Memorial Day Weekend

We had the most amazing weather weekend this year! According to weather experts, this is the first time in 40 years that we've had a string of weather this good over the holiday weekend. Temps were in the 70s and the days were clear and sunny. It definitely got us out and enjoying the weekend!

B came home early Friday afternoon and while he was out waxing the TT, I got the idea to start a search for a way to get Caiden out on bike rides with us. Walking is nice, but biking would offer us a whole new adventure to explore. We discovered our options would be either a bike seat mounted on the rear of one of the bikes or a trailer that hitches to the back of a bike. After much analysis we opted for the trailer. Better protection from the sun, enhanced safety and the ability to haul extra stuff (like food and toys) made the trailer an easy win. After a quick perusal of Craigslist, we scored a very gently used trailer ready for pick up the following day. Hooray!!

But the weekend wasn't only about biking! On Saturday afternoon, we met up with Adrienne, Cork, Rob, Anastasia and Carrie at the annual Folklife Festival down at Seattle Center. It was cool to get back to the festival as it was one of the very first things we did when we moved to Seattle. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend too much time with Rob, Anastasia and Carrie as they were stymied by traffic, and we were limited by the parking meter and Caiden's need for dinner. But it was still fun catching up with Cork and Adrienne and wandering around the festival! Plus again, gorgeous weather made it all the more pleasant.

Sunday was our first foray onto the bike trail. B got the car loaded up and off we went to the Sammamish River Trail in Woodinville. The day before we stopped at a local bike shop and got Caiden a helmet. Managed to snag the last toddler size they had in stock. When I stuck it on his head on Sunday before we got riding, something just didn't seem right. I kept trying to adjust it but it was too big. Finally I looked at the label inside the helmet and it turns out a child sized helmet was stuck in a toddler box! GRR! Fortunately, the bike shop was just off the path up ahead, so we headed out.


Can I just tell you this trailer is so cool!!! From what B could tell, it was a piece of cake to navigate (I still have yet to take a turn with towing it on my bike). Caiden got to stay all snug and secure and we got to enjoy a bike ride together for the first time in quite awhile.

So back to the helmet saga. We returned the first helmet and stopped next door at Play It Again Sports to try our luck there. I brought Caiden in with me this time and the guy fitted him with a new helmet. The band seemed to fit, so I said ok, paid for it and off we went. Except poor Caiden could barely hold his head up with this new helmet!! And it just looked...BIG.


Well, after we got home I examined the box and discovered it was designed for kids AGE 5 AND UP! What the heck!? Why must this be so difficult?! I made a 3rd and final trip back into town and finally came home with the infant version which actually FITS and doesn't make him lean over due to the weight. Poor kid.

Anywho, back to the bike ride. We had SO much fun riding around on both Sunday and Monday! Between both days, we rode 15 miles. Caiden did really well hanging out in his trailer, and we also sort of accidentally discovered downtown Woodinville has a really nice park and facilities right off the bike path. We'll definitely be taking advantage of that park more often now that we know about it! I am totally looking forward to enjoying more bike rides with B and Caiden!



We finished out the weekend at an impromptu BBQ at B's friend Colin's place in Seattle. We got to meet some new folks, enjoy some very tasty burgers and enjoy a good ol' fashioned Memorial Day cookout out on the deck.

All in all, this was an incredibly enjoyable weekend. Getting outdoors and appreciating the beautiful weather felt great! Hope your weekend was as enjoyable as ours was! :)

DA-oom!

Spend any short amount of time in Caiden's company, and you'll soon learn all about his latest passion: DA-oom! Of course, you may need the Caiden-English translator, so allow me to be of assistance. DA-oom = balloon! The boy simply cannot get enough of 'em! :D We go into a restaurant, and he quickly shows you the array of DA-oom to pick from. If we're lucky, he'll get to take one home or even get one to play with right away! Going to the grocery store is a whole 'nother adventure what with all the different kinds of DA-oom - mylar, multicolored, assorted shapes and sizes. It's a veritable DA-oom wonderland! And as an aside, Trader Joes has THE best DA-oom around. It looks like a regular ol' DA-oom, but the helium staying power is amazing! He's had a green one that is 9 days old and still going strong! Anywho, lucky for you, I managed to capture some video of him talking all about his DA-oom. :)

Early Indicators

Now that we're finally getting some decent weather, we can actually spend some extended time outside! Caiden hasn't had a tremendous amount of exposure to things like grass in his first year since we don't have a yard. But now that he is more mobile, we are looking for ways to get him playing in the grass...

'Cept he isn't exactly too keen on allowing his skin to commune with Mother Nature! I'd say early indicators are pointing towards inheriting his mother's preferences for things like indoor plumbing, avoiding bugs at all costs and trying not to get too dirty. :D

We tried to set him down on the grass, and initially he refused to let either leg touch! We finally plopped him down and he insisted on keeping one leg up in the air in an effort to reduce skin to grass contact. LOL!!!

NO! I don't WANNA!

Maybe if I hold my toes it'll be easier to keep my leg up.

Ewwww....must...not...touch...grass

Baby Says Bye Bye!

I am SO proud and excited to report that Caiden is turning into a voracious reader! I have always loved reading, and it is really important to me that we instill a love of reading in Caiden. To help foster this, I've been taking him on regular trips to the library and checking out tons of books so that he has exposure to a variety of different stories. Some of his recent favorites include Brown Bear, I Kissed the Baby, Skippyjon Jones Up and Down and the Mittens the Kitten books.

