We had an art date with our friend Nina in her garage studio. She is so very talented and we have a few of her paintings. She also teaches kids’ art classes in the summer at Country Village and Aiden was old enough to attend this past summer.

We did our usual roam around Redmond town center, riding escalators and buying snacks.

We were able to coordinate another Team Awesome gathering with almost everyone from our team but Laura who had move to California. This was a great group of people that I started my career with (and became parents together) and we couldn’t have had a better Team Awesome leader.

We never missed an opportunity for bubble tea and milk powder buns (for me it was usually a corn and ham bun or red bean mochi).

We hung out with our neighbor Arshan, and Ishrat made a beautiful and delicious going away dinner for us. She is a wonderful cook and we spent many mornings having tea together on the weekdays.

We spent a lot of free time with Connor and Genevieve who were a few houses up the street from us. Moving away from them was a little easier because they would be moving only a couple months after us to the Chicago area, and we were excited to be within driving distance of each other. Aiden and Connor both love chai tea and are always building train tracks together. Oliver and Genevieve are great little friends who love each other.

We played at the park and slumber partied with Tom and Emily. Several of our other friends came to hangout throughout the day. We had a lazy morning with bagel breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and The Lion King. We had one more dinner with them before the kids left. The picture was full of smiles and then afterwards it was nothing but tears, tears, tears. It hurt my heart to leave these two (three).

I squeezed in several working coffee dates with Hanako when we could find time. We almost never take picture of ourselves but manage to take many pictures of our coffee and snacks. We usually required a work break to run through Ben Franklin for some craft inspriation.

We had a lot of boxes piled up, Andrew and the boys hopped on a plane to leave them in Indiana with our parents where they had a fun-filled week of grandparent and cousin time, and I kept on packing.

We were also lucky enough that the timing meant we were home to meet the newest arrival to the Hampton side of the family.

Our family helped us coordinated getting a few items to our new house and had air mattresses, blankets, and pillows for us so we could slumber party in our new, empty house after we closed. While prepping our house in Washington to sell, we boxed up and shipped a car load of stuff via Amtrak. I don’t remember how much it was, but I remember thinking this is a great deal. The downside is someone has to be at your destination to pick it up from Amtrak (which for us was doable).

We’ve been talking about it for a year, and we’d really like to be closer to our families. I’m already working from home, and Andrew’s position has allowed him to make the transition to work from home. We’ve been casually looking at houses during some of our visits, and started to seriously look during our Christmas visit. We expected to see houses we like but not feel pressure to buy anything just yet, but one house made an impression.

It was the last house on my saved list, the largest (which I was interested in smaller), and at the top of our price range. Nothing in the photos jumped out at me, but I saved it to our list because the price per square foot was really low (a weird way I sometimes sort house listing because it could indicate a good investment). When our realtor asked to schedule a time to see it, the owners said they were in the midst of moving out and didn’t want anyone seeing it that day or the next. Okay, we took that as a sign. It wasn’t meant to be. But two days later we checked in again and were able get a showing. We were instantly excited.

It’s in a small neighborhood of 25 houses, surrounded by trees, which was no common where we were looking. The lot is mostly wooded with a creek running through the backyard and slightly larger than the average neighborhood lots we saw. This meant privacy between houses. The extra square footage meant plenty of room for 2 of us working from home and 2 kids growing and running wild. It needs updating but it’s in great condition, and over time we’ll be able to put our own stamp on it.

We put in an offer, going back and forth with the owners a handful of times. They accepted, Andrew flew back to Washington for work, and I rescheduled my flight with the kids so we could get an inspection done while one of us was in town. We planned to fly back to Indy for a long weekend to close our new home February 15th 2019. It was a whirlwind.

Aiden practiced his fire building skills with Aunt Sarah, we caught frogs

We headed to the farmers’ market and ate all the yummy food. Aiden happily spent most his time being pulled around in the wagon eating strawberries.

We ate and wandered our way through Portland. At Harlow, where we had golden milk and vegan mac and cheese, Aiden practiced using my camera.

