{ The (Un)Traditional Seattle Thanksgiving }

My brother and his awesome wife Chele (Chay-lee) didn't disappoint in providing an excellent Holiday, once again, this year. Seattle Thanksgiving came about as I was debating where I would spend the holiday. My brother called amid my vacillating and won me over with the line "You'll break tradition if you don't come, dude!" As it has it, spending Thanksgiving in Seattle the previous year had started a tradition, so, not to disrupt the long-standing behavior, I went to Seattle for the holiday. It was an excellent choice.

I selected two themes that adjectify the three-day trip...

#1: nontraditional.
#2: awesomely family-erific

Trip highlights included a drive along Lake Washington, a visit to Kite park, Thanksgiving breakfast at the TV-acclaimed and sister-recommended Top Pot Donuts (it's a palindrome just in case you didn't notice), guitar time with my brother Andy, an enchilada feast for Thanksgiving dinner, bonding with my sweet niece and nephew, and a delightful lunch with my dear friend Bonnie who's living in Seattle right now.

Here's the recap/representation in picture form:

This is the view from inside the Seattle airport. My first glance out the window yielded a view of no less than 150 ever green trees at the same time. So rich.


My brother and niece at a small bridge over Lake Washington the morning I drove in. Not the best picture of my niece or my brother, but it captures the moment. We had stopped for a second on our way home to walk around and take in the fresh, Seattle air.


Thanksgiving breakfast at Top Pot donuts. This place came highly recommended from my sister Tracey (despite her never having gone there), and it didn't disappoint. This photo is of my brother ordering a dozen. It's a pretty poshy place, I'll tell you what. It feels like a high-end coffee shop inside; stacked with book shelves, dark-wood floors and beautiful-looking donuts.


My niece Anza admiring said beautiful Top Pot donuts.


Me, Chele and Anza in front of Top Pot. The family that eats donuts together stays together.


They weren't so beautiful after we cut them into pieces so we could try each one, but they were still delicious :)


The non-traditional, but definitely yummy Thanksgiving-dinner enchiladas. Low hassle, high enjoyment -- thanks Che :)


My cute niece Anza eating a pear. The photo is blurry (as were a lot from this trip -- sad), but check out those blue eyes, huh?


My nephew Mojave. Again, the photo is admittedly blurry, but I couldn't bring myself to post any of the more-clear ones; this one just captured his happiness so well, in or out of focus. (He looks kind of like a baby drone in the other ones I took, and that's just simply not a fair representation of this happy little guy.)


Hanging Christmas lights in matching hats with my brother. Another tradition continued -- we did this last year too, but I'm not 100% positive the matching hats were involved last year.


Mojave and my niece's doll, Daisy, playing with the blocks together.


My nephew Mojave licking my brother's eye -- Andy could not stop laughing. Slobbery eye. ick :)


My brother Andy during our evening of guitar (I tried to upload a video, but the format is wrong. lame.) We played his electric for the night. My brother rocks it at guitar, no doubt about it, but can I just tell you that my playing the electric guitar made me feel automatically 100% better at the guitar than I actually am? I'm not sure why, but man...electrics just have something to them that sounds great...


During lunch time with my friend Bonnie, we stopped into Anthropologie (over in the University Village in Downtown Seattle) only to discover the SADDEST succulent I have seen in my entire life. This was Bonnie trying to make a sad face to match the plant's attitude.


My parting look right before my brother and family dropped me off at the airport for my morning flight home on Saturday. This is my cute little niece, Anza, in her pink, footsy leopard pajamas eating a morning nectarine. Priceless.

{ The great penny squish }

The company I work for just moved into a brand new building that is located conveniently close to (within throwing distance of) the railroad tracks that run through Utah Valley. While I would usually think being located near railroad tracks would not be counted as a good thing, it is DEFINITELY a bonus when your fun co-worker, Natalie, suggests that you take a ten-minute work break to go squish pennies on the railroad tracks :)

We made our way out to the tracks a little after lunch today with four pennies and a nickel for squishing. The escapade included four trips through the soggy, gross marsh that separates our building from the tracks (ick), balancing on the train tracks while enjoying the fresh afternoon sun, and hunting for our coins when we returned to collect them once the afternoon train passed (the wheels/vibration of the train toss the coins off the tracks). Who knew work breaks could be so adventurous in American Fork?


Natalie and Jen making their way through the reeded bog to get to the tracks.


Natalie placing coins a little ways down the track from me.


Jen taking time out to admire the railroad ties. I think she was saying something like "You guys...check out how old these look! These things are amazing!"


Our smooshed pennies on the tracks after the train passed (we put them back on after we found them to see how they fit flush with the metal). If you look close, you can still see the Lincoln Memorial printed on the backside of all the pennies even though they were totally flat and smooth once the train was done with them -- super cool and unexpected. (note: Sadly, the nickel was nowhere to be found when we went to collect our treasures).


The coins left circular marks on the tracks where they had been between the wheels and the tracks during the flattening process. They looked like little, scattered polka dots :)


The view from the tracks looking away from our office. We're kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but it's really beautiful.


