Overdue reunion

We met Andy's longtime friend, Claude, and his wife at Lalo's in Berwyn last night for a long-overdue reunion. I don't think we've seen them in 10 years - and they live just a couple towns away. Life gets busy but we promised to do it again, obviously sooner than 10 years. We had a great evening catching up.

Yay, L!

Finally a decision today from U of I!

A few hours later she got a notification that she was also accepted to Purdue. We're still waiting to hear from the University of Central Florida. Choices, choices.

Soothing support

What a week it's been at nursery school this week. It ended up with a kid switching to a different, shorter class. Wow. My teaching partner gave me an aloe vera plant this morning for my "soothing support." Get it?

Where's the quality control?

An orange LifeSaver in my bag of Wild Cherry LifeSavers? What's going on???!?!??!

Custom jeans

E was toying with the idea of sewing herself some jeans when she was home last month and I told her it's probably too hard. Denim is hard to work with and zippers are hard, etc. She apparently needed something to do (she starts work Monday) so she bought a pattern for jeans and sewed some herself yesterday. She sent me this picture. Guess she proved me wrong. She did say she "messed them up first by mistake and made two right legs so I had to improvise." Even with that, I think they look OK, especially for a first attempt.

My buddies

Seems like wherever I am the cats aren't too far away.

Patiently waiting

Look who was waiting for me when I got home from work today. It's Schubert! Sometimes he runs out to the car to greet me. He sits on the porch while I go in and drop by purse and waits for me to come back and give him some food. I wonder how many other houses in the neighborhood he goes to for food.

E's lucky sign

One of the perks of E's apartment building is getting to choose your own good luck symbol for your door number plate. She had twelve to choose from ...

... and she chose the bamboo. They installed it over the weekend.

Check your email

I never, ever check my Google email account. The other day it popped up on my phone, not sure how that happened, and said I had over 1,000 items in my inbox. What?!?? Most was garbage, which is why I never check it, but one of the emails was from Julie sharing 206 photos from our trip to Washington, D.C., last May. This one of the photos I liked. It's Allison and me at the Library of Congress.

E's welcome gift

E's leasing office gave her this mug with the building name on it as a welcome gift for being one of the original tenants. Nice little perk.

Finally finished

I checked this book out of the library Nov.18 and finally started, and finished, it on the flight to and from Seattle. Not sure why I waited so long to crack it open. The library kept automatically renewing it.

POTUS cleaner

Not sure where we were but I remember L wanting this. It's a President Trump microwave cleaner. You fill it with water and vinegar, heat it up in the microwave, and it makes it easier to clean off all the dried-on food. Andy and I found it at a resale shop for $3 next to E's apartment while we were searching for some sort of sewing table. No luck with the sewing table, but I did find a barely used Pampered Chef chopper for $4 (Andy broke my old one), and Creative Memories 8x10 pages for $1.99. And then I found two packages of 8x10 page protectors, also $1.99 each. I've been looking for albums and pages for our upcoming trip to Germany. I'd say it was a good resale day.

I love L's reaction when I texted a picture of it to her. She even said she'll clean the microwave. We'll see about that.

Valentines from my Triangles

I missed the Triangle Room Valentine's Day party last Thursday because we were flying to Seattle. And yesterday I forgot to bring my Valentines home from school. At least I remembered today. Some of them are so cute, especially the ones where the kids wrote my name and theirs. It's not easy for most of them to write their letters yet. The heart on the red card in front, from my little friend Vivian, is actually wildflower seeds that I can plant. Look at their adorable handwriting:

This one is from Leah who reminds me so much of E at her age ...

... and this is from my buddy Van.

E's rooftop

We even got to see the rooftop of E's building. (We also saw the workout room on her floor but I didn't take any pictures. It's pretty nice).

Should be a happening place in summer.

Lots of places to sit ...

... and take in the view.

And a dog run her puppy will like once she gets it.

It was cloudy the entire time we were in Seattle, except when we left yesterday. And today was sunny for her too. E went up to the rooftop and took this picture of Mount Rainier to send me. I've been out there twice and have never seen the mountain.

E's building

E's apartment building is called the Talisman. It's new construction in Redmond Center, the city's downtown. There are lots of similar-looking, new construction apartment buildings in the area.

This is at the side door where we usually entered her building.

This is looking toward the "lobby" area of the building. E liked to sit on the long blue chair to wait for us to come pick her up.

Elevators to get to E's unit, No. 411.

The mailroom. Not too exciting but I liked the lights.

Lobby area near the leasing offices.

Cool coffee table with rolled up magazines/paperback books inside.

Area when you get off the elevator at her floor.

The view from E's apartment - a third-floor patio area with lots of seating and grills.

L's Presidents Day

While we were flying home from Seattle, L was with the church's youth group working in a warehouse where meals are packed for children in Africa. Love the hairnets, kids!

And back home

We said our goodbyes to E after dinner last night so today Andy and I got up, had breakfast in the hotel and took the rental to Costco to fill it up before returning it to the airport.

Doesn't it figure that the sun decides to come out on the day we're leaving?

We had a couple of drinks in the United Club before our flight. We had expected security to take longer than it did.

Andy had a couple of hours to catch up on his work emails.

These are some boots I picked up at Costco. They were more comfortable for the flight home than the shoes I had packed.

Sunday fun day

E drove to our hotel so she could take us to Blazing Bagels for breakfast. We walked to the restaurant from the hotel. It was such a cute (and busy!) place. The server was very perky and friendly for it being so early. And they had samples to try. We're suckers for free samples.

Look at this menu. Wow.

Even with all those choices, both E and I got chocolate chip bagels with plain cream cheese. Andy had a breakfast sandwich on a bagel (of course) and said it was so much better than the free hotel breakfast. I should hope so.

After breakfast we made a quick Walmart run where E found two end tables for her living room ...

... and this lamp she liked.

Then it was time for some fun. E drove us to the Woodinville area of Redmond (not sure if it's a separate town or what) where there were lots of wineries. We stopped at Chateau Ste Michelle Winery but didn't want to pay a fortune for the tasting ($15 a person for a flight?) so we left. We did see this pretty peacock on the grounds as we were walking back to our car.

Really? Flowers growing in February. Stores had flowers on pallets outside and I overheard one guy tell his son they were going home to do some gardening. We were really surprised at how green everything was.

We drove around a little more and decided to go into Cougar Crest's tasting room.

For $10 (that's better!) we were able to try five wines. E and I were both surprised our favorite was a white wine. We could have gotten the $10 back if we bought a bottle to take home but Andy and I weren't sure it would survive the flight.

Here's Andy with his baby girl ...

... and proof that I was with them in Seattle.

We had a big lunch at a fast-food taco place so we just went to a neighborhood bar for dinner. And it was happy hour!

We got $5 drafts, E had a $5 hard cider and we had these bacon-wrapped poppers and wings for dinner.

E had a cup of tomato bisque soup.