Thanksgiving break, Garden d'Lights

For Thanksgiving, I drove up to the Seattle area to spend the holiday and my days off with my friend Dan and his family. I had a nice break. Traffic was great, the weather was good considering it was late November, and I got to relax and play lots of games.

On Saturday, Dan and I had dinner at Ooba Tooba Mexican Grill (so good!) and then went to Bellevue Botanical Garden for their Garden d'Lights display. I thought I'd show you a few of those pictures. It was a great night, despite the crowds. I think Christmas lights are my favorite decoration.

They had different nature themes set up along the main path that you take to see the lights. When you first enter, they hand out a list of critters that you can look for (sort of a game that kids might like) and cross off. So this central area is obviously a pond with pondy animals.

Then there's a farmer back there.

A garden.

Then there's this flowing stream with jumping fish and you can see a peacock back there. I suppose that sentence needs lots of quote marks, since obviously it's all just blinking lights to give a certain effect. It's very cute, though!

On the right is the jungle area where they had a monkey hanging in the tree.

And this nice dragon was one of my favorite parts. His name is Snap d'Dragon, or something like that.

He's just making his way through the forest.

I loooooved the effect of the lights on the trees (left). It's a cool idea, and I want to try it sometime. When I have trees that I can light up. :) Until then, you guys can try it!

And here's a cute vineyard scene.

There was some other stuff, but I'm not going to show you every picture. I definitely recommend this place if you live in the Seattle area or will be visiting. I've been to the Bellevue Botanical Garden a couple of times before, but it was to see the garden in daylight (which I also recommend, and it's free). This light display did cost $5, but kids 10 and under are free, and they have several free nights. (I sound like I'm getting paid to tell you about it.)

How was your Thanksgiving?

Teenager

My niece K is 13 today. I didn't forget her birthday, but I almost forgot that I planned to do special posts for my nephieces when they turn 13! It's been since February when my nephew turned 13, so it slipped my mind. But here I am! (Don't let me forget when it's Z's turn!)

(Me holding K, fresh from the oven.)

When K was born, her family was living with my parents and me for awhile. So K and I were roommates way back. ;) She was born very early in the morning (1-something, I believe), and my mom and I went to the hospital to wait for her arrival.

Because I didn't yet have a digital camera, I don't have many photos of her as a baby. But these are from when she was closer to 1, I think, and both with her older sister L. (She and L are exactly 18 months apart, so of course they played together a lot and we have lots of photos of them together back when they were my sister's only two daughters.)

However, I have thousands of pictures of her from about age 2 up, and it's very hard for me to choose some for this post!

I don't really like this photo of myself, but here we are again.

I have a memory of K that gets me emotional just thinking about it, but this photo reminded me, so I'll share. One year, her family got tickets to see Lion King (the live musical), but then her dad had a migraine and couldn't go, so I went in his place. K, probably about 3 years old, was on her mom's lap, and both girls seemed really into the play. You know how the Circle of Life song kind of builds and climaxes with holding up the lion cub for all the animals to see? Well, K was so into it, that when the music got very strong and they held up the cub, she shot her little fist up in the air all victorious-like. It was like she couldn't contain herself. She probably didn't even realize she was doing it. Oh my, it was SO ADORABLE. Too adorable.

K is both laid back and kind of zany. She doesn't take herself too seriously and can be goofy without self-consciousness.

Her personality makes her a natural with kids. She is calm and will spend time playing with them, reading them stories, etc. But then she'll also get riled up and lead them in noisy excitement, too. She's energetic and naturally skilled at physical things like climbing and running.


[Same tree as the first photo.]
Something else about K is that she's always a willing subject for the camera. She's naturally able to find and hold poses for me, and doesn't ever seem to object when I want to get pictures. In that and many other ways, we are opposites.

But in some ways we are alike. She loves art and music. She likes to draw and puts together scrapbooks of design ideas. She writes song lyrics. She's generally compliant.

There's so much more I could say, but to sum up: K is awesome, and I love love love being her aunt/tia. I only wish we could hang out on a regular basis. The plan is for her to fly out to see me next summer, like her older sister did. I can't wait!


(We used to do a lot of sleepovers when I lived in the same town, and we would put on face masks.)

(She is in the background, but I came across this funny photo and wanted to post it. She's dancing with L and their cousin J.)


Happy birthday, beautiful K-meister!

Portraits from my CA trip (Part 2)

Continuing on from my first post, here are the rest of my favorite portraits from my recent trip to see family.

K is almost 13, and is always a patient and natural model for me. I barely have to instruct her, she just changes her pose naturally and holds for a photo.

Love.

Just a snapshot of her using her phone, but I thought it turned out prettily.

Next is L, age 14 and looking suddenly so grown up. Don't you love her glasses?

I wanted to take some with L and K together because I have so many of the two of them when they were young. I wanted comparison shots. Look at those girls--they're almost the same height, both over 5'7!! In our family, that's very tall.

For a little comparison, here they are in 2006.

Then I wanted photos of K with N, because they had matchy-match dresses on (actually, all three of the older girls had very similar dresses). This was one of those situations where K was kind of annoyed at the matching dresses, but little N was proud to be matching her big sister. I love how N's like a mini-K in these.

K made sure to point out that her dress had a striped pattern underneath and N's doesn't. So they're not quite identical.

Another family picture of my sister and her girls. E had just woken up and was not super thrilled about picture time, so I didn't push to get a perfect smiling photo. We just let her have her lollipop.

Thanks for looking!