of ours) moved to Seattle a couple weeks ago and it’s been fun teaching him all of the quirks about Seattle, along with fun things to see and good places to eat. Most of the major differences relate to traffic: carpool lanes, express lanes, tolls, the bus system, parking, etc., but there are other things like the plastic bag ban and recycling / food & yard waste that he’s been getting used to, too.

What else is new? Nick and I started playing a new game called Guild Wars 2 that I’ve been blogging about on my personal blog. It’s an MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft, but with a lot of improvements. Nick and I have been having fun exploring the world and seeing this new take on the genre.

Crumble & Flake pasteries

Mom and Amanda stopped by yesterday afternoon with some bakery treats from Crumble & Flake Patisserie in Capitol Hill. They were recently featured in Seattle Magazine and Mom and Amanda had been dying to try them out. They got three different filled-to-order cream puffs (blackberry, chocolate, and coconut), a fig and olive tapenade roll, and kouign amann (a salty, buttery, carmelized, crunchy pastry that’s like a croissant). The kouign amann was unanimously the favorite and apparently Mom and Amanda were lucky to get it; it sells out so quickly that customers swear they don’t make it. The blackberry cream puff was really good, too. Thanks for the yummy surprise!

Clematis in our Backyard

It’s been almost 2 weeks since we moved in to our new house and it totally feels like home. We still have some boxes to unpack and decorations to put up, though, which is probably why we haven’t uploaded many pictures of our place yet. Expect some soon, though! In the meantime, enjoy the picture on the right of the clematis (thank you for telling me what it was, Mom!) that is blooming in our backyard.

I started my new job as a software developer at a start-up game development company on Monday. I’m really excited to be working there and I know I’m going to learn a lot. My first few days were mostly setting up my computer and whatnot, but I started diving into code on Thursday. The guys I work with are pretty cool. The worst part is the commute, but I can more or less set my own work hours, so I’m trying to find out which times are best for driving.

The weather in Seattle has been really nice this week. The forecast for the upcoming week looks very summery, too – sunny and highs in the low 80’s. That’s a little hotter than I like it, but I’m not going to complain while the rest of the country is dealing with 100°+ temperatures.

On July 1, Seattle enacted a plastic bag ban. Nick and I have been using reusable grocery bags for the past year, so it’s not a big deal for us, but we have to be extra careful not to forget them now. With our house, we also have a food and yard waste bin, which is new for us. Between food and yard waste and recycling, we find that we don’t produce that much actual garbage, which is kind of nice.

We met the couple we bought our house from earlier this week. They had some mail in the mailbox that didn’t get forwarded, so we said they could stop by to pick it up. They were really nice, friendly people and we enjoyed meeting them. They filled us in about our alarm system and told us that the shoe rack they left was custom-built for our house by her father, so they were happy we were using it.

Main Bathroom

One of the first decoration projects I tackled was the main bathroom. We only had one bathroom’s worth of bath mats, shower curtains, towels, etc., so I knew we would have to get something for the main bathroom fairly soon. I wrestled with various color palettes before I found a green and white shower curtain I liked and I picked the rest of the bathroom accessories based on it. The result is pictured on the left. Nick and I are really happy with it and smile every time we walk past the bathroom (it’s such a cheerful green!). Now we just need to find some art or something to put on the walls.

We also bought some curtains for our bedroom and a sofa for the living room that we’ll show off in another post.

The weather was really nice this evening, so Nick and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. We stopped at Joy Teriyaki to try out their teriyaki. We both liked it, but I think it could have used a little more teriyaki sauce. Yelp reviews for Joy Teriyaki recommend their Mongolian menu – especially the huushuur, a Mongolian pastry filled with beef, onion, and garlic. We’ll have to try it out next time!

Nick and I spent the morning taking a load of boxes over to the house and setting up some things there. It’s really starting to feel like home. We hung out with Margaret and Donna at the apartment afterward and then we went to the Volunteer Park Conservatory on Capitol Hill. I’m really glad we went because all the plants and flowers were gorgeous. Even the building itself was beautiful, made of glass with a wood and iron framework. I took tons of pictures, but it’ll be a little while before I upload them because I have to go through them all. We also walked over to Volunteer Park’s koi pond and Black Sun sculpture, but we didn’t stay long because of the rain. When we got back to the apartment, Margaret taught me how to crochet. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to do some fun crochet projects!

Nick’s Burrito Macho

We went to Sonrisa Modern Mexican at U Village for dinner. It wasn’t busy when we got there, probably because of the rain and we were there for an early dinner. The salsa that came with our chips was delicious and made in-house. We ordered a primo combo (three different enchiladas), baked chile relleno, burrito macho, and ancho rubbed chicken quesadillas. Everything was fantastic and Nick and I would definitely go back there again.

