Duuuuuude

So last week was spring break here.I had a few days off from work, and then took the rest of the week off in order to make a whole week that matched Mike's schedule.

On Monday we took care of some stuff around the house. After a trip to the hardware store, Mike built some shelves for the garage and a storage unit for the laundry room. We also borrowed a ladder from our friends and hung the rest of the pictures downstairs. Our house is really looking much more like our space now! I'll post some pictures soon.

On Tuesday we left for the vacation part of spring break. We were headed to a dude ranch down in the Texas Hill Country. We managed to time our drive so that we stopped for lunch in Austin. And it was AWESOME. To be fair, I think Austin is ordinarily pretty cool, but we were there during SXSW (a giant arts/film/music/culture festival) which was like steroids for Austin. And rain for our parched hippie souls. We didn't actually attend any of the events, but the place where we had lunch was quite near some of the venues, so there were lots of people associated with the festival. After lunch we were torn between finding an independent coffee shop or this cupcake bakery a friend had told me about. I won. Guess where we went?Yes, that is an airstream that sells cupcakes (I'd hate to think how hot it gets in there in the summer!). Also, for ultimate perfection, there was a yarn store across the street from the cupcake airstream. I never wanted to leave.

After our lunch fun, we were back on the road, headed for the small town of Bandera and the dude ranch. We actually didn't end up spending any time in the town at all, so I can't really say anything about it. The dude ranch, on the other hand, was very nice.

We met my mom and her best friend, Harriet, there. Harriet is a native Texan, so she'd been to the Hill Country before, but this it was new to the rest of us. For the southern Californians among us, I'd say the Hill Country is a bit like Poway/Escondido/Rancho Bernardo (before all the houses went up everywhere) - which is to say lots of chaparral and scrub oak. It was pretty, in a mildly rugged sort of way. It also might have been a bit early for spring, since many of the trees were without leaves. I didn't find it to be a place of awesome scenic beauty, but it sure beats having a big box store on every corner (I'm not naming any names here, Fort Worth).We mostly did a lot of relaxing and hanging out. Our little cabin had a very pleasant veranda. The ranch staff cooked all the food, so it was very easy to wake up (at 7:30am, when they knocked on your door, bringing you coffee and juice), eat breakfast and then pass the day walking around the ranch, reading, resting, knitting, etc. The ranch also always offered the option of eating outside; we did this about 50% of the time.On our second day there, Mike and my mom went horseback riding.Also, the ranch had deer (very quick and quiet) and a peacock and a rooster (less quiet, especially at night!).And, for the record (I've verified this!), the stars at night ARE big and bright.

I would totally go back to this place - it was very relaxing. I also think it would be fun to go when it was a little warmer so that one could go tubing in the river that borders the ranch property. I also think that if one had kids ages 6-12, this would be a totally awesome place for them. Since it was spring break week, there were lots of kids around having a really good time.

We left on Friday; Harriet headed back to San Antonio to pick up her daughter and Mike, my mother, and I drove up to Fort Worth. We drove home via Fredricksburg. Fredricksburg is a town in the heart of the Texas wine country. It's a bit like Port Townsend - filled with little gifty shops. We visited a nice kitchen store, had some good pizza, and Mike and my mom tasted some wine. Incidentally, if you are from California or Washington, you may not find yourself that impressed with Texas wine. I'm just sayin'.

Friday night we had dinner at our favorite Indian place and then headed to the house so that my mom could finally see it. She really liked it!

Saturday was kind of a low-key day. Mike made French toast for breakfast, and then there was lots of hanging out, lunch, a walk, baking lemon bars (only my second attempt ever; not a staggering success, but not bad, either), and then Thai for dinner.

On Sunday my mom and I headed to the Modern Art Museum for brunch, then we had a walk, and then Harriet and her daughter arrived in town just time for dinner. Dinner was pizza made by my Chef Extraordinaire.And that was spring break. The end.

More Pictures

So it was totally my goal to hang pictures in the house this weekend, and then take pictures of a few rooms to show how well we're settling in. However, it turns out that we'll need a stepladder to hang some of these pictures, so that project didn't quite get off the ground (so to speak). We did hang a few pictures in the eating area, but nothing really major.

But, despair not! I have other pictures to share.

