In typical Seattle summer fashion, the weekends are a blur and in general just too darn short. We spent the good majority of the weekend out of the house and with friends and wouldn’t have really wanted it any other way. And of course we spent a lot of it celebrating Bryan’s birthday! We hit the weekend running on Friday and never looked back.
For Bryan’s actual birthday we had to work 😦 but I still managed to pick him up a mocha in the morning and Thai for lunch and I made Bryan’s birthday cake at intervals throughout the day and we left home on foot to retrieve our two children from their respective places and then walked over to Mother’s Place, Reese’s old school, for their closing carnival. Reese was a bit shell shocked for nearly an hour when we first got there, without hardly a word leaving her mouth. Despite being a deaf mute, she proceeded to get her face painted in the Preschool room by her old teacher Alice, her hair painted rainbow by her old teacher Tiara, decorated a cookie in the Toddler’s room with her old teacher Karen and got an Elmo tattoo on her hand. She then finally broke out of her shell and played with her friends Georgie and Mika for a while outside by the water tables and Brooke enjoyed the water tables as well. Georgie’s family was going next door to Rhein Haus for dinner and drinks so we tagged along for about an hour for drinks and conversation, which was great fun, before walking back home to get our own dinner of homemade mole and bourbon bread pudding. We were all pretty tired at this point and had the next day to continue Bryan’s birthday celebration.
Saturday morning started like usual, Reese has been sleeping in though. Bryan made pancakes, although we did not shape them into 37, and then Lottie came over for a play date while Sarah had an appointment. Lottie left around 1 pm and we started prepping for the next portion of the day’s events, the birthday dinner and bike ride. We had five other families that were available to meet up with us at Briley’s BBQ up in Lake City and were shocked that that many could and would join us for the dinner. We wanted to take turns biking there since it’s right off the Burke Gilman Trail so Bryan set out with Reese by bike and I left a little later with Brooke to play briefly first at Matthews Beach Park, before ending at the restaurant at 4 pm to meet up with everyone. We had one giant table to ourselves and ordered family style which worked really well. The staff was great and we had 10 kids in our party who all managed to be on great behavior throughout dinner (I’m thankful the food came out so quick). We moved to their outdoor space with picnic tables so the kids could play and we sang happy birthday and had cake outdoors there. I brought the cake, a black forest cake that came out pretty darn tasty. After all our friends had left I got the turn to bike back with Reese and Bryan drove home Brooke. It took me just over an hour to bike the 12.5 miles back, I was really trying to get under the hour mark though. It was another great summer day.
Sunday we packed up the car to head to gymnastics like normal but didn’t get back home until 5 pm. We had Rosalie’s birthday party to attend in West Seattle so after gymnastics we stopped at a West Seattle park called Highland Park to zip line, swing and slide for a while before the party was ready to start. We were the first party guests and Rosalie and Reese hit it off again, immediately getting the bounce house broke in and all of the rest of the toys. The birthday party was fun even though we didn’t really know anyone there but met a few fellow Boeing employees and another girl from Michigan. Both girls were exhausted and fell asleep on the drive home. We settled in for the night with leftover BBQ and movies and Reese didn’t wake up until nearly 8 this morning!
We have lots more summer fun planned in the near future and this week but it’s always sobering in the summer when the weekend is over!
Happy Birthday again Bryan!
Chelsea
Evolving in the Emerald City 