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We had everyone over for Thanksgiving at our house this year. Grandmother and Grandfather, Nathan and Ashley (and Thor and Ares), and Joella all arrived on Wednesday. Dan came up from Tulsa on Thursday morning. We were also joined by Brian, a friend of Michelle's from work.
Jeff and I decided to go the easy route for the big meal this year, so we grilled a few flat-iron steaks and made baked potatoes in the oven. We had a green salad, and some yummy red-hot applesauce Jello and banana bread brought by Grandmother. We didn't duck out of cooking entirely... we made a fruit savarin for dessert which went over pretty well. We still had lots of dishes to wash, but no real cooking dishes, so it was a pretty quick cleanup.
Cooking, sort of
Michelle, Grandmother, Dan, Nathan, Ashley
Joella, Brian, Grandfather, Jeff
Nathan explains Wii to G&G
Grandmother tries her hand at golf
Gritting your teeth makes you a more effective boxer
Dan and Joella duke it out
Domestic violence
Dan had to leave on Thursday, and Nathan, Ashley, Grandmother and Grandfather all left on Friday. Joella stuck around until Sunday. She and I had fun going to yoga class at the Y together on Saturday, and Jeff joined us for a trip over to the movie theater to see New Moon. It was a pretty good weekend.
We sold my GTI yesterday. I have to admit, that I'm a bit sad to see it go. It was a good car, both practical and fun to drive. I realized last night that it was the first car Jeff and I bought together as husband and wife. Perhaps that's why I'm feeling all sentimental about it. I usually don't get attached to material stuff like that.
We sold it to a 60 year old school teacher from a town about an hour and a half south of us. He plans to auto cross it, and I'm glad to see it will finally have the chance to live up to its full potential. My coworkers have been trying to get me to do that with it ever since we bought it. :)
Our last picture together
I got to have my birthday present a little early this year - I treated myself to a flight down to Houston to see my sister, Joella, and to go to the Muse/U2 concert with her. She managed to get some great tickets at not too high of a price, and invited me to go along. As we both love Muse, and knew that U2 would put on a great show, it was an easy choice.
I took Wednesday and Thursday off work, and caught a VERY early flight out of Wichita and over to Denver, then caught another from Denver to Houston. I arrived in Houston right at lunchtime. Joella suggested a visit to her favorite margarita place for lunch, and I was all in favor of that, because I LOVE authentic Mexican food, and I've soooo missed having it since we moved back to Kansas from San Diego. It didn't disappoint - I had a delicious shrimp enchilada with my margarita (which really was quite good), and which came with some yummy sides that enhanced the experience. I also got to meet one of Joella's fellow transitional year students who met us at the restaurant. It was nice to see that Joella had at least one good friend down there.
Joella drove me past the huge medical complex where she works on our way back to her apartment. It is a pretty incredible collection of buildings. I can't imagine that there's any procedure that they wouldn't be able to do on a sick person down there. I did have to deal with my "no scrubs in public" pet peeve more than I'd have liked to, because the place was full of doctors and nurses and students running around on the street in their scrubs... but I survived.
We eventually made it back to Joella's apartment where we spent the afternoon just relaxing before the concert. It was about 100 degrees outside with 100% humidity, and we were NOT looking forward to the one mile walk to the stadium for the show. Happily, Joella ran into one of her friends down by the apartment complex pool who volunteered to drive us to the stadium! We had a quick bite to eat at her place before hopping in the car for the ride over to the show.
The stadium was nice and air conditioned, and the roof was closed when we got to our seats. Eventually they started blowing smoke around the stage, and they opened the roof of the place up, but I'm pretty sure they kept the A/C on, because it never got really hot in there. Muse finally came on and played an awesome opening show. We both really enjoyed watching them. I'm pretty sure that most of the other people at the concert didn't know any of their music, but Joella and I happily sang along anyway. They played about 10 songs, and then it was time for them to go off stage, and for the roadies to start setting up for U2.
It took a while, so we went on a popcorn run and had time to eat enough to get our fill before U2 came on stage. It was a bit surreal to think we were in the same building as these people who have all these iconic songs and who we've only ever seen on television for the last 30 years. It was a really amazing show, though, and it was so worth the trip down to Houston to see. The band was fun to listen to, but the thing that really impressed me was the stage. I was thinking how much fun it would have been to be an engineer on that project.
The concert got out at about midnight, and Joella and I walked back to her apartment from the stadium and totally crashed for the night. We both loved the show and agree it was the best concert BY FAR that we've ever been to.
My flight home in the morning left around 9, so we had to get up early again. There was a bit of a traffic jam on the way to the airport, but I made it in time to get through security and on to my flight to Denver. I was in Denver for the whole child-caught-in-a-helium-balloon fiasco, which made my three hour layover there a little more bearable. My flight back to Wichita was only delayed by about 10 minutes, even though it left right about the time the supposed missing child was flying past DIA. I made it back home to Wichita and back to the house before Jeff got home from work. It was a really fun trip, and I'm so glad I got to see Joella in her new city!
Errol is a frequent visitor to my lap when I'm working on the computer. He is rarely there to help, but rather takes advantage of me as a warm place to sleep in our often cold house. Apparently I'm quite comfy.
Hi everyone!
If you're wondering where our vacation photos went, don't worry, they'll be back soon. We've put some photos of the car we're selling in our Picasa account, and because we didn't want just any random internet surfer snooping through our vacation photos, we've blocked them from view for a little while. Of course, if you just LOVE looking through our photos on a regular basis, the best solution would be for you to go ahead and buy our car so we can put the photos back up. Just kidding. :)
We had the opportunity (i.e. ANOTHER WEEK OF FURLOUGH) to take a little trip up to Seattle and Port Angeles, Washington, to visit some good friends: Mary and Luis, who are about to have a baby, and Stacie and Chris, who were just married. We abandoned Fang and Errol to the capable hands of our new pet sitter, and flew up to Seattle last Wednesday, the 9th.