On Saturday, two of our good friends here in Fort Worth got married (and to each other, no less!). We went with them to the ceremony in the courthouse and then to the Japanese Garden to take some pictures. We then celebrated with some pizza afterwards. The bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, and everyone was very happy and a little weepy.

More from the ultrasound machine

Here are some more exciting pictures. These were taken at the 20 week appointment, which was on Tuesday. For those of you keeping track at home, the gestation period for a baby is usually about 40 weeks. According to our sources, the "fish" (as we call it) is currently about 7 inches long and weighs about 11 ounces.

Moved in (sort of)

Sorry for the radio silence, but, as I'm sure you know, moving is a little stressful and time-consuming. I'm not sure what made us think we could pull off a mid-week, mid-semester move, but we have now been disabused of that notion for any future moves (of which I hope there aren't many).

I think the worst of it is over, though. Most boxes (except those in the office and those that go with our yet-to-be-bought living room bookcases) are unpacked, the kitchen is set-up, and we are settling in. I even baked some cookies in the new kitchen last weekend.

We still need to get the giant pile of boxes out of the living room. We've been doing the environmentally friendly thing and craigslisting them instead of just sending them off to be recycled. But that means that they hang around until the people who have made arrangements to pick them up actually show up. So, despite the progress we've made, boxes are still a larger feature of the living room than I'd like them to be.

No pictures yet, though. I'd like the big box pile to be gone and for us to have hung some of our pictures before I start taking photos.

floored

Well, we're finally finished with the flooring. It looks great - we're so happy with it. I'm glad we went with a lighter color, since I think it makes everything look a little warmer and lighter.This weekend we moved all our clothes and most of the boxes containing the super-fragile items. The real move - with the movers - happens tomorrow.

This is not my goat

Photo credit: Seattle Police Department

Or so I've been told. Full story here.

"What are you going to do with all those bedrooms?"

Due July 17th.

16 weeks plus change today.

We aren't planning to find out whether it's a boy or a girl (well, eventually, yes, but not before the birth).

We're happy, our parents are happy, etc.

You've come a long way, baby

Forgive the cheesy title, but here are some new pictures of the house. I took these with the iphone's camera (why is it that I have two perfectly good cameras, but managed to forget both of them yesterday morning???).As you can see, the grass is a little brown (as is the grass throughout the neighborhood), but we're hoping for green in the spring!
(the fan on the floor is trash [it was defective and replaced by the builder]; we just haven't thrown it away yet)
That's the master bath above, but there are no pictures of the bedrooms, since without furniture they all look the same....

However, here is a picture of Mike's first home-improvement project - a shelf for the laundry room!Also, this is Kate writing - I just realized that this will post from Mike's account.....

Updates....

Mike got two very exciting phone calls today:

1. Our fridge will be delivered on Monday.

2. Our flooring will be delivered on Wednesday.

The flooring guy will hopefully start working on Thursday. Allowing time to be safe, this puts us in line for a move on (ta-da!) Valentine's Day! Hello, romance!

Snow Day!

So work and school were canceled again here today. It actually snowed last night! I just can't wrap my head around a place cold enough to snow in the winter and then hot enough to be 110 in the summer.....

Anyway, here's the proof of the snow (and I know these pictures may not impress you if you are from "Michigan", "upstate New York", "Canada", and [this year] "Western Washington"):I also found a polar bear enjoying the cool weather!

A first

No work today for me! School is closed due to an ice storm.

Thinking about this, I think this might be the first time ever that I've experienced a weather-related school closure. Once, there was a bad earthquake when I was in elementary school, but the day after was a scheduled in-service so they got the building inspectors out then, so no school closure. Wellesley might have closed once, but I don't think I had classes that day. And UW closed once, but it was at 3pm, so I'd already had my classes for the day.

But today, today is a real gift! Alas, I was dressed and showered before I found out about it - but, no worries, my sweatpants and my fleece have quickly found me!

A little ketchup

So, it's been a busy week.

Also, I must confess that I haven't been blogging as much because I still haven't replaced my computer. I just can't decide if I want a pc or mac, a desktop or a laptop. So I do nothing. And my readers - all three of you - suffer. Or something.

Anyway, first things first.

We finally got the keys to the house on Tuesday, when the loan actually funded. So that was exciting.

