For Hunter

Just a collection of photos and some stories that I know would be enjoyed by Hunter.

This was how Smithka spent her 4th of July. She sacked in practically the whole day. She was really taking a well-deserved lazy day, relaxing from her duty of being the neighborhood sneak peak.


These are genuine reindeer. Christmas flooded over your senses the minute you turned the zoo's corner and saw Santa's most faithful helpers nibbling in Washington's early July heat. The original Christmas legendeers really knew what they were up to when they decided that REINDEER would be the animal that comes to mind when the word "Christmas" is uttered.

I wish I could have gotten a completely front-on shot of this silly owl's face. He made me giggle. His ginormous, invading eyes give the impression that he thinks he's much more intimidating and wise than he really is. He looked around and at people like, "Duh, you're taking pictures of me. I'm the most interesting and intriguing piece of creation here."

I just thought Smithers looked beautiful on this windowsill behind these curtains. I love the way her eyes match the linen. And her use of the perch technique here is exquisite. If I've ever seen an attempt at the Double Paw Curl that deserved a 10.0, this is it.


Smithers continued to impress me with the way she has perfected the art of cat comfort. Notice the well-placed tail.

After cautiously climbing onto the air mattress and snooping out the underneath side of my pillow, Smithers decided that the pillow would make an adequate kitty-cave, if only she could get underneath it. Well, no task seems to large for a determined Smithers so sure enough, in a matter of minutes she was cuddled completely under the pillow. She stayed there for a good twenty minutes.

I just thought these were awesome flowers at the zoo, reflecting a little of our Awesome God. They're such cool flowers, aren't they? This shot is from directly below the flowers, so they're pretty design faces the floor. Interesting, huh?

God's Perfect Timing

I'm sure most of you who read this blog have already seen Heather's post about her back pain and the ER ordeal. Poor girl! She hasn't felt "normal" or well for ten months now, and even before she was pregnant her migraines and headaches were an almost constant struggle. She puts on such a cheerful face and maintains such a sweet disposition, though. She's really strong. That's why it was such a shock to see her writhing on the ground last night with tears streaming down her face...I knew that she was feeling a level of pain that I have never come close to experiencing. For Heather, managing a busy, social events-filled life with a constant headache (many times migraine) while maintaining a sweet smile and a fun, encouraging personality is LIFE. Making sure people don't feel uncomfortable around her because of her pain has always, in her mind, been a loving MUST. And she does a stupendous job at it.

But enough about Heather. :)

Our God is so awesome!!!! In a gazillion more ways than one, too, but here's one of them:

He demonstrated His providential planning and timing yet again. Hear this: My original itinerary had me leaving Washington TODAY, the day after the all-nighter in the ER. Thankfully (providentially), at the beginning of my month here it was looking like Matt was going to have to be out of town this entire week, so Heather asked me to extend my stay here by at least a few days. I readily agreed to move my flight to the weekend. But think about it, can you imagine us trying to get me to the airport today in the state we were in after having not slept the night before? I'm so thankful that I get to stay a few extra days and help get things back in order and help Heather rest like she should. And I'm so thankful that her in-laws are here also...they've been such help! And they've got quite a knack for cooking. So that's where Matt gets it.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

An Event Worthy of Fireworks

A proposal was made on the 4th of July! (Said proposal was eagerly accepted on the same day.) Congratulations, you two!

Fiamially (fee-am-yu-lly)

The title comes from the way I used to pronounce the word "family" when I was a small girl. Haha, over the years my family has pretty much developed its own vocabulary as we picked up and held on to funny ways of saying things or little kids' mistaken pronunciations...anyways, my whole family plus Harrison's girlfriend were here in Washington this past weekend! It was a great time of passing Georgie around, laughing, fellowship and a little sight-seeing.

The first time all of us were together was on Saturday morning when we gathered for a kind of smorgasbord (Matt had to help me spell that one...though he claims I still didn't type a real word because I left out the two little dots over the second "o") breakfast. We laughed a ton as Harrison and Vichka presented their gifts to Georgie: 1) a coffee machine, because, of course, babies are always falling asleep all the time, so Georgie just needs a good strong cup of coffee and 2) a monsterish puppet. I think Heather has a pic of the monstrosity on her blog.

We eventually mosied over to the Steilacoom Deli & Pub for lunch. Yummy just like the first time.

