Our New Home.

Guess what -- Steven and I have signed contracts (and written some big checks) and we are now the proud renters of a lovely townhouse in Enumclaw!

We're so excited!!!! Oh my goodness! It's just making everything seem so real and all of the sudden, moving to Enumclaw doesn't seem so bad : ) In fact, I clocked it today and it's only 47 miles from my mom's house (that's exactly an hour in really really really good traffic).

We didn't have much time in the house this evening before Steven had to go to the fire-station for drill, but we got the keys and stayed long enough to draw a quick floor plan and measure everything. This way we can figure out what furniture will fit before moving a bunch of unnecessary stuff down there.

Check out our new room! There are two bedrooms upstairs. We were so glad that we got a place with two bedrooms -- we expect people to come visit us (Paige -- you have your own room!!).

Downstairs there's a living area, smallish dining area and a kitchen. The kitchen isn't fabulous (at least not by my standards) but it's clean and functional and once I get my beautiful red Kitchen-Aid mixer in there, all will be well.

Steven will probably move in sometime in the first couple weeks of May. I'll have all summer to move things in and get settled/organized before I join him after the wedding in August. In the mean time, I'll continue to share a room with my mom -- love you Mom! (but I still can't wait to move in with Steven--how grown up are we??)

Grapefruit Alaska.

Since we tend to have lots of grapefruit at our house, Tara recently looked up some interesting grapefruit recipes. She found one for grapefruit alaska. Baked Alaska is a dessert that has pound-cake on the bottom then a slab of ice cream (I've had it with Neapolitan ice cream) and then you cover the whole thing with meringue and bake it for 10 minutes. Somehow the meringue protects the ice cream so it doesn't melt. It's a very strange phenomenon.

So, with this recipe, you take the grapefruit segments out of the grapefruit halves, then scrape out the rest of what's left inside to have a clean half-of-a-grapefruit-bowl (not the funnest job... in fact, it was rather tedious, as you can tell by the look on Tara's face). You mix the pieces of grapefruit with a little sugar and then spoon it back into the grapefruit-bowl. Then scoop some vanilla ice cream on top, whip up some meringue, and pour that on top, sealing off the edges.

Then bake it in the oven at 425 until it looks like this.

Check it out! Pretty cool huh? Next time we're going to try full fat ice cream since this low fat stuff seemed a little meltier than the fatty kind. Otherwise, it seemed to work well.

Yum!

I Just Love Paige.

This post is definitely a couple weeks over-due... Paige came up to Seattle to spend Easter weekend with my family. The original plan was to do lots of wedding related stuff but I just wasn't ready to start making invitations or anything like that so... we pretty much just had a lot of fun.

We did manage to complete one wedding related task -- we went shopping for bridesmaids dresses. Paige must have tried on a dozen dresses and we were having a terrible time making any decisions. We ended up just taking loads of pictures so we could hopefully decide later (I only just made the decision this week. I'm ordering the dresses tonight!)

Since we were in the neighborhood, we figured we should stop by Macrina for some treats: quiche, grilled sandwiches and some lovely desserts. So tasty.

Macrina is always a good choice.

(like Amanda's new hair cut?) After trying on lots of dresses and trying to make tough decisions we were thoroughly exhausted and promptly went home to get into sweats. We lazed around for a little while before making dinner for the Parducci fam.

LOVE homemade pizza! So good. We made one with roma tomatoes, goat cheese and basil and another with chicken, mushrooms, peppers and BBQ sauce. Yum. Yum, yum, yum... I need to go make dinner... anyhow, my family came over and we spent the night eating pizza and almond cake and playing all 13 rounds of Mexican Train (this took at least 3 hours.) Paige is just that special--she gets her very own Parducci-family-dinner.

Saturday afternoon we drove into Seattle to see Hilde -- made a stop at Molly Moon's in Wallingford. They have salted caramel ice cream there. I was intrigued but stuck with coconut as I figured it was the safer option. I don't know if I can eat an entire cone full of salted caramel ice cream. Maybe I'll try it next time.