Me, Natalie and Jen with the tracks

{ Birds of an office feather }

You know you spend too much time with your boss when you start showing up to work on multiple occasions wearing the same color palette/the guy-girl versions of the same outfit. Here was Monday's:


Me and Mike at the office.
Pants: Black jeans
Everything else: A mixture of green, gray, black and white (minus accessories)

{ Dear Threadless... }

...Please reprint the Hooray Cholesterol t-shirt. I need to own it. Thanks.

{ Unibomber biker }

Me and Kates decided to ride our bikes to run errands on Saturday, and by the time we got out of our condo area, my ears were already icicles. I put on my hood to remedy the situation only to discover that gold pilot glasses + grey sweatshirt hood = unibomber look alike. It was a hard toss up -- get a cold-ear headache or look like the unibomber, but in the end, keeping the ears warm totally won out. It was a super beautiful ride though...

{ Nicki Schmidt the singer }

Last night I guitared and sang at my church's stake talent show. I guess each ward in the stake was supposed to have a ward talent show sometime in the last little bit and then send the best of the best to the stake talent show last night. Our ward, however, did not have the talent show and therefore did not have a ward representative for the stake talent show. So (after some talking tos from my roommate, Hilary) I volunteered for the job. I always get nervous singing in front of a bunch of people, but I figure it's good for me. And it was fun. I sang a song I wrote last summer called Worth It. #1 reason I like singing my own songs? I can sing them however I want becuase I made them up :)

I posted the video Hilary took below. I can only hear the audio on my computer, so if you can see it too, awesome (and please take note of my new, cute $8 shirt that I scored at Ross on Thursday).

{ Excuse me... }

What's that you say, Mr. sign? Gas is only $1.90 in Draper?! Wow...(in a great way)...

{ Perfection in a Cup }

I don't know if there is a better dessert than Red Mango frozen yogurt. Honestly...the superlative of a yogurt experience. Here's the evidence:

1. The perfected Original-yogurt flavor of the frozen yogurt makes for a delicious sour-sweet base -- this flavor is WAY better than any "flavored" frozen yogurt you may want to convince yourself to get. Trust me.

2. Fresh mango, raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries and strawberries add the ideally-sweet, low-calorie, banging-with-natural-goodness flavor accent to the already delectable yogurt base.

3. If you text "Mango" to 415-13, the company sends you a text that entitles you to $1 off your Red Mango purchase.

Need I say more? If you've got one near you, you should definitely look into this.


Me and Kates enjoying the goods last week. Thank you Mike Dobson for giving me the heads up on this place.

{ Google insight }

Me and Kates googled our names tonight, just for fun. The first hit -- my facebook profile (nice). Second hit -- the one-line-poetry site of a 16-year-old German girl named Nicki Schmidt (same spelling and everything). I was inspired by this little line she had written:

"Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart."

Simple and brilliant. What a smart little 16-year-old. Advice taken.

{ Staying up doing nothing }

This is me...at 12:15 this morning, wondering why on earth (when at 10pm I was ready for bed) I had stayed up from 11-midnight looking at friends' blogs. It's not like the blogs wouldn't be there in the morning; or two days from now when I may have more time to spend aimlessly looking at photos and reading thoughts. I don't know why I get sucked in, but I DO. And I think this happens more often than not. I get sucked into looking at photos of some sort before bed when I really should be sleeping. I mean, I gotta work hard for the money. And how can I work hard for the money when I'm preoccupied with working hard not to be sleepy? I rest my case.

I should just make a rule or something that involves no picture viewing before bed on weeknights. Or just stop caring about my loved ones. One of the two.

{ Halloween '08 = rad }

Let's be honest...I'm usually not a big Halloween celebrator. Dressing up? meh. Halloween parties? smish. But, to my pleasant surprise, this may have been the most fun Halloween of my adult life thus far. I didn't really do anything THAT amazingly out of the ordinary or cool or anything, however...I DID have a sweet costume and I WAS with some of my favorite people the whole night -- so that could have helped. Whatever it was, it was just a really enjoyable 24 hours this year. It began with me designing a killer brochure at work and ended with me dancing the night away in a barn and subsequently sipping non-alcoholic, kiwi-apple cocktails and eating poshy hors dourves at a lounge in downtown Provo. It was just enjoyable, you know?

Me and Kates rocked the Mario and Luigi costumes this year (the hats were homemade and the mustaches were surprisingly not itchy). My favorite outfit of the night, however, was sported by my friend Amy Walton as pictured below -- Fanny the Walmart greeter. Gotta love it.


Me and Kates tried to get some good video-game, jumping shots, but we couldn't get the timing right. This was the best effort.


Here's Amy. Who would have thought this cute, little blonde mommie could pull off a buck-toothed Walmart greeter? So awesome.


Amy's brother is a dentist, and I guess he made everyone in his family snaggly teeth for Christmas three years ago. Amy integrates them into her costume every year.


Our buddy, Todd, was Popeye -- sweet, huh?


Me and Kates with Mike (Steve Zissou from Life Aquatic) and Marie (rocking the Celtics jersey)