Colorado!

Left early on monday morning to meet mom in Colorado for a 5-day get away. I got to see the sunrise behind Rainier on the light rail ride to the airport:

 We met in Denver, and drove the beautiful four miles up to Snowmass.

 We stopped for lunch in the darling little town of Idaho Springs. We got great italian food and they even had a gluten free menu for mom.

We shopped in a few of the little stores--one, called the Wild Grape had these glasses we loved, but we don't know what this kind of glass is called.

We hiked a bit to view the Maroon Bells--the most photographed mountains in the world. We contributed. The aspens have peaked, but we still saw some great color.

The view from the trail.

I'm all thumbs.

 Then we went for lunch at this bookstore/cafe we love in Aspen. It's in an old house an they have a lovely deck for dining.

Went on another hike down valley the next day. Followed a river along and was quite nice. I can't remember the name of it.

At one point the wind gusted very strong and sent a barrage of aspen leaves zooming through this clearing. It was like watching a yellow snow storm.

 We stopped in the adorable and tiny historic town of Redstone for an ice cream by the river.

 So many cute houses--and many of them were for sale. It made me sad to see people moving away from this lovely place.

Now I'm back in Seattle, and busy busy. Went to the Symphony with Stephanie last night and had a lovely time. The weather is great. Lauren arrives in a few days, and I had my audition this morning. We'll see how it goes.

Top on our minds right now is that our precious little kitty is sick and cannot even keep down water. We will probably have to take her to the vet tomorrow, but they are not open on the weekend. We are very worried about her getting dehydrated. 

Portland!

We finally got away for a weekend to visit our neighboring city of Portland, OR. Our cousins Naomi and Tom live there, and we hadn't yet visited them since moving to the NW two years ago!

So many bridges in this city! Nathan and I took our bikes, which is the perfect way to get around Portland. There is lots of infrastructure for bikes, and it's much flatter than Seattle. We basically just biked around and ate a bunch--but the weather was perfect every day!

I didn't take photos everywhere we ate, but this breakfast spot was super charming and the food was incredible. It was scandinavian food--and this popular brunch place had us sign up on the waitlist at the bar open next door, which was open just to accomodate the waiting hords. 

A smorgasbord, lefse special, and swedish hash.

Top five most "Portland" things we saw on this trip:

1. a man riding a modified toddler's bicycle with a really tall seat post and a home-made side car welded to it in which he was carrying is belongings. I think the bike even had handle-bar streamers. I wish we had gotten a picture. It was hilariously undignified.

2. a man zooming down the street on a skate board, walking (or running rather) two dogs. He had a leash stretched out in front and behind him.

3. A fifteen (or more) piece band of vagabonds singing and playing together--instruments included spoons, the saw, and a man playing a single string on a broom handle.

4. Portland's famous food carts, of course. Too bad we were too full from breakfast still!

5. and there was this guy and his didgeridoo we kept seeing everywhere we went.

There was also a man across this street playing guitar and had a base petal thumping the suitcase he was sitting on, while the other foot played the tambourine and a hotel bell alternatingly. I neglected to get a picture, but he actually sounded really good!

And OF COURSE we went and got lost in Powell's, which I think is the world's largest bookstore. 

In the left corner you can barely see the dog who's panhandling owner taught him to play dead. It was pretty funny to see the dog lying on his back like that.

Nathan checks out some D.F.W. Should have known I would find him here!

Then we booked it (or biked it rather...and it's pretty uphill!) to the international rose test garden in forest park. Please excuse the enormous amount of flower pictures I am about to post.

The path through forest park on the way to the roses.

more roses!

If you look closely, there is a bee in this one!

Some other random things:

in front of whole foods.

six people wearing variations of pink in front of a pink wall. weird.

the courtyard that was some kind of old factory where we enjoyed happy hour.

This store was calle "cargo" and was all kind of random imports and recycled/antique things. It was AWESOME.

Hopefully we'll get back to Portland soon since there is so much that we didn't see. 

A perfect day...and last week.

It's been a crazy summer. I spent most of July participating in a dance festival that culminated in a performance, and while I kinda enjoyed the intensity of dancing 7 hours a day and then working at plum on top of that, it did leave me kind of short on time to do things like blog.  My dear friend Helen also participated in the festival with me and lived with us, and her last week in Seattle she was joined by her boyfriend and our mutual friend, Kyle. Helen's birthday is July 29th, and she wanted to go to Mt Rainier National Park (Nathan and I had never been) and Helen has lovely family in the area that took us out! So these are pictures from the beautiful hike we had up to Mt Fremont. 

Helen Poses like Captain Morgan. Kyle models the stylin' frame pack I bought for five dollars at our neighbor's garage sale while waiting to be picked up for the day. Sweeeet!

This is totally candid.

Nathan on the path through the shale.

The top! What a view!

AND SURPRISE! Kyle proposes to Helen. Helen says Yes.

This is a reenactment.

a blurry picture I took of the ring. Kyle designed it! Helen's favorite color: PINK!

 On the way down.

Fields of wild flowers!

SNOW!

So that was a grand and most perfect day. Followed by mad packing because Nathan and I had to leave the next morning to the midwest. I was on vacation, saw a lot of people who read this blog (so don't need to fill them in), and got to relax a lot while watching Olympics, which is exactly what I needed. 

Jump to current times...

Nothing too exciting going on here. However, in an effort to write on a more regular basis, here are a few things I did do recently:
Last tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary (we got some super sweet cards from the grandparents!) and we also went to dinner using the Poppy gift certificate the Bankas gave us for our birthdays.
Poppy is very convenient to our house and had some delicious, delicious food. You basically order one of a few options, and it comes with a variety of 7 or 10 things. They call them "thalis." There was some indian influence (note the naan bread) but otherwise it didn't feel particularly ethnic unless GORMET is an ethnicity.

Ok, we shared all of our items. Nathan got duck with fresh currents and peaches, strawberry-tomato-sage soup, curried kohlrabi, pickled blueberry and apricots, and a beet salad with gingerbread croutons.

I had some kind of beef, zucchini gratin, fennel blossom soup, the same beet salad, some other kind of salad with cucumbers, and pickled fennel.

Dessert thalis.

 Ok, and then one day for lunch I made myself this with the basil from my window boxes, which somehow survived not being watered for nine days while we were in Michigan/Wisconsin.

Then on Sunday we went to a friend's boyfriend's birthday "Rib Off" in which there were I think 7 ribs competing and we had to vote for a winner! It was extremely difficult. They were all delicious, and the weather was perfect. We played "corn hole" which is a kind of bean bag tossing game, and I was terrible at it.

We hadn't been to Madrona Park before. It was lovely.

 Two of my favorite dancer friends by lake Washington.

Too bad it was a touch chilly for swimming. It's hard to see in the picture (which is funny, because it was very easy to see in real life) but Mt. Rainier is just about center in this picture over the water. I need to learn how to make mountains show up in photographs!