Category: travel

More Lavender

While we were in Sequim we also stopped by a few lavender farms. My favorite farm was Purple Haze Lavender. It probably has something to do with being named after a Jimi Hendrix song but the farm’s atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. (Some of the other local farms are kind of frou-frou and a bit stuffy.)


This was actually my second time visiting. My mom and I stopped by almost ten years ago. The farm (and it’s name) has stuck with me all these years so on this trip we took the opportunity to go back.

It was just as charming as I remembered.

Raspberries and Lavender

The beach condo my family stayed out was on the Olympic peninsula and about 10 minutes away from the small town of Sequim. It’s a great little town. Because it’s in the rainshadow of the mountains it receives a lot less rain that the surrounding areas. The climate is great for growing things, especially lavender.

While we were in Sequim we stopped by Graysmarsh Farm to pick some raspberries and buy some lavender. E had a fun time roaming up and down and rows and eating handfuls of raspberries.

E examines the raspberries.

When he got bored with the berries he entertained himself with some of the handy sticks lying around.

Everyone enjoyed feeding E berries and he was more than happy to keep eating and eating and eating them.
(During the next 24 hours he had four poopy diapers. It was insane.)

I had never seen such huge raspberries before. They were incredible.

We ended up with two big buckets of berries. We ate one of them and then froze the rest.

By the time we were finished everyone was tired and E was tired AND grimy. But everyone had had a good time.

Besides berries, the farm also grows lavender. Because they don’t have a fancy gift shop their prices on bulk lavender were a lot better than some of the other local farms ($15 for a gallon bag instead of $25 at other places). If you’re interested in visiting the farm they have a website with details on their growing schedule.

Gasworks Park

After we ate our way from one end of Wallingford to the other we stopped by Gasworks Park on the way home to take in one of the best views in Seattle.

There were a lot of people there enjoying the summer evening.

It was relaxing to watch the boats go by.

Woman’s best friends.

Detail of a sundial.

Today is a state holiday to honor the pioneer members of my church and so N has the day off from work. Presented with a Thursday night that was no longer a “school night” we got a sitter and went out to dinner and to see Harry Potter. It was really nice to spend time one-on-one with N chatting and laughing after not seeing each other for a while. I think it might be true what they say about absence and the heart because he seems even cuter and funnier than before.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Dinner and Ice Cream AND Cupcakes

My brother and sister-in-law Ken and Mindy are fairly serious foodies and took us around to some great places when we were in Seattle. Our first night there we ate dinner at Tilth. They specialize in organic New American cuisine served small plates style and were named one of the NY Times’ best new restaurants of last year.


Even though the restaurant is housed in a renovated cottage and we sat outside on the patio, Tilth is probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to. When N and I go out to eat we tend to frequent ethnic dives or if it’s a special occasions we’ll go to a schmancey steak house (I adore a good steak). But this was my first experience with fine cuisine served small plates style and it was great.

We had the Chilled Walla Walla Onion Soup, Sweet Corn-Yogurt Flan, St. Jude Albacore Tuna, Mini Duck Burgers, and the special which was Artichoke Ravioli. The food was delicious and delicate and gorgeous. (I had my camera with me but was sadly too shy to get it out for pictures.) My favorite dishes were the Onion Soup (the house-smoked salmon in it was great) and the Artichoke Ravioli.

After dinner we walked down the block to Molly Moon’s Ice Cream where we split scoops of salted caramel and balsamic strawberry ice cream (both delicious). As we ate our ice cream we continued our impromptu dessert stroll and walked further down the street to Trophy Cupcakes.

I had first heard about Trophy Cupcakes on Not Martha and had filed it away as a fun place to try if I was in town. Ken and Mindy had been there before and liked it so we made it the third and last stop on our grand gastronomic walking tour of the Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. (On the way there we discussed how the walking part of the evening conveniently and completely balanced out the ice cream and cupcake part of the evening.)

There were so many delicious-looking flavors that choosing was hard, but they were $3.50 a piece (and we had just had dinner AND ice cream) so we picked out a Pineapple Upside Down cupcake and a Snickerdoodle cupcake and cut them into fourths so we could each taste both. They were both fantastic. The flavors of both the cake and the frosting were rich and creamy and surprising like their namesakes. There were pineapple slices at the bottom of the Upside Down cupcake and the top of the Snickerdoodle cupcake even had the same texture as a Snickerdoodle cookie. I have no idea how they pulled that off but it was great.

I didn’t try the Red Velvet flavor but I thought they looked adorable.

