Seattle

The weekend was marked by lots of good eating. DTF on night 1, Ding Tea bubble tea on Day 2, Cho Dang Korean on Night 2 and Portage Bay Cafe on Morning 3.

Portage Bay Cafe. Oatmeal Cobbler French toast was a surprising hit.

After watching Limitless with Chris Hemsworth on Disney the kids decided they wanted to 1) exercise and 2) cold plunge. We took a long walk along the waterfront Sunday morning followed by weights in the condo weight room. Sunday night we did a 58 degree "plunge" in our bathtub. Kids stayed in a few minutes! We are going to work our way down in temps because even though 58 sounds decently warm it feels soooo cold. Chris Hemsworth had done his plunges in 37 degrees...brrrrrrr. Dae informed me he turned his shower to cold at the end today. haha.

Tang Yuan

From scratch just like when we were kids with our dad. The mochi flour was verrrry sticky. Otherwise, they turned out great!!

Lucid and the Sky (with Diamonds) 🎶

 

Badger Mountain

Nice and quick Sunday morning hike up Badger Mountain

Cheesemongers

DIY cheese kit Olin got for Christmas (from us). We tackled Mozzarella today and it was scrumptious if I do say so myself! All we needed was a gallon of milk plus our kit (which included a tablet of rennet - an enzyme - and citric acid in powder form). 

 

You heat up the milk to 90F along with the citric acid. Then you add the rennet at the end, and let it sit for 15 minutes until it becomes like watery tofu. You start stirring it and breaking it up until it starts to look like scrambled eggs in water. It's pretty interesting. Then you alternate hot/cold water baths while you are stretching and folding the cheese. In the end we got 4 fair sized mozzarella balls out of it and made some caprese sandwiches with homemade sourdough, store bought tomato, store bought pesto, homegrown basil, and homemade mozzarella!

Olin's Jackson Hole packing list

JV Blue! 

Jackson Hole

We loaded up the Toyota, drove 10 hours southeast and met the Hoins family for a 4 night ski vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming! It was a beautiful drive (when I was awake) and the kids were excited for their first time in Wyoming. I had no idea Jackson was 15 minutes from the Idaho border.

And...the kids all tried snowboarding for the first time! It was a lot of painful falls and a lot of sore muscles but after 3 hours they were significantly better than when they started.

We had heard the runs were hard (the mountains were for experts). There were definitely some harder blues and the "double blues" were more like blacks, but there were plenty of good solid runs that weren't too hard either. Very few greens.

Moose mom and baby! This duo was everywhere this day. It was so neat to see them right in the middle of the run.

We completely missed the noodle bar on the second floor of the lodge on day 1, so we made sure to go find it day 2. It was pho and it was really good for ski food! This was at Rendezvous lodge

We were all on full moose watch

Many hours of Minecraft were played after Ursula was able to successfully log in to a Windows account

 

Day 3 was really sunny

Perfect weather to learn snowboarding! It was a last minute decision. We weren't even going to ski the last day but then got the idea that the kids may want to learn to snowboard as we were all together, had a free day, and Erik the snowboarder was willing to teach everybody.

Shreddin'

Snug and packed in with our gear.

Bunny hill snowboarding

Firestarters

 

Braces, First round, off!

First round of braces off and a clear retainer to wear for this guy. He gets a bite plate in a month to help reduce his overbite and allow his molars to erupt a bit more. 

A huge, full, double rainbow at ortho

Best part of the Day

We went around the dinner table on Wednesday asking the kids the highlight of their day. Olin: “doing vocab at school”. Christian: “mom figuring out how to load email on to my phone”. Haha. Glamorous lives!

Christian has really in to learning more about the Theory of Relativity. It is so confusing. Here he is watching videos. 

Kauai - Part 2 of 2

Notes: Lots of Kia and Dodge rental cars out and about in Kauai. Jet skis are not allowed in Kauai. I guess Kauai was experiencing a drought this past summer, and it definitely seemed a bit drier than prior trips.

Flash photography. Sitting on the grassy area of Poipu Beach waiting for the fireworks to start.

Pretzel art

Dae was convinced these nighttime photos would turn out clearly

Beachhouse dinner. Very pricey! A very nice setting but the sun was beating down on all of the tables.

Gillin's Beach. We ended up spending about 5-6 hours here. 

Dae's golf photography at Poipu Bay Golf Course