breakfast & birds:

i must offer up a tribute post to hiroki’s, our favorite seattle coffee & pastry shop. Here is Saturday morning’s breakfast: chad’s grande iced moca & & berry custard roll and lauren’s quiche lorraine with brioche toast crust. mmm…

on crafty note: here’s a few pics of my latest project, a mobile for baby ezra. the little bird bodies were such fun to stuff & perch. hope he likes it. :)

birds on a line…er, branch

summer night:

friday night we all met up at buca de bepo’s for dinner. what a treat to have so many of our favorite people gathered around one table! we ogled over baby eli and passed him around the table. we then took a head count, kudos to the trail blazing “phase one” friends (jess & brendan, beth & dan) and took attendance of the confirmed “phase two” friends (everyone else). it seemed like a momentous moment, the next time all these friends gather, so much will have changed… it is so strange & incredible to see your friends become parents to these tiny little people.

david, blythe, brenna, david (holding eli) & daniel

kristen w/ eli & beth

chad's turn

the group

this pic in front of buca took several tries…and we still didn’t fit everyone…but we gave it a good go.

after dinner we all headed to the knights for a couple rounds of the phrase-picture-phrase game. we look hard at work , and we were (example: how does one draw a picture of the word “anaerobic”?!), but it’s worth the laugh in the end every time! we were zonked by midnight. (don’t tell the phase oners!)

at a ripe age of one:

here's a little back log smattering of cole’s first birthday party at the children’s museum. the year has come and gone so fast!

blowing out the candles (with a little help)

ruby toted little tristen up from sacrimento to join the party. grandma sarah was in heaven!

luigi, myself & jeremy

the little guy was all tuckered out by the end of the busy afternoon.

pink little bundle:

our dear friends brendan & jess have welcomed a precious little boy into the world. we were awed to gaze upon his little pink roundness and marvel at his perfect tiny hands and feet. God is good. all the time.

ezra, july 13, 2008

techno inundation:

after months of anticipation, 3 attempts & finally after 2 1/2 hours in line, we are now the proud owners of a pair of these:


so, what does it do? -everything, except walk your dog & floss our teeth. i must admit -i had the brief thought that perhaps, at 25, i am too old to learn to use such a radical device, but with chad at the helm, we took the plunge.

the best part about the whole iphone quest was surprisingly had in snaking line drawn out in front of the u village apple store. the saga went as follows…

...

we quickly made friends with our fellow line suffering neighbors (all techies of the highest admitted pedigree, and most of them microsoft workers complaining that they could not get a corporate discount).

our new line friends! ...all on their "old" iphones...

together we bonded over our excitement and the rollercoaster of emotion that spread over the crowd whenever a (vindictively taunting?) fedex delivery man or truck came within proximity of the storefront doors.

see, when we walked up, it was decided, we would be getting black 8 gigs. (period) ….but after hearing the arguments of the many other (saps) busily justifying their purchase of this ridiculously expensive phone we weakened… maybe we need the 16 gig? (my thought’s personally went as follows: “i don’t need a 16 gig. ..what chad’s getting one?! i must have one too!”

…the software engineer in front of us lectures us on the virtues and of the greater storage capacity. ...the programmer behind us sings the virtues of the applications and the superior interface, he is getting the black 16 and one for his wife. The guy behind him says the same! (the pressure is mounting!)

(lauren can’t stand it & ditches the line to brouse the sale rack at j crew then returns for the free jamba juice being handed out to the suckers in line) …chad looks at me with a look that says….”i see myself with t black 16 gig…i’ve caved!”

(1 hour later) …. the rumor circulates -they have sold out of the 16 gig black! … gasp! –but we wanted, no, now we need the 16 gig black!

(over the next hour)… l & c commiserate with new found line friends. together we justify need for 16 gig phones and discuss why white will be just as good as black. white is apple’s iconic color, they will all get cases anyway…yes -now we all want 16 gig white. …(ah the mob mentality…)

*side note: how is it that they can get a million people (this weekend alone) to stand in lines that are hours & hours long to buy a phone they have never personally laid eyes on and in a color they didn't even want in the first place?