The next day Mindy and I stopped by the University Village mall to do a little shopping and uh, what do you know?–Trophy Cupcakes’ only other store is located there! I’m not one to ignore a sign from fate so we went and brought back a few more cupcakes to share with the guys: Strawberry Cheesecake, Coconut, Triple Chocolate, and Vanilla Chocolate. It took us a few days to eat them all so the the chocolate flavors were kind of stale when we got to them. But the Strawberry Cheesecake and the Coconut flavors were fantastic. I would recommend those and the Pineapple Upside Down and Snickerdoodle flavors if you ever go.

And if you’re ever in Seattle, you should really go.

I’m baaack!

E and I arrived home yesterday and we were both super happy to see N after being separated for about a week. I guess that after our horrid flight to Seattle where we sat on the tarmac for an hour (half an hour at both ends!) I was due for a dose of good flight karma because yesterday E fell asleep on my lap as soon as we took off and he didn’t wake up until the landing gear hit the ground. It was amazing because E never sleeps when someone’s holding him.

The only unpleasant part of the flight were the grumpy old people sitting behind me that started loudly complaining about having to sit behind a baby as soon E and I sat down. Things like, “Oh great, we have to sit by a screaming baby” (E was not screaming) and “this is going to be miserable” were said repeatedly AND loudly. Did they not think that I would be doing everything in my power to keep E quiet? I didn’t want to bother anyone. I was stressed out as it was. Sitting in front of them was already making me ten times more nervous than I would be otherwise because they were chomping at the bit to be critical. And the flight hadn’t even started yet!

My sister Jan was actually on the same flight but we had been unable to get seats together. But I was able to switch seats with someone and sit next to her. I normally never do this sort of thing, but as I was changing seats I looked the old people in the eye and said, “Don’t worry, we’re moving so we won’t be inconveniencing you.” They looked a little stunned for a second (maybe they didn’t realize how loudly they had been speaking?) but then they started congratulating themselves on their good fortune–while I was still standing right there. Argh!

Okay, now that I’ve vented about the mean old people I’m ready to move on. *Exhale* All and all, it was a wonderful trip. Besides spending time with family my favorite part of the trip was the food–the food was GLORIOUS.

Photos and details tomorrow!

Back on the grid. Sort of.

A deer in the meadow at Hurricane Ridge. Freakishly pastoral, no?

Well, that went quickly! I meant to check in a few times during the week but our vacation kept us pretty busy. So far we were on the most horrid flight ever, ate at some fantastic restaurants, took the kids to the beach, took the kids to the zoo, spent time chatting and catching up with Ken and Mindy, went to a movie, sampled several delicious flavors of cupcakes, visited a couple lavender farms, picked two huge buckets of raspberries a U-pick farm, went to a wild game park and fed zebras and buffulo from the car, and hiked around on the Olympic pennisula.

I love blogging but it was nice to have a bit of a break from my self-imposed daily posting schedule. But now I feel recharged and I’m eager to share the photos I’ve taken. E and I are flying back on Tuesday (N flew home a couple of days ago to get back to work) and I’ll be back to daily posting later next week.

“I don’t want the whole world to know!”

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but N’s family lived overseas while he was growing up. They lived in Seoul during the eighties and then moved to Singapore where N graduated from high school.

We spent a few summers in Korea together during college but haven’t managed to get over to Singapore yet. But I’d really like to visit. Because Singapore is a mixture of different ethnic groups: Chinese, Malay, Indian, etc… there’s an incredible variety of cultures (and food!). And English is widely-spoken so it’s easy to get around and such.

And the children are ADORABLE.

Goblin Valley Photos

The trip to Goblin Valley was really fun. Thunderstorms had been forecast but they were supposed to hold off until the late afternoon. The forecast was part right: it poured during the 4-hour drive there but it stopped raining once we got to the park in the late afternoon, which was nice. But the rain had turned the soft red clay dirt into super slippery, mushy mud. We had already invested so much time in getting there that we braved the mud and climbed down onto the valley floor to poke around. The scenery was amazing.



There were a few other people braving the mud.

E clowning around with N.

My shoes after walking around on the valley floor.

The mud was really something: it sucked my shoes right off my feet a few times. We hadn’t brought extra shoes and so we ended up driving home barefoot. We wanted to stop somewhere for dinner so we first stopped at a Walmart and bought some cheap shoes to wear. Before we went into the store we tried to clean off our muddy shoes the best we could but I still felt very self-conscious. It was the first (and hopefully the last) time that I felt under-dressed for shopping at Walmart.

We had one other little mishap besides the mud: we had miscalculated the amount of gas we needed. When we got to the park we were running quite low on gas so on the way back we drove straight to the nearest gas station which was in the opposite direction than our home. It added about 45 minutes to the drive home but I think it ended up being worth since we got to see this place:

Best gas station ever!

All and all, it was a really fun trip. If you go, bring extra shoes and clothes, towels, and a big jug of water to wash up with. (There isn’t any running water at the park.) And make sure you have at least a quarter tank of gas when you get there–learn from our mistakes!