Oh yeah, the Seattle weather pulled out all the stops for Paige. She got the wind and the rain and the beautiful dark clouds over Lake Washington. We've had such a lovely mild winter and of course Paige was in town on the super rainy weekend... oh well, she'll be back again soon : )

Since it was Easter weekend, we figured we had to do something festive. Egg decorating was the obvious festive-Easter-activity. We had fun with the colors but I must say, decorating eggs isn't the best idea when you don't really like to eat them. We had sparkly, rainbow-colored, hard-boiled eggs in our fridge for days!

Easter morning, we went to church at Eastlake and then Paige took my car to go have lunch with her aunt's family and her brother while Steven and I went to his parents' house for an Easter egg hunt. It was so sad having to take Paige back to the airport that evening! She really shouldn't be allowed to reside in a different state... I like it better when we're in the same city.

I'm that sub...

Remember when you were in jr. high or high school choir or band or orchestra or whatever and you would get those subs who had NO IDEA what they were doing? And you would think to yourself "why the heck can't they give us a sub who can play piano or read music or something??" because it was so obnoxious to have those subs who had no knowledge of music education what-so-ever. yeah, well, today, I am that sub. I'm subbing for a music teacher at the junior high. Band, orchestra and then choir... and I can't even play the piano! Actually it's been a really great day and the choir is singing a Wicked medley so I'll definitely sing with them and it will be great fun : ) There were some assistant directors in here first period so those kids actually got their instruments out... the rest of my classes (so far) have voted to watch Hairspray. It's a musical so I figure it's okay, plus, I love it. At least I'm getting more work! This is a good thing!!

Oh Junior High...

I'm subbing at the junior high again today... I've worked here more than anywhere else in my subbing adventures and I'm starting to like it. Fancy that? It's still not my favorite age but they're kind of fun and at least they're still shorter than high schoolers. I'm teaching math today and in my first period class there are these twin girls -- they still dress exactly alike : ) Seriously. They wear the exact same outfit. The same brand and style of jeans, the same jacket (in different colors), the same shirt (in different colors) and they even have the same backpack (in different colors). Their hair is styled exactly the same way and I always see them together whenever I'm here. I wonder how much longer that's going to last... I guess it's still cute in junior high but it's not going to fly in high school.

Junior High is such a funny place. It's weird to walk down the hall and see "couples" holding hands. They're 13 years old!!! What's with this "going out" thing anyway? I never understood it, which is probably why I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 20... worked well for me. Another strange thing is that I've had at least two kids in my classes that I used to babysit, so they walk in and say "hi Stephanie!!!" and it kind of catches me off guard.

Anyhow, it's nice to be working in this same school again. The building is becoming familiar to me, teachers are greeting me in a more friendly manner now that they recognize me and the students who I've had in other classes even seem somewhat pleased to see me. It's a good feeling. Makes this subbing thing not quite so bad. I wish I could just always work here. It would be nice to have a little consistency in my life. Basically, the good news is that I was happy to get a call to sub here this morning when usually, I kind of dread subbing. Today is a good day.

I LOVE Weddings!

Not too long ago I interviewed for an internship with an event planner. I didn't get the internship but she recently contacted me and asked if I would like to help out with a big wedding in Seattle. It sounded like fun and I figured it would be a good learning experience, so that's how I spent my day yesterday. I absolutely loved it. I know that I want to be a wedding planner. Seriously. It was just a perfect fit. I was so happy being there and I just wanted to be able to do more and be involved with all of the details and everything. I was so excited to be there! I almost cried about 5 times. Right before the bride walked down the isle with her dad I got all anxious-excited for her and I was just smiling the whole time. What a wonderful day!! This is what I want to do with my life. I want to spend it planning these days and making them happen. How special to be able to share in that experience with all of these different couples and families. Sigh. It was the best.

The ceremony was at a Catholic church on Capitol Hill. There was a gospel choir and they sang beautifully and it was such a "feel good" ceremony. There was a really wonderful energy in the room just because everyone was so happy to be there. The reception was at the Arctic Club in downtown Seattle and it was beautiful. Really fancy. The really cool thing about being a wedding planner is that I'll get to plan and be a part of all different types of weddings. Fancy ones and casual ones and indoor ones and outdoor ones. See, since I'm only going to have one wedding of my own (and I'm very happy about that, indeed) there are all of these cool weddingy things that don't get to be a part of our wedding simply because, we just can't have it all. So, if I plan weddings for other people then I'll still get to enjoy all of those other things that don't fit into my wedding. Like a gospel choir for example--we're getting married on a farm. This wouldn't exactly be very fitting, you know what I mean?