On our way home we stopped at the lake for a walk. Here are some pics:

Couldn't resist the shot of the butts as they all bent over to look at something in the water:
Since when did trees become food?
When we got home from our outing, we all decided that our skin temperature relative to the temperature of the pool water made ideal conditions for a dip, and Harrison became a hippie on our walk to the pool:
Georgie had her first dip in a swimming pool, poor girl hated it even more than she hates baths. But doesn't she look cute?

After having to say good-bye to my mom and Hunter, the rest of us went to church the next morning! Georgie got dressed up for her first occasion of hearing Jesus talked about in big words, as Matt said.
After church we went to lunch at a really cool restaurant ("we" here means the church group minus my dad, we had to say good-bye to him mid-morning :( ). It was a pizza place, called The Rock, and the theme was rock-n-roll. Guys, I love restaurants like this, that pay as much attention to atmosphere as they do to food. It totally reminded me of Hard Rock Cafe, except maybe a little more Disneyland-ish (i.e., EVERYTHING was part of the decorations, even the drink station where the waitresses prepared our drinks looked like dumpsters, and the outside of the menus were famous rock-n-roll records). I think I was the only one who appreciated the atmosphere so enthusiastically, but I think we all agreed on the caliber of the food. Oh, so tasty.

Pics:

This one was meant to be a picture of the two girls' scrunchy hair (thanks to my mom who labored to braid our hair the night before!!), but Harrison couldn't pass up the opportunity to take another picture with his beautiful girlfriend:
Part of the decoration in the restaurant, a guitar chandelier:
I was WAY impressed with the bathrooms. The minute you walked in you felt like a rock queen. The stalls were jet black with hot pink flames, the toilets were black, the walls were a juicy red, man, I could totally be a rocker. (Ok, probably not.)
After lunch we spent the afternoon at Dashpoint State Park. This was the first time that I got to wade in Pugent Sound! The water was very warm, and strewn all over the sand and in the water were beautiful sand dollars, some of them still alive! I started getting all excited and shaking them next to my ear as I marveled aloud at the little shell angels that we would find inside a sand dollar if we broke one of them open. Finally several of us gathered in a little huddle as Matt held a sand dollar in the middle of us and broke it open with his hand. Nope, no angels, but Matt did succeed in splattering my arm and face with mudd. The rest of the group had never heard of angels being inside sand dollars, so they proceeded to laugh at my belief and attributed it to one of my crazy dreams. I then became slightly frantic because of how CLEAR the REALITY of angels in sand dollars had been in my mind, so I crawled all over the sand, shaking many sand dollars to find the sound of loose shell and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with my world as I shook and shook but heard nothing. At that moment the reality of angels in sand dollars seemed to be the crux of everything I believed, I had to find them!!!!! Oh, those minutes were painful as I slowly began to believe that I had, in fact, dreamt up the notion of shell-angels residing in sand dollars.

This is me with the mud, also looking slightly perplexed because of my angel dilemma:
I managed to still have fun and shoot a few pictures:
The moment of truth!!!! I finally examined a previously broken sand dollar, one that looked as if it had been carelessy stepped on, and I found what I had so long and frantically been searching for!!!! Sand dollar angels! (Or, some people like to think they are doves...doesn't matter, it was what I was looking for!)
Georgie just looked so cute with her dad:


Do you see the jellyfish?
I want to frame this:
As our group was walking along the shore, Harrison wondered out loud what it would be like to climb this hill and find a tiger at the top:
The purpose of our walk on the shore was to reach those houses in the background, which from far away looked just like miniature playhouses:


Mr. Crab (um, Mr. Dead Crab, that is):
Perhaps the coolest jellyfish I've ever seen:
Have you ever felt the top of a jellyfish? All I can say is, whoever named them jellyfishes has obviously felt the top of a jellyfish. So fun to feel! Just steer clear of the tenticles!

Wandering in Seattle

Today my dad, brother and I traveled the thirty plus minutes to downtown Seattle! We really didn't want to be away from Lakewood too long, because the main attraction of our time in Washington is, of course, Georgie Eloise Hitzeroth, but we tried to time it so that we would only be gone for four or five hours. We had two main goals in mind: seeing the Seattle Space Needle up close and in person, and experiencing the original Starbucks in Pike Place Market. I always get excited for any tourist adventure, especially when it happens in such a big and famous city, so here is me waiting in the car and excited for the hours to come:

About thirty minutes into our drive, the downtown Seattle skyline came into view! Its such a pretty city, don't you think?

