Pumpkin Patch

I love my little pumpkin face!

uhhh stupid blogspot... please help!

I'm getting so frustrated with blogspot! I have a great preview page of how I want my post to look like when published, and as soon as I hit 'publish post' everything is thrown into disarray... can anyone help or suggest another free blogging site?

Slacker... again...

This is getting bad... this is now the second month that I've not routinely updated the cyberworld with something interesting/relevant... Why have I been slacking; I don't really know. I've been telling myself it's because we have been so busy that I haven't had time to actually sit down and write about everything that has been going on, but let's be serious, it's because I have an 11 month old who consumes my everything!

Here is a picture of the three of us departing from Richmond to Chicago. Malia was a champ on all of our flights. She really enjoyed ripping out pages from the Skymall magazine... sorry United!

Gig Harbor/Seattle, WASHINGTON

So, in the past month, we have gone cross country! The end of September, Keoni, Malia and I travelled to the West Coast. My brother Jack and his wife Julie moved out to Gig Harbor, WA in April. Gig Harbor is a beautiful place to live, and Jack and Julie did a great job showing us around town. Everything is in walking distance from their town home. There is a great little coffee shop just a block down where they make the best pumpkin cream cheese muffin. Across the street was a organic grocery store with at least 10 different apple varieties. Keoni actually found one of our favorites at the grocery store yesterday!

We spent some time in the big city doing the typical tourist attractions- Space Needle, Pike's Place Market, First Starbucks. And of all things, we were able to see a good friend and groomsman from our wedding Tony! The pictures below don't give Tony much credibility, but Malia did warm up to our Mountaineer buddy!

We also were able to have Jack show us around Fort Lewis. This is one of the bases that we have on our list of possible locations, so it was really helpful to see the surrounding communities to help us determine if we could see ourselves living surrounding area.

Below are just a few pictures of our trip to Washington:

Beautiful picture of Gig Harbor. Jack and Julie live about 10 minutes from the Harbor. Could you imagine waking up to this view every morning?

Pike Place Market. The Market officially opened in 1907 and is one of the oldest operated public farmers' markets in the country. Here you can get fish, flowers, veggies, baked goods, artwork, jewelry, etc. We had a fabulous lunch at Jack's Fish Spot

Here is a picture of one of the fish stands. I was shocked at the 'show' these men put on when someone orders from their stand.

This picture is really disgusting, but crazy at the same time. Right under the alley under the big Public Market sign is this wall of gum. It is LITERALLY covered in gum of all shapes, sizes and presumably, flavors.

The First Starbucks! Malia, Julie and I are waiting in line for our drinks in the first starbucks. I was surprised how small the coffee shop was in comparison to all the other millions of stores across the country. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I did get a vanilla bean frappuccino!

Malia and our dear friend Tony! I promise as the lunch hour progressed, Malia became more delightful and less scared of Tony.

Oh the Space Needle... call me cheap, but we did not want to spend $17 a person to go to the top of the needle. They did have an awesome gift shop though. Malia got a cute pink shirt with a silhouette of the needle made out of crayons.

Check back for the next post on the second half of our trip to Oregon!