Mount Rainier
We arrived at Mary and Luis' house in time for dinner. We were pleasantly surprised to find that another college friend, Cress, and her family would be joining us for the meal! Luis cooked up a fabulous three course dinner for the seven of us and we had a great time catching up on everyone's latest news.
Luis hard at work making dessert 
Mary, Matt, Ryder, and Cress
First course - new style sashimi
Pasta with mushroom sauce
Our young sommelier
Green Lake Wildlife
Right after lunch, Jeff and I drove over to Edmonds to catch the Edmonds-Kingston ferry over to the Olympic Peninsula. The ferry ride across is always fun, and the drive from Kingston to Port Angeles is scenic and relaxing. We arrived in Port Angeles at about 3:00, and went straight to Chris and Stacie's house, where we met Chris for the first time, and we met Gracie, their dog for the first time as well. We played with Gracie for a while, and got a tour of the cute house, and then we all left together to drive over to Chris' family's cabin on Lake Sutherland. Chris showed us around the cabin, then took us out on his boat for a drive around the lake. It was surrounded by quaint cabins and dense trees and little mountains. Gracie went along for the ride, and delighted in spending much of her time switching between all of our laps.
A sailboat near our ferry
Gracie, who never tires of playing Frisbee
Stacie, Chris, and Gracie
After the boat tour, we went back to the cabin where Chris and Stacie whipped up a tasty dinner of grilled brats, and yummy chips and salsa, and macaroni salad. It was great to picnic outside on the deck and be out in nature. It's not often that we can eat outside in Kansas without our food blowing away, so we were happy to get the chance to do it in Washington!
The four of us at the lake
We headed back into Port Angeles by way of a little detour down Ediz Hook Road. It's a neat peninsula that shelters Port Angeles Harbor. We checked out the cool rock piles and took some more pictures of ourselves. After that, we had to get back to Kingston to catch a late ferry back to Seattle for the night.
We just had to take one of Stacie's famous self portraits!
Michelle on the hook
Jeff on the hook
Jeff and I spent the following morning shoe shopping in Seattle, and then met up with Mary and Luis for lunch at Serious Pie, which is a downtown pizza place that serves up some gourmet type pizzas. It was pretty good. After that, we all roamed about downtown shopping for a while, then went back to the house to rest up for the evening. We had an early dinner reservation at Wild Ginger, where we met up with one of Luis' coworkers from Boeing. The food at Wild Ginger is served family style, and we decided to let our waiter choose a variety of dishes for us to eat. It was a great choice - he brought out five different appetizers and five different entrees, and we all got a taste of each. It was a really fun restaurant and the food was outstanding!
After dinner, we moved across the street to Benaroya Hall to hear the Seattle Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. It was a nice concert, but I have to say (and Jeff agrees) that we could NEVER play for their conductor. He was a mess. I'm pretty sure he was half a beat ahead of the orchestra the entire time, and he was flailing all about in such a manner that you couldn't really tell where the beat was, so it was definitely not the orchestra being behind. The orchestra sounded just fine, and they were all together, just not with him. Anyway, it was amusing to watch, and it was fun to hear the Fifth played live.
Saturday morning was spent at Pike Place Market with Mary and Luis. We've all been to the market before, but this time was a little different. We decided to take a tasting tour of the market through a guide company called Savor Seattle Tours. It was really good. We had a group of about 16 people, and we were led to nine different stalls in the market for a variety of food samples. The tour lasted about two hours. When it was over, we walked back through the market to do some grocery shopping. We picked up a yummy fresh fruit smoothie, some chocolate covered cherries, and some good anchovies. The smoothie was devoured right away, the rest came home to Wichita with us.
The famous entrance to the market
Sampling a Daily Dozen Doughnut
A cutie from Pike Place Fish
Fresh fruit from Frank's Quality Produce
So pretty!
The neon signs at the market are fun
Gorgeous flowers
This is Brett, our illustrious tour guide, at Beecher's Handmade Cheese
Crab cakes at Etta's Seafood
Mushrooms in the market
We decided to visit IKEA for part of the afternoon. We all love that store, and Mary and Luis wanted to look at some baby items, and Jeff and I just wanted to wander around and see all the great stuff we can't have because we don't have IKEA anywhere near us. We ended up buying a little stuffed mouse toy for Fang, and making a wish list of bigger items that we'd love to have to decorate our second guest bedroom. Oh IKEA, please come to Kansas!
After IKEA, we all needed a rest, so it was back to Mary and Luis' house for the rest of the afternoon. Then we went out again for our last dinner together, this time to Dahlia Lounge. After dinner, we went back to the house and shared our vacation photos with each other. Mary and Luis showed us their England and France photos from over the summer, and we showed them our Austria and Switzerland photos. Then it was off to bed for all of us.
The sun sets on Mary and Luis' backyard
We flew home early Sunday morning and arrived back in Wichita in the middle of the afternoon. We were relieved to find our pups were happy and well fed. I don't think they missed us too much. We'll definitely have to try this pet sitter thing again on our next short trip out of town.
Cooking, sort of
Michelle, Grandmother, Dan, Nathan, Ashley
Joella, Brian, Grandfather, Jeff
Nathan explains Wii to G&G
Grandmother tries her hand at golf
Gritting your teeth makes you a more effective boxer
Dan and Joella duke it out
Domestic violence
