Great Labor Day Weekend!

We had three days of fantastic weather and lots of downtime. We kicked off the weekend with a special date night at Nell's (a favorite!). On Saturday, we went to an outdoor concert at Chateau Ste-Michelle of the oh-so-delightful Pink Martini. On Sunday, we picnicked with friends and went for drinks at Poppy's. On Monday, we went for a bike ride around the island and caught up with friends in Seattle. We wish we had more weekends like this one!!

Back to blogging

Seattle from the piers

It's pretty obvious that I took a hiatus from blogging this summer, mostly because our lives have been insanely busy, but I have all intentions to get back to posting more regularly. The irony is that when things get busy and I have little time to write, that's also when there are most things to write about. So, I'll try to recap very quickly our summer.

Space Needle in Seattle, taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone

We were blessed to see many of our family members in the last few months - first, Misho, Michel and Tatko came for a quick - but very fun visit to Seattle. Misho decided to make a stop on the West coast, as part of her trip back from Australia and Michel and Tatko met her here. It was right around Easter, so we had an Easter feast, along with Fred's family, with a perfectly cooked "angneau pascal" curtsy of Colin as well as Bulgarian Easter eggs which we dyed together and broke in the Bulgarian tradition.

Then, Mom came for a week-long visit and I was able to take most of those days off, so we spent lots of great quality time together. We gardened, cooked, played with the dogs and went treasure hunting in Seattle's Antiques mall.

Phil, Karen, Cameron and Ryan joined us in August and it was super fun to spend time with them. The kids are growing so quickly and are now big boys. Among other activities, we went kayaking on Lake Union, which I wouldn't call a "kids" activity, but they did great and enjoyed it! We also went to the Boeing factory and saw the very first 787 to be sold and delivered (soon) to its new owner.

Then last week, Bouba and Marco stopped by for a couple of days as part of their West Coast tour and we loved their company! They'd rented a big van, in which they slept most nights, and drove up from California to BC. Free spirits for sure! :-)

In between family visits, we spent Memorial Day weekend (end of May) with friends in Okanagan, BC where we'd rented a beautiful house and did the usual indulgence of wine tasting, cooking, eating and relaxing. The dogs were the gang's (well behaved) mascots. The stay there was lovely and memorable, but the drive up there was an adventure in itself! We saw several bears along the highway and were surrounded by pristine BC forests.

In August, we went to Ontario and spent some time with Dad, Dave and Syd. They took us to Evergreen bricks works  where we had a lovely lunch and walk, we visited Dave and Syd's resto and Dave made us an amazing dinner (and taught me how to make Tarte Tatin!). We also saw the most dramatic storm either of us had experienced  - the sky looked like torn by fireworks every second or so for a duration of 30 minutes solid. It was quite the sight! We then went up to Blue Mountain, where we saw Mum, Vic, Amanda, Randy. We celebrated Mum's 65th, Amanda and Randy's engagement and summer in general. We went kayaking on Georgian Bay and hiking in the area.

In early August we also had a big party in the backyard - one we've wanted to host for a couple of years now. Dinner parties with friends tend to get a bit more challenging as our friends have babies and kids with various scheduling demands to be fed or taken to bed. So, a big backyard party was the perfect way to accommodate everyone. There were lots of people, kids running around and 3 dogs being terrorized by kids who (among other) thought it was very entertaining to feed them ice cubes. It was very fun :-)

I've also taken 3 trips to Geneva in this period. On the last one, I had a weekend in town and since I'd already seen most of what GVA has to offer (it doesn't take long), I took the train to Paris, where I spent the weekend hanging out in Saint Germain des Pres. It was a treat! Of course, Paris in August is drained of Parisians and filled with tourists, most stores are closed, but it was lovely regardless.

Jardin du Luxembourg on a cloudy day, taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone

So, a very packed and wonderful summer. Except for the fact that we only started getting sun in August and my produce has been disappointing for the lack of warmth, it's been a wonderful few months.