dinner on March 9th

Nile was feeling especially creative that day so she cooked a few 1st time foods:
kabu radish with tofu skin (age), bacon with collard green and kabu leaves, stuffed Thai eggplants.

Snow Shoing

We wanted to go snow shoing on Superbowl Sunday, and thought it would be a great day since everyone else would be watching the game. Unfortunately, everyone else thought it would be a great idea, and it was all booked up. So, we got the next available date which was the first Saturday in March!

Here's Matt playing in the snow. He's never seen so much snow in his life. There was 12 feet of accumulation and 20 or more pushed up from the plows.

We went with Russell and John. They were nice enough to drive, which we really appreciated. Even though our car has seen snow before, we've never driven on a mountain pass. Fortunately the weather was perfect.



Snow shoes were included as part of the hike. They wern't the tennis racket kind that we wanted, but instead were much more functional and bright red.


This outhouse was completely snowed in. It was only partially accessible because the tree well created by the tree standing next to it. The tree in the other picture is completely hollow on the inside, but still healthy. This is possible because all of a trees nutriance flows through the few inches near the surface of the tree. The core is only for stability.



Here our guide is telling us about some hazards of snow shoing. This hole in the ground goes down 12 feet to a small creek below. Falling in could mean that you'd be stuck for quite a while. Matt was just excited to see a big hole in the ground. Our guide also talked to us about some ecology of the area in the winter. This lichen is food for deer, and some other animals. Humans don't have the enzymes to digest it, so you shouldn't try eating this to survive if you had to.



Matt liked these natural snowballs. The tree looks a lot like a snow man, and the snow ball on the right was created by a small piece of snow that rolled down the hill and got bigger and bigger. Literally, the snowball effect. :-)

Vancouver Aquarium

After 4 days of Seattle, we went up to Vancouver for a day and a half with Meiko.

On the way up we drove through a snow storm. We were afraid it would be snowing in Vancouver, but it wasn't. :-) Our first stop was the Vancouver Aquarium

Seattle in 4 days!

While Meiko was here, Nile and Meiko went around Seattle. Here are some things that they saw:

The new main branch of Seattle Public Library. (Picked as one of the 100 best modern buildings in the U.S. by Architectural Digest.)

At Volunteer Park, Meiko pokes her head through the Black Sun.

Nile gave a tour of the Conservatory. Here is Nile among her collection of cacti and succulants.


They did a drive-by of Safeco Field where Meiko got to see a giant poster of Ichiro while Nile watched the traffic lights.

Kerry Park--the vista of Seattle. We went back that night too.

The new Olympic Sculpture Park!

The also stopped by the SAM (under construction) and saw the famous sculpture.

Nile and Meiko went to the first Starbucks.

Meiko brought some origami paper for Matt, so they folded some origami together. They made a hermit crab and orca together.

Here is the completed hermit crab.

Seattle YUM!

Nile's friend from foever-ago, Meiko came to visit us from Okinawa for 6 days. Nile and Meiko went on a restaurant tour of Seattle. First stop was Vios, our neighborhood Greek restaurant. It was as good as it looks. They had: Lamb Suvaluki and Greek Salad.



Then they started eating before taking photos. This is at Tutta Bella Pizza. Takashi said that their pizza's are better then the ones he had in Italy.


This is Queen Sheeba, our local Ethiopian restaurant. This was Meiko's first time trying Ethiopian food.

Then they started to forget to take photos all together. Other restaurants they visited were: Red Mill Burgers (one of the 20 best burgers in US, according to GQ), and Agua Verde (Mexican).

These were donuts from Top Pot. YUM!

Lastly, when we went to Vancouver, we had some cup cakes, yummy dim sum, and crepes.



We're pretty sure we all grew sideways that week.

Lemon Cake!

For Valentine's Day, we were going to make this Lemon Cake but Nile was so tired it didn't happen on the actual day. When it did happen, it was really good!















As you can see, we're too excited to eat it to take a good picture! It was really good!

Flower and Garden show

Anita, Jim and Nile went to the Flower and Garden show.

Anita got a lot of ideas and Nile got a lot of questions from Anita. Nile was happy when she found the Master Gardener talbe that could answer Anita's questions for her. ;-)
 

Cupcakes for Valentine's Day

Matt made Nile this sweet cupcake for Valentine's day. He also decorated a few others with flowers.