Pat was looking at the Nature Conservancy website today (it's one of the charitable organizations we donate to), and look what he found! They're using one of his flickr pictures for their ecards: http://my.nature.org/birds/experience/ecards.html (Pat says it's not one of his favorite pictures, but I still think it's cool that they picked it as one of their 8 ecards!)

Another bad hailstorm just went through Jim Thorpe. We could hear the hail hitting the trees up on the mountain before it started falling by the house. It looked like a white-out at times. At least the van was in the garage this time, unfortunately dad's truck had to weather the storm. Here are a couple of photos of what the storm looked like...

This was the biggest one we could measure from the safety of the garage....

Looks like the storm is over, now to check for damage!

Hey guys! We thought we'd post a few quick photos of our first day's adventures :) The backdrop for all of our adventures has been the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, of course:

We went hiking in the Skagit Wetlands this morning and saw some cool birds, including this short-eared owl:
And some bald eagles too! This is a juvenile, so he doesn't have the coloration down quite right yet:
Do you see the momma bird in the nest?
A whole field of snow geese!
Then a car drove by and spooked them...
...all of them!
Next, we went to Anacortes to catch a ferry to the San Juan Islands! This is a view of another ferry on it's way back (we figure we must've looked the same)
When we finally made it to Orcas Island, there was another ferry blocking the dock! So we waited.
After checking into our house, we went hiking in Moran State Park and found some waterfalls!
...bigger than anticipated. (Do you see us getting wet?)
Pat's becoming very professional with his photography (all of the pros wear their hats backwards and have one muddy knee and beautiful models for their pictures, we've heard)
Shot of T & P taking a well-deserved break in front of Cascade Lake.
(If you think that's cute, you should see the next picture in the series where Pat's trying to push Theresa in...)

That's all for now! We're having a blast but we miss you all of course. Will post more pictures later :)

So Pat and I made brackets on espn.com for the March Madness Tournament (yes, I made mine in about 2 minutes by blinding clicking whichever team struck my fancy...) And guess what? After the first two rounds, I'm in the 94th percentile of all entrants on espn! I picked 15 of the Sweet 16, do you believe that? Amazing how that jr high basketball knowledge comes back later in life... ;)

We don't have any pets to post cute pictures of, but isn't this little seal cute? We came across him (and some of his friends) when we were hiking on the beach a few weeks ago.




On another trip in January, there were some big males on the beach showing off for us too.

Don't worry Mom, Pat kept his distance while taking the pictures...

Every morning Piper and Pippin poke their heads in the computer room to check on Abbey before coming downstairs for breakfast. Only, this morning Piper was shocked to discover that Abbey was not in her normal spot on the computer chair! Upon further investigation Piper found that Abbey wasn't in the computer room at all...her food and water bowls were left ungaurded!Pippin was standing guard in the hallway..are you sure she's not in there anywhere Piper??
Abbey was definitely not upstairs, so that could only mean one thing. Piper carefull peaked around the corner to check down the stairs...Abbey was still not in sight...

Pippin was the brave one this time and went downstairs first....the kitchen was clear, and Pippin decided she should stay there to guard the food and water bowls...

That only left one place where Abbey could be, and sure enough, Piper discovered Abbey had snuck downstairs all by herself and curled up on the couch in the living room. She must be getting tired of the scenery in the computer room, but maybe she's not as brave as she seems because this is how we found her...
If she can't see Piper and Pippin they can't see her, right??

Happy Spring everyone!!!

When CW was out to visit a few weeks ago, we impulsed shopped at the Ballard Market and came home with some beets. I don't know exactly what we were intending to do with those beets, but buy them we did.

We never really ate beets as a kid, did we? Except for those weird, jarred, pickeled beets that I wouldn't touch. (I guess they could've been quite good, I honestly wouldn't know). At any rate, I had to scour some of my favorite food blogs for inspiration. I thought since cooking with beets had a *huge* resurgence this year, that there would be plenty of options to choose from. And could you believe it? The only recipes I could find about beets were variations on a beet vinaigrette salad. It seems this huge resurgence was in fact a huge resurgence in vinaigrette salads.

So I made a salad.

Why not?




It was my first time working with beets, clearly, so I followed the directions here almost to the T. Its an arugula and red onion salad, tossed with a red wine vinegar/olive oil/lemon juice vinaigrette. The only change that I made was to substitute some feta I had in the refrigerator for the goat cheese (though I think that would be delicious as well). The recipe recommended that you roast the beets whole, tossed in olive oil and wrapped in tin foil, for about an hour before using. They roasted beautifully. I was highly impressed by their color....(yes yes I know its beet juice, but still). I'll probably have nice red fingers for a day or so!

The inspiration:
Pan Drippings, Gloriously

The experiment:
After I read this article, I was quite excited to try my own rendition. Chicken thighs are a staple in my house, and I typically bake them with just a light coating of adobo seasoning (which is quite savory) when I'm feeling lazy (which is quite often). So, I decided to bake them on a bed of bread, with a few additional ingredients. I chose to use baguette due to its high crust-to-insides ratio. Since the recipe calls for stale bread, as most dressings do, I first baked slices of fresh bread at 300°F for about 15 minutes until crisp.

I cut each slice in half and tossed them in a bowl with one diced onion, several smashed garlic cloves, a bunch of sage leaves, juice of half a lemon, and a drizzle of olive oil to aid the mixing process.

The mixture was then spread in a baking dish.

The adobo-seasoned chicken thighs were laid on top.

The dish was baked at 425°F for 45 minutes.

And the final product, which was delicious.

Notes: The lemon was a bit overpowering in spots. I would recommend using less juice and perhaps adding some zest after baking, instead. I may also try additional stuffing ingredients (e.g. celery, oysters... bacon??!!) in the future.

For Valentine's Day this year, CW sent me a beautiful orchid. The first bud just opened the other day, so I'm sending along pictures of what it looks like. There are quite a few, because I couldn't pick a favorite!






The plant in its rightful home, my bathroom windowsill.

Sharing the windowsill with my VDay orchid from last year (I think it might be a bit jealous.)