I've decided I want to be a wedding planner. So... that's what I'm going to do. I haven't figured out how, or when or anything like that but it made me happy and that's something my current job situation is definitely not doing right now. I think I would love, love, love all of the details and the planning and the list making and the scheduling so I'm going to give it a try.

Being there for the wedding also made me so much more excited for my own wedding. I think in the process of planning it, I've sort of lost sight of what exactly I'm planning. I mean, I've been really excited about it but when I was at this wedding and the bride was about to walk down the isle and just the look she had about her and how nervous-excited she was, I all of the sudden got this "oh-my-gosh!" feeling. It just hit me -- "this is a big deal!!" And now I have this renewed joy and enthusiasm and anticipation and I can't believe I still have to wait 4 more months (124 days to be exact) to marry Steven! I'm feeling terribly impatient. I can hardly stand the wait.

How Very Strange.

I missed a call for a sub job as I was getting out of the shower this morning and I was super bummed because I was definitely available and wanted to work. So, I called the sub office and asked if the job was still available. Thankfully, it was. I was told to go to Bothell High School where I would be subbing for a business teacher from 9:30 to 2:00. Well, I got here and everyone was telling me "okay, you're here for Becky Porter. She's a career counselor. So..." And I'm thinking, "What? Career Counselor?? Um, okay." And no one really knew what to do with me because they couldn't even figure out why I was here. I ended up in the faculty lounge counting and alphabetizing the HSPE tests (new WASL -- standardized test basically) that the entire school took this morning. It wasn't bad, just a little tedious but time went by pretty quickly.

Well, then I came back to the Miss Porter's office where I had left my stuff and the lights were turned on and my stuff was moved and in walked Miss Porter behind me saying "hi. You must be sub. I didn't ask for a sub. I never ask for a sub. This would be a pretty weird position to get a sub for." And all of the sudden I was feeling super awkward! I mean, she must have felt pretty strange when she got to work and someone's laptop and jacket and purse were all strewn about her office when she certainly hadn't invited anyone else into her office... you know? So now we're both awkwardly sitting her typing away on our computers because I'm on a lunch break and don't have anywhere else to go and can't go back to "HSPE Central" until after lunch because it's locked.

It is quite nice to get paid to alphabetize and I know I've been helpful as this is a HUGE project that the BHS counselors have to get through and I definitely prefer the alphabetizing to teaching the scary high schoolers, but this has still been a rather odd day.

On Holiday in CA.

I just got back from a fantastic vacation to California!!! I flew down last Tuesday to spend some time with some of my amazing SPU friends and then on Friday I went into Beverly Hills to meet up with one of the families that I babysit for here in Seattle. The family actually flew me down to spend the weekend with them and help out with the kids -- the time with friends was an added bonus to the trip. It was SO nice of them to fly me down early so I could have some fun with the girls : ) I started my day with a trip to Starbucks for free pastry day but they were out of normal pastries so I got a free red velvet cupcake, which I thoroughly enjoyed mid-flight.

Chelsea, Claire, Hilde and Chelsea's friend Jenny picked me up at LAX Tuesday afternoon and we went straight to Ben and Jerry's to take advantage of free cone day!! Since the ice cream was free, I took a chance and tried a new coconut-7-layer-bar flavor and it was absolutely delightful!

From there, we made our way to Santa Monica -- what a beautiful day!!! I had never been to Santa Monica before and it was so fun walking around and enjoying the weather. We hung out on the pier and enjoyed the scenery then jumped back in the car.

Next stop -- Hollywood! Yet, another touristy thing that I hadn't previously taken the time to explore. We saw some of the stars (you know, the star shaped ones on the ground), the Kodak theatre, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood sign! Grauman's made me think of an I Love Lucy episode and the stars made me think of Pretty Woman. I had lots of funny movie/tv scenes going through my head : )

A trip to So Cal is never complete without a day in Disneyland!! And what a blessing to be able to go with friends! It was Hilde's first trip to Disneyland and Claire hadn't been since she was really little so Chelsea and I had a blast playing the Disney experts and showing the girls around.