Tuesday was also Inauguration Day. Tuesday was awesome.We actually took a break at my work and watched some of the inauguration on TV, although the reception was pretty fuzzy. I also caught a replay of the speech driving home. But then, that evening, we went to an inauguration-watching party. The hostess was really creative and had made foods that represented different parts of Obama's life/heritage: so we had Kenyan beans and rice, Indonesian rolls, Chicago deep-dish pizza, and Hawaiian coconut cake. Yum!

On Wednesday we got right back to house things. After work we meet at the house to check out how a few of our favorite flooring samples from the store actually looked in our house (so weird to write those words "our house"?!). We were picking something for the living room, master bedroom, and two downstairs closets. After some debate, we settled on this:It's wood laminate, which actually means plastic. It will look like wood, but is much more durable and easier to care for. Also, cheaper. So, it will take 7-10 days to arrive, and then our floor guy estimates 2-3 days to install.

We've also been busy researching refrigerators (okay, sorry, this may be, like, the most boring post ever - feel free to move along to reading, um, well, anything else). If anyone has any thoughts about refrigerator brands or styles, we'd love to hear it. And, yes, we've already looked at Consumer Reports. Right now we're looking at Whirlpool one from Costco. The good news is that Costco includes delivery and is very price-competitive with Sears, etc. The bad news is that it can take as long as 20 days for the item to arrive. So we're hoping to place the order soon, just in case it takes the full 20 days to arrive.

Basically, we are still looking at a mid-February moving date.

The weather here remains crazy. Yesterday it was 80 degrees. Today it's 30 degrees. I feel like people in Seattle always said, "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." But, whatever, it was always raining. Which was fine; I like rain. But the whole changing-rapidly-thing wasn't quite as a big deal as people acted like it was. Here, it's the real deal.

The Closing...

Kate and I are officially homeowners! Here is an older set of pictures of the house. Since that time, the house has been completed, and it looks fantastic. The closing was originally supposed to happen Tuesday, and then due to circumstances beyond our control, was pushed back to Thursday, and then to yesterday. Kate and I were very prepared. We had turned in all of the necessary documents far in advance, so I assumed that the closing would be easy and smooth. As yesterday progressed, and papers were still being processed, and our mortgage broker was still not able to tell us precisely how much money we needed to bring to the closing (he was able to give us a ballpark estimate which ended up being close to correct), I realized that this was going to be a crazy day.

At my real estate agent's office, I asked whether this was unusually crazy for a closing, and she laughed and said that no, about half of them are this crazy, and some of them are even more crazy. But as we drove to the actual closing, she admitted that, if the mortgage broker could not give us an exact amount of money to bring to the closing before we actually walked in to the closing, that would be a first for her. And, thus, we are number 1! We got the figure just after walking in, and our real estate agent took me on a wild goose chase to look for a branch of our bank (it was harder to find than it should have been).

But it all worked out in the end, and we celebrated an Uncle Julio's last night, the same restaurant where we ate the day that we moved to Fort Worth.

San Diego Snippets

I promised - so here it is!

We actually didn't have great weather - 4 out of the 7 days we were there, it rained! Nevertheless, we managed to walk on the beach nearly every day.However, I didn't end up taking as many pictures as I'd hoped, partially because of the rain, and partially because I was just feeling lazy. And the pictures I did take are only of sort of mediocre quality, so perhaps it's all for the best that I didn't take more!

We managed to visit with lots of family and friends, which was really, really nice. First, we had a lovely lunch with Mike's relatives from Los Angeles. Here's a picture I took as we strolled in La Jolla after lunch.We also had a great dim sum lunch with some of my very dearest friends in San Diego. Here are a few pictures of the star guests:Why on earth I didn't get a group shot, I have no idea. Well, other than the super-large table, the carts and servers coming and going, and the difficulty of it all....

And, for SYL's birthday, we took her out to a place that is fast becoming the new "it" sushi place in San Diego. It was delicious! Also, happy birthday to SYL!My family from San Francisco was also in town while we were there. It was so, so nice to see them. Here's a hanging out shot on Christmas morning. Yes, that is a rosemary topiary standing in for a Christmas tree.Lots of nice gifts were given and received, and I'm touched by thoughtfulness of some of the things given to me. Here's a pair of socks I knit for my grandmother.While all the holiday decorations were still up, all the ladies in my family went downtown to have tea at the super-beautiful Hotel Del Coronado (the gentlemen went out for Mexican food). Here are a few pictures of the tea itself:And one of the exterior of the hotel (taken through a car window, so please forgive the weird reflections).We had a great time in San Diego, even if the weather the best (as always) on the day we left. No worries, though - we'll be back!

