Hello! I'm finally getting a free moment to sit down and put some photos up ... It's been, as usual, a hectic month. Here's our Halloween Jack-o-lantern, of which we were very proud. We got a pumpkin-carving kit this year, complete with a special color-changing light! Oooooooo...

We took a field trip one Sunday to IKEA because our roommate Kellyn had NEVER HEARD OF IT. We just couldn't let this travesty go unheeded. It was a fun day - our housemates Chiara and Aaron joined in too. (Chance is taking the picture.)

Thanksgiving is actually tomorrow, but we celebrated early at the House with a potluck on the 13th. Everyone made very tasty food and we all were stuffed.

Aaron made this amazing pumpkin pie. I'm still dreaming about it...

A couple of our roommates ended up having a pillow fight - a good use for all of those random throw pillows that normally live behind the couch. Aaron eventually put a wire basket around his head like a helmet and attacked Kaela with a vengeance! I think in the end it was a draw.

Our latest activity was taking a couple of housemates to see the Supersuckers, a local rock band who put on an amazing (but very loud and VERY late) show at Neumo's. This is where famous Seattle bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam used to play back in the "good old days." We had fun but we couldn't hear anything the next day!

I don't think I've posted a photo of our glorious sunset view yet. This is what we see out of our window in the evening. It's hard to see, but there is a beautiful mountain range on the horizon. Seattle really is pretty when it's not raining!

Hello! It's been over a month since I posted anything - we have been so busy with moving into our new place, settling down and starting school that I haven't even had time to look at my photos, much less post them. But now I'm finally getting around to it. Here's our new house -

We love our roommates. We're quite an international house - here's the white board with the announcement for our most recent House Potluck, and everyone contributed a language - as you can see, we're a very multi-lingual house! In fact, most of the people in the house speak German, which is great for us!

The potluck was very lively and lots of fun. (Here we all are in the kitchen.)

So. Our big activities of the last month - first, there was the bachelorette party for my cousin, Karly, who got married on September 24th. It was in central Washington, a couple hours' drive from Seattle. The landscape there is really different from ours - it's dry and hilly.

Here's the cute little cabin we stayed in - it was very cozy and had beautiful scenery.

Here are my cousins Lisa and Karly (the bride) and Gillia, my sis.

Day of the wedding ... here is Gil (my sister) putting the finishing touches on one of the wedding cakes. My sisters were solely responsible for the 7 cheesecakes and they were absolutely AMAZING. Everyone was impressed with how they looked and how they tasted, too ...

Here's where they had the ceremony - it was really beautiful, with candles and everything.

Here's Gil realizing that one of the cakes had cracked in half during the course of the night. Don't worry, it all turned out okay and they tasted great!!

At the end of September we celebrated my birthday at Chance's family's house.

It was a "good luck" day - there was a gorgeous rainbow across the water.

Later the sky turned these amazing orange and blue colors - it was really a crazy weather day!

Earlier this month we went with our friends Jenn and Chris to Vancouver. Here we are in Stanley Park, a gorgeous green space with water views and ample frisbee-playing areas...

It's lovely to just walk along the shore and see the mountains and the skyline.

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There were also lots of Canada Geese. Go figure.

Vancouver has an amazing Chinatown. We love to go to this one certain shop and buy things, simply because the woman behind the counter is so pushy and it's fun to bargain with her. Chance decided to buy this strange rice-wrap - it was filled with bean paste and didn't taste very good (hence his face). :)

It wouldn't be a Vancouver trip without a visit to "Cupcakes" (guess what they sell?). Their cakes look amazing too!

We also checked out the library. It's gorgeous - built in this neo-roman-colloseum style ... Vancouver is really beautiful.

A couple of weekends ago I joined my family to celebrate my Grampa's 89th birthday (Gil helped blow out all those candles)! It was lots of fun to see my relatives, many of whom I haven't seen in a year ...

Last weekend we hung out with my parents. They took us to the Ballard Locks - one of Seattle's famous waterways.

The Locks were built in the 1920's, so they have really neat art-deco buildings. It was sunset and everything was very calm and pretty.

It has been quite the month.

Hello again ... it's been a while since the last post, because, as you'll see, we've been very busy! I spent the first week and a half of September at my parent's house in North Bend (see previous entry). It's so beautiful there - here's Mt. Si at sunset.

My sisters and I took a lot of lovely walks around the neighborhood. The horses and donkey in one of the neighbors' fields are very friendly (or hungry!).

It's so nice to be back in a place where there's a piano. It was my great-grandmother's and we all love playing it! Here's my sister Gillia giving a private concert for her cat, Henry (who's lying in the brown chair).

Meanwhile, Chance was at his family's home in Bremerton. I visited for a couple of days too - his grandparents live right on a beautiful beach on Puget Sound. Here are Chance and his Grampa feeding the ducks ...

Grandma enjoyed the company of the grandkids, plus a visit from her daughter Nanette, mother to cousin Gabe who visited us in Berlin!

It was fun to see the cousins together - of course, much silliness ensued when I insisted on a family photo shoot --

Finally last week we made our first foray back into Seattle life - we visited the University of Washington to take care of some bureaucratic things and also took a very pleasant walk around the beautiful campus.

Here's our new street - lined with chestnut trees. They're beautiful but the nuts fall quite fast and unexpectedly from the trees and it actually seems quite dangerous sometimes!

Of course a trip to Seattle wouldn't be complete without a stop at our very favorite cafe in the whole world, the Joe Bar! They've added a few new things to the menu and put up a very attractive price board, but otherwise we are very happy to say that absolutely nothing's changed. And that's as it should be.

When it's sunny in Seattle, you can see Mount Rainier, one of the nation's tallest peaks, quite clearly. Here we are on the aptly named Rainier Avenue...

Last Saturday we took on the task of moving all of our stuff out of storage and into our new living quarters in a big house in the University District. Luckily all of my siblings were along for the adventure and made everything incredibly easy and enjoyable! Here's my sister Gillia showing off her incredible rope tying abilities.

Here's my brother Kyall making a terrible face for the camera as he and Chance move our mattress upstairs. I think there was a lot of shoving in the stairwell, but it made it up two floors!

Now we're pretty much settled in in our new home ... here's our wonderful friend (and housemate and landlord) Paul, channelling Jackson Pollack as he gets creative with the basement floor. Love it!

Hello! Well, we made it home. And customs and everything went so smoothly that we were almost out before our families got there to meet us! My sisters painted this lovely banner for us.

First thing we did was have a great family dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant. From the left - my sister Gillia, me, Chance's sis Jeanette, her friend Lee, Chance's mom Kris, Chance, his sister Elyse, and my sister-in-law, Candace.

I'm staying at my parents' house in North Bend, which is about 25 miles east of Seattle, in the foothills of the Cascade mountains.

I went for a nice walk around my parents' neighborhood and noticed that the leaves are already turning ... is fall really that close?

On Friday we got the treat of a day trip with our friend Ulf. We drove about an hour south to the town of "Lutherstadt Wittenberg," former home of the great reformer himself.

First stop was a medieval castle, Burg Rabenstein.

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