Margaret and Donna start their scenic drive back home early tomorrow morning. They plan on stopping in Salt Lake City and Jackson Hole to see the Grand Tetons. We said our goodbyes after dinner and gave them both big hugs. Can’t wait to see them again!

Nick and I took another car full of boxes over to the house tonight and we’ll spend tomorrow packing up what’s left and moving more boxes. We’ll probably only have furniture left by the time we do the big move on Sunday afternoon. Hurrah!

This morning, we all went to West Seattle to meet up with Mom and Amanda. We got there a little early, so we stopped to take some pictures of downtown (see picture above – the Space Needle is orange “galaxy gold” in celebration of the Seattle World’s Fair 50th anniversary). We walked around Alki Beach Park for a little while, too, before Mom and Amanda got there. We went to Duke’s Chowder House for lunch, where we enjoyed all sorts of delicious seafood.

Duke’s Fish & Chips

Donna hadn’t been to Seattle before, so we went to Pike Place Market after lunch. Even though we were there in the middle of the day on a weekday, it was still packed full of people. Donna bought some really neat handmade blown glass art and Nick and I picked up some awesome Seattle artwork for our new house.

We were all exhausted by the time we got back to our apartment, so we relaxed for a while and had an easy dinner of burgers and garlic fries from Kidd Valley. After Margaret and Donna left, Nick and I took a load of boxes over to the house and unpacked most of them. We can’t wait to fully move in!

Update: Added a photo of Nick’s fish and chips from Duke’s.

OMG, what an exciting day! We took Margaret, Donna, and Suki to the University of Washington this afternoon, so they could see where Nick works. Suki is a 14-year-old pug and she is having a hard time walking right now, so she was pushed around in a stroller (lots of people commented about how cute that was). The picture above is of Drumheller Fountain, just south of the building Nick works in. Mount Rainier is in the background. We ran into some of Nick’s coworkers on the way to his building, so we chatted with them and embarrassed Nick a little. We also went up to the office where he works to see his desk and meet the rest of the gang. UW’s campus is so beautiful and Margaret and Donna really enjoyed seeing it.

Margaret, Donna, & Suki

Visiting UW was also a nice distraction for Nick and me, as we spent the day counting down the hours (and minutes!) until we closed on our new house. At 5pm, the house officially became ours and we went to show it off to Margaret and Donna. We brought one of our gnomes and put him in the garden to mark the home as ours.

Dad met us at the townhouse, so he was there to experience us being in our new home for the first time. We all went to dinner at Tutta Bella in Wallingford for dinner to celebrate. We were surprised by how packed the place was! Donna got a calzone and the rest of us split three pizzas:

• Filomena (extra virgin olive oil, fresh mozzarella, ricotta, roasted asparagus, roasted onion, prosciutto cotto, grana padano)
• Tutta Bella (pomodoro, fresh mozzarella, isernio’s italian sausage, onion, basil)
• Giovanni (extra virgin olive oil, fresh mozzarella, tomato, prosciutto crudo, arugula, shaved reggiano)

Filomena pizza, the monthly special

Donna said her calzone was delicious and we enjoyed all of the pizzas. I think the Tutta Bella was the favorite, but they were all great. We somehow managed to save room for dessert, too. Nick and I got pear gelato (of course), Dad had chocolate panna cotta, Donna got a trio of Italian cookies, and Margaret shared her tiramisu with us. Everything was so yummy.

Tomorrow, we’ll hang out with Mom and Amanda at Alki Beach in West Seattle.

It’s apparently a popular place! Lots of people were there for dinner and Nick and I were the only white people, so we figured the food had to be authentic and yummy (lol!). The staff was friendly and our food arrived quickly. They started by bringing us tea, salad, and half a dozen side dishes. We weren’t sure what any of the side dishes were (a few sprout dishes, kimchee, potatoes, and some other things), but everything tasted great. Our sizzling plate of bulgogi came shortly after the side dishes. The bulgogi was good, but I think we both preferred Wasabi’s. If you ever visit, make sure to bring a friend or two because one dish is easily enough to feed three people!

Marie and Nick at Ivar's Salmon House

We were going to meet Dad at a Thai restaurant in the U District, but it was closed. Nick was in the mood for fish and chips, so we decided to have dinner at Ivar’s Salmon House instead. Dinner was great and we had a beautiful view of downtown Seattle and Lake Union from our table. There were a lot of sailboats on the water yesterday and we saw some seaplanes take off and land while we ate, too. Dad hadn’t been to Gas Works Park in years, so we walked around the park after dinner. He told us about the chowder cook-offs there used to be at Gas Works Park. I looked online and it seems like they still do the chowder cook-offs, but it’s along the Seattle waterfront now. The next one is coming up soon: Saturday, May 12 as part of the Seattle Maritime Festival. We just might have to go!