Belated holiday letter

Hah! I bet you thought this was going to be a post about San Diego! Fooled you! That post is still coming, though.

But in the meantime, I thought I'd share with you the holiday letter I wrote. I had grand dreams of printing these out on paper with a snowflake border and then folding them up and placing each letter inside of holiday cards on which I'd write a personal message to each recipient. I even went so far as to buy the snowflake paper and the holiday cards. Alas, um, no (but an A for the thought).

And then I thought I'd re-format the letter into a newsletter format, include pictures, and then send it out electronically to everyone with a generic message. Alas, um, no (but a B- for the thought).

And then - you know, now that it's January - I thought I'd just remove our contact information and some of the stuff I wouldn't want the whole internets to see (you know, like our employers and the like) and just post it here. Yes (and a C- for effort. But so it goes).

So, at long last, here it is . . . .

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy Holidays! We thought we'd update you on our lives since a lot has changed for us recently!

Mike completed his Ph.D. in July of 2007. Right after he defended his dissertation, we took off for a two-week camping trip to Farragut State Park in Idaho, Glacier National Park in Montana, and Banff and Jasper in Canada. We did a lot of swimming in lakes, sitting by the campfire, and hiking through some beautiful scenery. Highlights included a two-day, twenty-mile backpack in Glacier and meeting up in Japser with some of our Japan friends.

Mike was fortunate enough to find a position as a lecturer for the 2007-2008 academic year. This position gave him the time needed to prepare his applications for academic jobs, and gave Kate the time needed to complete her teaching degree. In January of 2008, Mike was invited for a job interview for a position that focused on teaching about Japanese politics. Two days after he returned, they phoned to offer him the job! Texas is affordable and not too far from either of our families, so it was a good fit all around.

Kate spent the spring of 2008 completing the last part of her teaching degree by student teaching American history, Advanced Placement American history, and second-year French. She graduated with a Washington-state teaching credential and endorsements in French and Social Studies. In addition, in June of 2008, Kate ran her first half-marathon, accompanied by two of her close friends. The race took place near Olympic National Park, about three hours from Seattle. The course was beautiful, starting near some very picturesque farms, passing through an old-growth forest, and then finishing up with a stretch along Puget Sound.

Our amazing friends helped us pack our apartment and load our rented truck, and we left Seattle on July 1st, 2008. Seattle had been good to us, and it was sad to leave a place with so many memories and friends (not to mention coffeeshops and cupcake bakeries!). We were incredibly lucky that Kate's good friend agreed to make the drive to Texas with us. The driving days were long and maneuvering the truck was a little stressful, but we kept ourselves entertained with walkie-talkies, audiobooks, and plenty of rest stops. We even spent the Fourth of July in Wyoming with Kate's relatives.

The good thing about arriving in Texas in July is that you don't have to worry about how much hotter it is going to get! That's right: the day we moved in, it was 102! Luckily, we had movers to help us unload the truck. Now that the summer heat is over, we're actually settling in quite nicely. We've met some really nice people and found some great restaurants - the Mexican food here is much, much better than it was in Seattle. Who'd have guessed? In the coming months we plan to adopt a dog from a rescue group and, hopefully, buy a house. Wish us luck!

Should you ever find yourself in Texas, please look us up.

We wish you peace and happiness in the coming year!

Poinsettia Bowl

Last week, Kate and I visited her family in San Diego. While we were there, it happened that my university was playing in a bowl game against the Broncos of Boise State University, and my in-laws generously bought me and Eric, Kate's brother, tickets.

The game was fantastic. It was quite close, and the good guys won by 1 point. Because it was a bowl game, there were "thunder sticks" on the seats. I opted not to inflate mine (because my HANDS are thunder sticks), but here is Eric blowing his up:

The pregame show included the TCU band and, for some reason, a giant "Thomas the Tank Engine":

Eric and I both wore TCU gear to the game. I wore the TCU shirt that my dad bought me when I accepted the job, and Eric wore Kate's shirt that says "fear the frog." However, we both changed into the free tee shirts that we got at the game that say "Texas Christian University: The Collegiate Home of LaDainian Tomlinson":