Four Day Weekend

Well mommy is excited as this is day one of a four day weekend for me. With Veterans Day being a state employees holiday I decided to take Monday off as well. The weather is trying to be sunny here but we've had rain off and on. We headed out to drive by more homes today - our neighborhood(s) of choice today were Phinney and Green Lake. As far as the search for a home in the Seattle area goes we've narrowed it to these two neighborhoods plus the Madrona/Lake Shore, View Ridge and then there's the entire north end / woodinville possibility still. We're all over the map.

We headed to the dog park after driving around for a bit. Here's Claire sucking on her thumb while enjoying the falling leaves and playful sounds of the dog park.

Breck does this super cute thing at the dog park when she's swimming. She stands on her back legs when she gets out far enough and lets her front legs float up - we call it her periscoping maneuver - you can get a pretty good idea of it here... its super cute and always draws comments from on lookers...

We plan to hit the market today to pick up tons of groceries to make lots of freezable dinners. My goal over this long weekend is to stock the fridge with soups, lasagne's and other pans of goodness to help make these next few months (aka "the dark days of winter") go by with a bit more ease.. as it seems to be dark when I leave for work and dark when I return... getting home and making dinner is just not fun.

Claire tried on Daddy's hat the other day and she just thought it was the funniest thing ever. (yes sports fans I'm wearing a WA State sweatshirt... with everyone losing recently I decided to market the worst of the worst losing team I could muster support for. My WI, CO and WA teams have just tanked this year.

Amazingly this past week marked my one year anniversary at the UW Medical Center. The staff in one of my clinics (Pediatrics) presented me with mementos marking the anniversary. I can't believe we've been back in Seattle a year. Pretty crazy. A lot has happened over this last year.. we are so very excited about the near and distant future as well. So much to be thankful for and so much to look forward to.

Claire is enjoying "school" / day care. We really like the daily detailed reports of her activities, her teachers are fantastic and the other 7 little kids in her class, by virtue of being a few months older in some cases, are encouraging Claire to sit up, eat "real food" and to interact with others in her age group. Next week she has her official school pictures.. so stay tuned for her first ever "school photo" and first professional photos I suppose too. How fun :) Then its off to WI for Thanksgiving.