Once we got off the freeway, we discovered that driving in downtown Seattle is probably just as difficult as that in downtown NY or LA. Oh well, there was plenty to look at! Mostly just shops and cafes and nice looking apartment buildings that I could imagine myself living in. Because of the traffic and slightly confusing streets, I think it took us another thirty minutes to actually get to the Needle. We had all previously determined that while we did want to see the Space Needle up close, we weren't all THAT thrilled about it so we wouldn't spend the money to ride the elevator or even pay for parking! Dad stayed in the car while Hunter and I hopped out for two minutes to take the shots we wanted and look around a bit. I think if I ever get to come back to Seattle again I would be interested in hanging out there a little longer, the attractions around the skyscraper look kind of intriguing and I wouldn't mind taking a ride up the elevator...or even eating a meal in the high-altitude restaurant if I were a millionaire (I'm assuming you need big money?).


Pike Place Market is only about a ten-minute crawl from the Space Needle. We quickly found some very reasonably priced parking and then happily set about on our adventure! I LOVED the view of Pugent Sound, quite lovely, so here is a picture as we were on our way to the market area. Once again, the pic doesn't exactly do the Sound justice.

Pike Place Market is a very enjoyable place to be. It seems to be made up of about a half-mile of shops, both permanent shops and kiosks, and TONS of food places. Every 20 seconds as we would walk down the street, another new wonderful aroma would drift to our noses, inviting us to waffle cones, cinnamon buns, clam chowder, fresh fruit, coffee, even flowers!! I loved seeing this flower spot, so beautiful. Couldn't resist taking a picture. Doesn't it remind you of the kind of place that Joe would have bought his flowers for Kathleen in You've Got Mail? Ugh, I'm such a girl.

One thing about Pike Place Market: it is a tourist trap and consequently VERY busy and crowded. It was lunch time when we arrived, and at first glance it looked like the only type of place to get food would be a place where we would pick up our order and have to stand or walk in the street to eat it, but I was very thankful to find a place called something like "Sound View Cafe" in order to have a satisfying sit-down meal. And the restaurant did have a wonderful view of Pugent Sound, we even got window seats! Almost immediately, Hunter stuck his head as far as he could out of the window and just looked and looked at everthing there was to see.

While I was waiting for my food, I imagined what it would be like to have a roof-top garden like this

or this.

One of the many pleasant views inside the restaurant:

My dad and I split an order of crab cakes that came with roasted vegetables, seasoned potatoes, and yummy yummy bread.

Hunter enjoyed his turkey and swiss cheese sandwich:

On our walk to Starbucks we discovered that there was more to see of Pike Place Market than just the main street, the post alley shops turned out to be very quaint and European-esque! I have to come back to this city with Holly...

Next pic is of the first Starbucks EVER!! I love how they haven't changed anything about it, they haven't made it more like its other retail stores or more modern or anything! Even the trademark symbol, when seen anywhere in this store, is slightly different than the current one. The mermaid is chubbier, among other things. :) Inside the store there is only room to stand in line and order your drink, look at merchandise you might want to buy, and then there is an official standing area with a counter at which you can sip your drink. No normal chairs or couches, though, and I liked that. I love that they've kept it the same way that its been for 36 years. Hardwood floors, counters, shelves, gold trimming, coffee beans displayed behind glass, it was beautiful and coffee-ish, somehow even more coffee-ish than modern Starbucks are. And the people working there were really friendly, when we walked in one of the cashiers was singing back every order that he heard coming from his customers, and later I saw him posing for a picture with some girls. I loved my experience in the original Starbucks. I got a Cinnamon Dolce Latte, by the way.

Inside the first Starbucks!

Not sure of the significance of the flags on this map, because I KNOW there are more cities with Starbucks than might be indicated by the flags on it, but I took this picture because, incidentally, this is the same world map that Heather selected for Georgie's nursery. Thought Heather would be pleased to know that Georgie's map was also considered worthy of Starbucks.


Drinks!!
Proof about it being the first Starbucks store:

On our way back to the car, I realized that not only could I not resist taking a picture of the flowers, but I shouldn't leave without buying a bouquet! I found a lovely bouquet of sweet peas, and they are now happily sitting in a vase on the kitchen table!

The three of us left Seattle feeling very satisfied with our time there, knowing that yes, we would like to visit it again for a much longer period of time, but for the time being we wanted to get back to the treasure of Lakewood: Georgie.