It is not uncommon for us to sit down and read 10 or 12 books in one sitting. Often times he will start bringing me books to read to him if I happen to be sitting on the floor with him. In fact, a couple of weekends ago, I thought it was the cutest thing in the world when climbed up on the couch with me, nestled himself into the crook of my arm next to the pillow, cuddled his blanket and settled in for a half hour of reading. It was one of the sweetest moments ever!

He especially enjoys interacting with the pictures in the books. In the video below, he knows exactly when to start waving bye bye!

What is even cuter is sometimes I'll spy him looking thru books on his own, and when he gets to the last page in the book from the video above, he starts waving bye bye all on his own!! And in another book, he'll make "moo" sounds when he encounters pictures of a cow - even if he hasn't seen that exact picture before! What a smarty pants we've got!

Lil' Shopper

One of the gifts Caiden got for his birthday was a shopping cart from the Ptaks. Given he was using multiple pieces of furniture as walking aides, I thought he'd be all over the shopping cart! Oddly enough, he was pretty freaked out by it at first, but after a few days of getting a little more used to it he was zooming all over the house!

My favorite part of the videos below is watching his little butt swing from side to side in his jammy bottoms as he maneuvers the cart along the floor. Tee hee! I also think it's cute the way he checks to see if you are watching him walk along!

The Plan

As you may recall, we announced back in January that 2009 was to be the year of the move back to Chicago!! We entertained high hopes of having a quick home sale, bring in some equity and maybe even do the whole For Sale By Owner route to keep some of said equity.

...

And then the market crashed. Hard. Hopes of selling were quickly fading away, and I was adamant that we not rent for fear of getting bad tenants and trying to manage a property from so far away. Plus I didn't think we could get what we needed to cover the place anyway.

And we can't forget the kitchen sink debacle which set us back several weeks. Ug.

But still, we persevered and met with a couple of real estate agents. We chose these agents based on the referral who told us they will give it to us straight. And boy howdy, did they ever. Bottom line? Don't sell this year. Unless of course you want to come to closing with a big fat check. Of course it doesn't help to have a short sale and foreclosure looming in your neighborhood either. That yanks the home values down that much further.

At this point, I was becoming pretty despondent. Getting back to Chicago this year was looking grim and next year wasn't holding any promises. But Caiden isn't getting any younger, and the longer we spend here, the less opportunity he is going to have to build memories with our families.

So we came back to the table to re-visit the rental option. After doing quite a bit of research and deep thinking, I started warming up to the idea. We'll only have about 2/3 - 3/4 of our costs covered by a renter, but it's better than being stuck here indefinitely. We started interviewing property management companies and finally settled on Terri from CB Bain. We liked her personality, her work history and felt she was pretty motivated.

But of course we can't make it that easy on ourselves. Before we committed to renting, we decided to investigate the re-finance option. See, we have an ARM on our mortgage that expires in Jan of 2011. If we can't sell in 2010, we risk having our mortgage payment go up. After lots and lots of conversations with our lender and various brokers, we decided the price tag was just too high to justify the modicum of security a re-fi into a 30 yr fixed would offer. But yay! A decision made! And now we wouldn't have to wait around for an extra 4-6 weeks for a re-fi to process which means we could get on the rental market that much sooner.

So at long last, here we are. Our listing went live Tuesday afternoon. We've got our fingers, toes and eyes crossed that this goes well and we get a renter soon!

Next steps from here? Well, we need to figure out how we're gonna move and where we'll land until we buy a house. We're pretty sure that long term we want to live in Sycamore. We've been looking at houses there and have seen some that we really like. Sycamore has the extra benefits of both being fairly central to everyone AND super close to my sister, Cathy. W00 hoo!!

Please keep your fingers crossed for us!! And send any renters our way! ;)

Happy Mother's Day '09

My 2nd ever Mother's Day was a lovely day! Caiden started things off my giving me his gift - he slept in until 8am! Wheeee!!!! B also treated me to a lovely breakfast in bed. This year, I got my gift early. Last weekend we were in Seattle and stopped in for a visit to Mrs. Cooks (that store is like crack for me!). I walked out with a new pan to add to my Le Creuset collection - a 9 inch iron handled skillet in blue.

We spent a lot of the day working on getting the house pulled together. (More on that to come in a future entry.) Here is a picture of the excellent job B did on our back patio. I can't wait for some nice weather to get out there and enjoy it!

After a busy day of straigtening, cleaning and organizing, we went down to REI to get an addition for the Subie. We are now the proud owners of a Sky Box. You know those storage boxes you see on the tops of SUVs and the like? Yep - we've got one of those now. Sadly, it's sitting in the garage all by itself for the time being as it won't fit in the garage while mounted on top of the car. Stupid garage. Anywho, from REI we went over to Desert Fire for a nice Mother's Day dinner.

Caiden proudly wore his I Heart Mom shirt in my honor, and his best gift of the whole weekend? Figuring out how to give kisses when asked! So cute!!

Wow....How Embarrassing

It's been since April 20th that I last posted!? Yikes. It's like back in the old days when I was so sporadic about blogging! I'd update maybe a handful of times and then go weeks or months with nothin'. Old habits die hard, eh?

Well, I say it is time to break this here streak! There is A LOT to share about what we've been up to, what Caiden's been up to plus tons of pictures and videos. So stay tuned, programming will be slowly returning to "normal" levels. :)

In the meantime, here's a cute picture to make you forget this dry spell!