First stop: Main Street USA! Well, it's not really a stop but Donald Duck was there and Hilde had to get her picture taken with him to show her brother Lars. So we had a little photo op. before dashing of to Tomorrowland.

Our first ride of the day: Space Mountain!! We really just wanted Hilde to start her day off on the BEST note possible. Okay, and actually, we knew that Space would have the longest lines later in the day so we wanted to get a chance to go on the ride without having to stand in a horrendously long line. It was quite possibly the funnest ride I've EVER had on Space Mountain. Chelsea and I were in the very front, which I don't think has ever happened to me on this read, and it made the ride feel so much faster and more twisty and just funner in general. We were both just laughing really hard and Chelsea was screaming like crazy. I thought our Space Mountain picture was absolutely hilarious. Because of how fast we were going and the fact that we were sitting in the front, Chelsea and I both had tears streaming down our faces -- she was trying to wipe those tears BEFORE the picture was taken but since she's screaming she looks like she's absolutely terrified. Not true. She loved it. Hilde was a little shaken up but she survived by holding Claire's hand : )

We were just running all over the park and snagging fast passes and it was marvelous. We packed a lunch so that we could afford some Disney treats like churros and pineapple floats and ice cream sundaes on Main Street. Hilde had ice cream THREE TIMES while we were in Disneyland! But I won't tell you that because I don't want to embarrass her.

Chelsea and I took a trip on Dumbo The Flying Elephant and we had to ask a little girl to take our picture because we didn't have anyone else with us at the time. I think she got a great photo -- we all look so cute!

Don't worry, we closed the place down. We stayed and played until about 11:30pm and then stopped at an ice cream parlor on the way out for a late-night snack. There was still a little shopping to be done post-ice cream so we went out to the Wonderful World of Disney store and shopped until nearly 1am!!!! 15+ hours at Disneyland -- well done! I drove us all home while everyone else snoozed : )

Sadly, Claire and Hilde had to leave to drive home to Seattle the next day but Chelsea and I still had some time to enjoy her swimming pool and her adorable niece, Kenzie.

Since Rachel just happened to be in Pasadena on spring break, we got to meet up with her on Friday. It was so lovely to see her! How random though -- I live in Seattle, she lives in Hawaii and we met up in Southern California... fancy that.

My time in Beverly Hills with the kids was, actually, quite relaxing. We stayed in a lovely, and rather large home, with Toby's grandma and mostly spent time with family. On Saturday we went to a Persian New Year Party -- the kids were pretty overwhelmed so we didn't stay long but the food was lovely -- and later went to a cute little park, where I was told to watch for celebrities but I didn't see any : ) On Sunday we went to Venice Beach to hang out with Toby's aunt, uncle and grandpa. The rest of the time we were at the house just doing whatever. Toby spent a lot of time outside on his bike and in the swimming pool.

And Miss Serena was just as cute as can be, all the time : )

****

One of the best parts of vacation is always coming home. Flying into Seattle is just beautiful. The first thing I noticed when I spotted the city was that the fire-boat was out with all of it's big water spouts on. It looked incredible from the sky. What a cool city we have. I doubt that any other city you fly into would have ferry boats AND a gigantic fire-boat fountain. Steven picked me up at the airport yesterday and it was SO good to see him!!! I think I should always take him with me on vacations from now on. That was a long time to be gone. He brought me m & ms. What a sweetheart. We went to Sushiland for lunch and then to the Arboretum for a lovely walk. We saw TWO bald eagles at the park!! What a wonderful welcome back to Seattle. Following the park we went back to my house for a little chill time -- aka food network shows with Tara and THEN we went out for dinner. Sort of. Actually, we got to do a tasting with the catering company we are using for the wedding. Free food. And tasty too. Get excited. We had some leftover Christmas movie tickets so we saw How to Train Your Dragon. I HIGHLY recommend this film!!! We really enjoyed it. Toothless is pretty much the cutest/coolest dragon ever.


I'm off to get Paige from the airport! She's spending Easter weekend with my fam so we can work on wedding stuff -- I can't wait to spend time with her!!