I snapped a few of him with my phone (left), and his photo on the right.

We wandered through shops before our next stop at a donut shop where we got a variety of mini donuts and a flight of chai tea. Aiden also picked a book from the “free little library”.

We were going to swim in the river, but it was too flooded this weekend to get to a good access point. Instead we cooked farmers market hot dogs on the grill and Aiden got his hair done and kept it that way for 3 days!

The boys loved it, and I while I love his snuggles we won’t be getting a dog of our own.

Sarah returned with exciting treasures like candy, sake, and chopsticks.

While she was with us the boys got to slumber party in our room.

We got treats at Lady Yum and a brewery with Sarah and Tobin before she headed back to the east coast.

Ishrat and I attended a paint pouring “make and take” at Ben Franklin. It was fun and we spent $7 and 30 minutes to see what this latest Pinterest craft was all about. They do several of different projects a month and I love going because I don’t have to overbuy a bunch of supplies to try something new.

I’ve been attending a sketch Meetup started by my friend and neighbor, Emily. It’s been a good way to force myself (in a fun way) to practice on a more regular basis. Aiden and I went for bubble tea and had our own sketching session.

We had an impromptu hangout morning with Graham and Candace.

Plus just some random photos from everyday life…

]]> http://blog.solanis.net/2018/03/march-happenings/ Mon, 19 Mar 2018 20:59:27 +0000 http://blog.solanis.net/?p=5875 Read More]]> We enjoyed the weather and swinging at the park.

We’ve been having lots of fun outside with Arshan.

We went out to breakfast this morning and then picked up s’more supplies at the store afterwards.

Daddy tickles

Probably our worst kid injury to date… Oliver tripped on the stairs and busted his lip terribly. It took a few moments to figure out that only his lip was bleeding. He was sooooo sad and got blood everywhere.

We toured the Eastern State Penitentiary. We did the self-guided audio tour which I’d highly recommend. There was a lot of good info about why it was initially designed a specific way and how the use of the facility evolved. At the end, there’s an installation about the modern prison system which was enlightening.

We reserved a time to visit the Magic Gardens, a 3000 sq ft outdoor, mosaic art installation run as a non-profit by Isaiah and Julia Zagar. I would definitely go here again.

Our self-unplanned walking history tour involved Elfreth’s Alley, Ben Franklin’s Grave, The Betsy Ross House, Christ Church, Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell. We had a list of ideas and places, but didn’t really have an agenda for our days.

We met up with Sarah Sunday evening for dinner and, then Monday morning we wandered the International District for lunch before heading to the airport.

We found and ate very delicious food… and drinks all weekend.

There were murals every where, over 3,600 in fact. This wasn’t even close to one of the best, but I like the perspective. I would have captured more murals, but I was far more occupied with the doors throughout the city.

The progression of a two year old wait for, receiving, and having the paper removed from his birthday cupcake. We will not name the individual responsible for rudely trying to prevent him from eating paper.

Aiden wondering when he gets to dive into this cake…

Christmas breakfast with cousins…

Aiden and Oliver each got one present early before everyone arrived.

Then we opening presents with everyone but Ali who was sadly home very sick (we all got struck by the sickness eventually, luckily it was only a 24 hour thing).

This is how we’d find the boys when we went up to bed.

Yoshi would like to come in and eat with us. Instead he rests his tongue on the glass and hopes we’ll feel bad for him.

Reading, movies, and snuggles… plus the guys being total guys.

Aiden took Granny’s Christmas present out for a test drive in the snow.

All of us adult kids got a night out to see Jeff Dunham!

We played at the Greenwood Community Center. Aiden and Graham made their way through the climbing tree. It look a little persuasion to get Graham back out.

Ali and I worked on some string art.
The guys helped with some very guided assistance from us.

This was Oliver’s first flight with his own seat! Despite paying for an additional seat we got a whole row to ourselves and the boys weren’t all over each other because I sat between them. It was a pretty pleasant flight.