Chris and Tricia's Anniversary, Part 2

The highlight for both Tricia and I had to be our Christmas night dinner. There were very few places open on Christmas, but Tricia had made a reservation at a place called The Alley Cafe. Although they called it a "cafe," something like "gourmet dining" would have been more apropos. We both had a multi-course dinner of salmon filets and Dungeness crab in Bearnaise sauce, with mashed potatoes, candied yams, salad, steamed veggies, a delightful Zinfandel Wine, all topped off with Apple Strudel. Is your mouth watering yet?

The atmosphere was great, but one of the neatest treats was when a European-style Father Christmas strolled in for a visit. Apparently there's one guy that does this once a year for the whole village, and we were just at the right place at the right time. His outfit was very fancy. He had a rich red-satin robe with fine golden embroidery, a forest green velvet overcoat, classic black belt, an intricately-carved wooden walking stick with a unique "mountain crystal" in the hilt. The crystal is so-named because when you look into the crystal there's a miniature mountain silhouette in the rock (quartz, we think). He wore a holly wreath on his head, and had some rich-toned bells that jingled as he walked. He really played the part well, and he had a real beard, not the fake-Santa thing. Here are some pictures of our wonderful dinner.

On Christmas Day Tricia and I (Chris) hopped in our hot-rod Cutlass-Sierra for our second anniversary get-away. After last year's disasterous anniversary adventure, this year's could only go uphill from there. And uphill it went! It was our first delightful anniversary, and it will be a tough one to beat.

We drove to Leavenworth, WA, which was inundated in about 4 feet of fresh snow, and it continued to snow another 8 inches or more during most of our time there. It was a winter wonderland, with a charming Bavarian-village imitation that far exceeded my expectations. Although the whole Bavarian theme is just a great tourism gimmick (it's not really a transplanted Bavarian sub-culture), they did it well enough to impress me, and I spent three months living in Bavaria. It was a lot of fun. The shops gave us plenty to do, and Tricia reserved a cute (but fortunately not cute ala "Precious-Moments" flavor) bed and breakfast that was smack in the heart of the Bavarian-downtown area. The B&B was pretty old, and each room was decorated with a quilt-theme. Here are some fun pictures from our time there.

One more....

Here's a bunch of Garden Valley Christmas photos:



















And last but certainly not least:

Last night Kari and I went down to the Seaport Village to take some night photos but noticed that it was a little foggy. Didn't get the pictures that we wanted, but these two kinda show you how foggy it really was.

Peanut laughing at a funny joke:

Karissa not really enjoying having her picture taken. Abby is oblivious.

And here we are yesterday morning in front of the tree...

Sunday night we drove around for a while in the cold and semi-wet, and finally captured a tree in its native habitat - the parking lot. It fills the house a bit more than last year's model. Well, more than any other tree we've ever had - separately or together.

The great white hunters return with their catch:


Rachel and Peanut wrestle for control.

Sorry for this awful picture, but I'm afraid it's the best that we got of our snow. If you can, picture our street as a winter wonderland... all the branches had at least four inches of snow piled on top and the streets were still bright and clean white. The day of this picture, the skies were the blue-est that I had seen in a while.

The office! We love how it turned out. Many thanks and expressions of gratitude to Mom, who helped me paint it these lovely shades of green.

I forgot that mom wanted to see what our dog "sugar" looks like. Or as dad calls her "splenda".

Kari & I on the deck after the frocking ceremony. (ask mom or dad if you have any ?'s with that)

"Presenting Aviation Machinists Mate 2nd Class Gregory R. Smith"..... AD2 Smith, G. R.

I will have better pictures later when I get my blues ready. Much better uniform!

Karissa had lots of fun making Cherry Wink cookies on Sunday with Grandma, Auntie Rachel and her mom. She took some to school to share with her friends for her birthday.

Here are a couple pics that were takin' during our canyon ride last weekend. No baby pictures quite yet...no scanner.

I wasn't actually breaking into my car, I was reaching for one of those glorious Mountain Dew's.

On Monday we got our first snow of the season. Unlike most first snows, this snow has stuck and is still on the ground and on our car. As I write, our second snow is falling; it is a lovely end to an otherwise dreary day.

I wasn't sure if you guys wanted more ultrasound pictures but here is another. This is 16 weeks...two more weeks and we can tell you if it is a boy or girl. read comments for last post to see what names we are thinking. Notice the length...140mm! I think that that is the placenta... Click for large image...

Hopefully it works this time around! This is a picture of the baby, I believe that it is 12 weeks in this pic. Its head is in the top right of the photo and his/her arms are raised. This coming Thursday will be 14 weeks for Kari (and me!) Almost 4 months along!!


http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=79631159915784893/l=212483865/g=74820133/otsc=SYE/otsi=SAIS

Here's one from the vaults. When I was a 19-year old substitute teacher at the Garden Valley school, a 4th grade student had to write this to me after his regular teacher came back (click to enlarge):

Soon to be spaghetti sauce...



Our tomato plants have been slow but steady performers this summer. We've been able to pick a couple big ones every few days. But last week, we harvested all of these one evening. The "Celebrity" variety plant decided to bear fruit.

Here is the whole family at the 50th anniversary party at Ocean Park, Washington on August 19, 2006.
From left to right: top row, Brian, Ron, Jeff, Andy, and Steve; bottom row, Kathy, Kathy, Jennie, Kathy, and Jeanne.
Brian, Kathy, Jeff, Andy and Jeanne.

Here are a couple views of Tricia and Chris' quilt. It may get finished by their second anniversary.

After we had already set our hearthpad in place and had set the rocks in mortar, we discovered that we needed a hole for the fresh-air kit. So we (that is, Chris) cut a 4 inch hole through the rock, cement board, plyboard, carpet, 3 layers of old flooring and a hefty floorboard with this borrowed sawzall. Talk about hard work!

Our sweet little Juliet was very curious about this new hole. Before we pulled out the camera she was putting her entire head in the hole. In natural cat fashion, though, she would not do it after we started taking pictures.

Our first harvest of tomatoes, which we picked a week or so ago. These are of the Sungold variety - an orange cherry tomato. They are the sweetest, most flavorful tomato I've ever had. Today I was able to pick so many that I almost couldn't hold them in my hands.

For our anniversary, which happened to be August 6th, we went to a nice fondue restaurant called The Melting Pot. Neither of us had had fancy fondue, and it was a fun experience. There were four courses - cheese first, to dip bread, fruit, and vegetables. We chose what they called a "Wisconsin Trio" for our cheese. This is the official description: "Fontina, Butterkäse and Buttermilk Bleu cheeses with white wine, fresh scallions and a hint of sherry." It was on the sharp side, and very good. Then came the salad course. Rachel had a strawberry almond salad, and I had a chef salad.

They brought out the main course next, which was a variety of raw meat that we cooked in the broth. The last course was the dessert, a flambeed chocolate fondue that we dipped all manner of sweet things in. There was a tray with strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, angel food cake, and several marshmallows that were coated with coconut, I think. It was all very good, and very nice for our first anniversary.



This last Saturday, we went to see one of our favorite bands, Nickel Creek. We'd previously seen two of their concerts in prior years, but it's been more than 2 years since they were here last.

A yard update...

This is what the yard looked like right before we had it planted:


And then, less than a week after planting:


Two weeks after that:


And this is what this part of it looks like today:


The entire lawn isn't perfect - there's some weeds still on one side, but it's getting better. :)

And finally, a tomato plant in the little side garden. It's really loving the drippers we installed with the rest of the sprinkler system this summer!