(finally, after another half hour) ….we are second to the front of the line! we can feel the air conditioning through the glass doors! –an apple employee steps out & whispers something to another employee at the door… (the suspense is killing us!) …could it be true?! –a delivery truck just arrived with black 16 gigs!! (*crowd cheers!) chad & new line friends abandon thought’s of “girly” white iphone. ;)

a busy three day weekend:

well, as to be expected, my hopes of getting a couple posts in a week have fallen by the wayside, but I have not given up! I was finally able to take pictures of the “after” state of our living room, to post the previous post, and now with my conscience cleared I can post this latest update on our july 4th weekend. it was a bit of a mixed bag, fun stuff, but a few stressful moments too! first the fun, chad’s band, van gross & the gypsies, had a thursday night gig at the mars bar. they did a great job & had a blast. :D it was so fun to watch chad be a “rock star.” ;) …yeah, i didn’t exactly know that about him when we married, and you might never guess! –but that’s just another reason why i love’im.

from left: seth. steve evan & chad rock the house at the mars bar

friday we enjoyed the day off & chad graciously took me to browse the outlet center. *grin* however i must say- man, it is soo hard to live in such a tiny place! on the way there chad repeated over & over that we would not be acquiring any more heavy pieces of furniture, “none, period.” (i think the rug was the last straw!...) i tried desperately to soften the “period” part of the declaration, but it doesn’t look good for me... (not that we have a whole lot of space to put anything in our jenga-tight little apartment!)

that night we met up at the boat on elliot bay marina with frank & sarah. we couldn’t have asked for better weather. :)

saturday morning came slow & easy. we had our token trip to hirokis & headed south to the office. there, i spent 6 stressful hours finishing my petition for a minor work promotion. in the end - it was 90 pages long! i felt like a stressed out, though satisfied, over-achiever. we shall see what ruling comes down from on high....

sunday was the perfect Sabbath, much fellowship, friends & rest, who could ask for more? for lunch we had hotdogs and long conversation with very dear friends and then continued the visiting in sammamish at the lloyd household.

jessica & i 1 week before the big arrival!

from the left: chad, david, luke & brendan at their new home for 3 in southlake union

our little nephew cole is getting soo big! here he is with his first ice cream cone. :)
...

lastly, but by far leastly, my very dear cousin is engaged to be wed! after much anticipation- a hearty “here here!” to patrick & kim, what excitement lies ahead!

an epic saturday:

we’ve been up to quite much!

we couldn’t have squeezed one more thing into our saturday! and now that i’ve undertook a recount of this long series of events -i am amazed we did as we did! go team lloyd! the day started quite early for a typical saturday morning. (i couldn’t sleep on friday night, i was too excited!) after a trip to hiroki’s we went to a great garage sale in ballard where I came away with some really cool fabric scraps. (post to follow on the resulting projects this spurred!)

fRom ballard we drove south for the main event, spencer was waiting in auburn for a ride home! he fit, windshield to hatch in the c-rv. on the way back we stopped by the vast land of ikea & picked up a few pots! (to feed l’s deep need to expand the reaches of her potted garden) after ikea & because hubby had been soo gracious to wade through a garage sale, rug warehouse & ikea- we stopped by to walk the greenwood car show. the car show went on for seeming miles, and did i mention that it was 92 degrees? but we still look pretty good yeah?

note the minis in the background?

we visited the mini club, samoa, proudly making a 25-car united front at the show, and oogled at hundreds of other cars all gleaming in chrome & pride. i enjoyed a bit of inspiration from the various hood ornaments mounted like self-proclaiming oscar awards.

badges & hood ornaments of various vintage

after walking the (+10!!) blocks of the show we straggled our was back to our uninspiring, though happily rug-filled car and headed home worn out & sunburned. …and you would like me to say that the day was done, right?!

no… we now have to muscle a 200lb rug down the street (why we didn’t park closer? -i don’t know) and up the three narrow flights of stairs to our little oven of an attic. ;)

…now i wish had pictures of the epic rug battle…i wish i could offer you a dramatic play by play of that excruciating trudge…but alas my writing skills will fail to convey the shear magnitude of this accomplishment. …let’s just say that it was way heavier than we had anticipated… and now, 3 days later, we are still groaning over the strain! of course, in my delirium, as i stooped rattling under the weight of spencer, my reaction was to buckle under an extreme case of the giggles- only making matters much worse. tears streaming down my face and a stomach cramp from the laughter -i think i gained composure about 2/3rds of the way up… we finally make it to the top, dripping & suffering from sun + rug burn. long story short(er)… we tumbled into bed at about 11ish after playing jenga with (almost) every piece of furniture in our house.

here is a glamour detail shot


before & after shot of living rm. dk brown pottery rug was now adorns l's "office." these
pic's do not do spencer justice, he really makes the room seem much more spacious.

before & after shot looking the other direction. (standing at mud rm door)

needless to say, we slept like rocks that night...and woke up as stiff as robots the next morning!