School Field Trip and Philly

Quick overnighter in Seattle with Halmoni and Haraboji. They are pretty much down to do whatever.

Artists at Play park in Seattle Center by Space Needle. It was cold and I had worn flip flops! That's all I remember from this outing.

Field Trip to Bill's Berry Farm for the school Pumpkin Patch. It was really nice to 1) chaperone and drive my kids and 2) have both the kids go to the same Patch again on the same day.

This is the "pumpkin" Christian picked

The "pumpkin" Olin picked. I appreciated how both of their selections were very manageably sized.

Philly! We came for a wedding (in West Chester, 45 minutes west) and stayed in Philly in Rittenhouse Square for 3 nights. Kids stayed at home with H & H. Weather was awful this day - rainy, windy and cold. But the weather cleared up for the rest of the trip. Here we are at City Hall which was very pretty. I liked Philly.

Dae didn't realize there was a subway even though he lived in Philly in 2004. hahaha. We took the Subway south to Wells Fargo Center to see an NHL game - Flyers take on the NY Islanders. We lost 6-1.

Super fun to watch an NHL game! They are very adept with their pucks and sticks, and very adept in their skating.

Now I need glasses for any kind of distance especially when in unfamiliar areas.

Wedding was nice and small. Here is Dae with the groom (Ravi, center, who was in fellowship with him at OHSU) and another guy we met at the wedding who was really nice from Dallas.

Princeton! I texted Laura to get the scoop on all the places to go on campus. Campus was cute and the town was cute. Here I am in front of Nassau Hall - oldest building on campus. It was under renovation.

The chapel was very pretty on campus

WHYY in Philadelphia! Also known as the home of Terry Gross. We went in one night because it was on our way to Chinatown and the receptionist told us where Terry's office was so we got to see the door from outside (the building).

Another wedding photo, out of order. I am Melissa. :) I guess Ravi hasn't met me too many times, or I wasn't memorable. hahaha!

Rocky Steps - aka Philadelphia Art Museum. I ran up the steps like Rocky and made Dae take a photo of me.

Another photo of me. Here I am eating a Philadelphia Pretzel. I was not impressed! I've had better at the Hanford JV girls' soccer game concessions just last month! Anyway, the main things we heard that Philly is known for are: 1) cheesesteaks, with whiz 2) Pretzels 3) Root Beer. The person who did my nails at the hotel said we needed to get a 'water ice' from Rita's but we didn't have time. She said it's a mix of an Italian soda and a slushy.

I had a root beer in our hotel room every night before bed and it was delicious.

Jim's Steaks for Cheesesteak.

Pretty yummy even though I'm not a huge cheesesteak person

Weekend Update

We did a quick overnighter trip to Portland last Saturday. Had some fun watching Didi and Mal play sports, ate some good food, watched the Huskies heartbreaker to Oregon (we need a good kicker)....

Jogathon went off without a hitch. All the kids ran their hearts out and I hope we raised a lot of money for the school's new playground and fitness funds. Becky was my 'professional photographer' for the event and she sent me this little preview photo which I loved. Christian ran 31 laps in 30 minutes and Olin ran 17 laps in 19 minutes. Each lap was around 1/10 of a mile.

We happened upon a 15 minute Magnus Carlsen interview on YouTube and it energized them to play some chess at 9pm last night. They are both proficient in and enjoy the Queen-King checkmate and the 2-rook checkmate. They say they know the 1-rook checkmate but I haven't seen it in action yet. It's a little harder.

I wrote these notes to the kids 2 weekends ago when we were in Seattle and I found it very funny that they wrote back to me on the bottom. Christian wrote "Thanks for the card. I love you." Olin wrote "I soll that, From Olin". He means he saw the card. 

Mid-October Happenings

Jogathon Pledge Sheet. It would appear that in Olin's world all grandpas have the last name "Bian".  Jamse means James. Speaking of our school's Jogathon, I have basically organized the entire thing myself. At first I was a little intimidated/overwhelmed about heading it up, but now that it's just around the corner on Monday, I feel very excited about it and I am excited about the prospect of raising a good chunk of money for the school and having the kids do some fun physical activity at the same time. Plus, I'd say I delegated 80%% of the tasks to volunteers, which was awesome. 

Sleep styles

Swing Styles. Weather has been perfect in Tri-Cities for the past month or so.

Overnighter in Seattle on a Monday night! It was grey and rainy but we managed to get in a DTF dinner, shopping at the Rack, Gap, H&M, and Zara and we even went to the 9:15pm showing of "A Star is Born" where we both fell asleep during different parts of the movie and filled each other in on the parts we each missed. ha!

BEYONCE..... and o.f.p. (other famous people)

This is how they came out. Beyonce and Jay-Z put on QUITE a show. They started performing around 10pm (we had gotten there around 7:30pm) and performed nonstop until 12:15am. It was an amazing show. I was impressed by both of them! Beyonce's voice was absolutely incredible, as was her stage presence! And I actually loved Jay-Z's rapping and I was surprised I recognized his songs. haha.

The seats were really good - they were kind of in the middle of the floor, not at the very front or anything, but we strategically positioned ourselves on the side by one of the long stages that protruded out (there were two) and at certain points both Beyonce and Jay-Z would walk by really close. 

This was a stage that moved over the top of us. The only unfortunate thing was we couldn't see the performers when they were directly above us.

The people right next to us had this sign that Jay Z apparently loved because he was totally smiling and pointing to them several times.

Several selfies with my selfie light that I packed especially for the concert. That, and my glasses, were necessities!

Dae was fangirl-ing over seeing Kevin Durant. He was really tall and really skinny. The area we were in was kind of like a bar where we all just milled around (no seats) so he was fairly close to us off and on throughout the concert.

So, the other famous people refer to Jim Zorn (I didn't know who he was) and Steve Largent! Dae got paired with them when he played golf on Saturday at Newcastle. He said they were super nice. He also said he outdrove them and I reminded him he's like 25 years younger than them. hahaha.

I read an article about the Amazon Go store on CNN so I really wanted to check it out. The concept was really cool but the store was tiny! I don't know how that CNN guy spent 53 minutes in there. It was just food, and maybe the size of a 7-11. As Dae summarized, we walked over, spent 5 minutes in the store, bought 3 food items we didn't need, and left. :)

Clean kids, clean house, and reading books? Had to capture a once in a lifetime moment. They had picture day hence button up shirts.

I have a couple friends at school that have regular access to fresh eggs so I am always getting eggs from school - it's nice. I love the variety of size and color!