Tour de Starbucks 2009

Welcome to the Werner version of Black Friday. Tradition holds that Steph and I hit downtown Seattle for 12 hours of caffeine driven holiday jubilee. Specifically, we attempt to occasion every Starbucks within a 3 block radius of Westlake Center, mixing in a lot of window shopping, people watching, and a few occasional whim purchases.


Of course, we leave the kids with grandparents.... we're certain they wouldn't be interested in watching a parade, seeing Santa, and going to a movie all in the same day, so we elect not to force it upon them.

The final tally this year was 8 total coffee drinks, down 2 from last year. I guess we just got complacent when we went to dinner at Gordon & Biersch, and we have a strict Starbucks only rule, so ordering a coffee after dinner just didn't work.

For those keeping score, Steph had: a tall Peppermint Mocha latte, tall skinny vanilla latte, doppio (i.e. double shot) espresso, and a tall nonfat latte. I had a tall skinny caramel latte, doppio espresso, tall house blend drip, and tall pike place drip. We both had smoke coming out our ears at the end of the day.

My apologies once again for the sad blackberry photo quality. Please direct all complaints to Research in Motion.

Anyhow, please enjoy the photos from TDS 2009!!

Big thanks to Starbucks for doing the little things to make our day a success!

first latte of the day, at the parade

yeah, Kenzie would have just hated this parade with Raggedy Ann, a winter queen, and Santa Claus

the oft referenced American consumer

Making friends with Seattle's finest. When I explained our mission to drink coffee from every Starbucks in the vicinity, he told me "I hope you're almost done"... what-EVS!!!

Westlake Center Christmas Tree!

Nice to see others finding their own little way to help get this economy back on track

Pacific Place, loaded with shoppers, fake snow, and holiday cheer

Not our "greenest" day!

California 2009 (aka Steph's once a year blog submission)

Well, what can I say? We could not have asked for a more perfect visit to our California relatives. We were able to visit Great Grandpa and Great Grandma, and a few of their friends and extended family, plus a special visit from Great-Aunt Julie. It was a fun filled visit full of lots of hugs and bonding time.

The kids were so excited to see their Great Grandparents! I think this may have been their first visit down to California where they both remembered exactly who we were going to see, so they were both thrilled. They were also thrilled to cuddle, talk, read, and entertain their Great Grandparents as well as the revolving door of additional visitors. We did have a morning of shopping to burn off some energy (and for Mommy and Grandma to visit our favorite shopping area in Walnut Creek). I think they had a blast acting very challenging, and Mommy and Grandma just wanted to get out of our favorite shopping spot and end the stress and embarassment. The kids did get to burn energy when their Great Aunt Julie arrived though. There was arm wrestling, ballet dancing, tickling, wrestling, "horseback" rides. You name it, their aunt was more than happy to oblige- and they all had a blast.

We had dinner out at Marie Calendars, which provided us with the opportunity to bring home tasty pie which the kids liked. And we were reminded again how much the kids LOVE Chinese food for our dinner in the next night. Considering how picky they can be, I have never seen the kids down as much food as they did that night. I get asked all the time if the kids are part Chinese, maybe there's something to this...

The biggest event of the visit was the loss of Jackson's first tooth. Technically, his second tooth lost, but this one lacked a fall and a lot of crying. It popped out without notice during dinner and was found on the floor after Jackson realized it was missing after dinner. He chose to hold onto it until we got home because it was "so cute". Number two (three) fell out with a little more drama on the ride to the airport. Luckily, the tooth fairy makes all end well no matter how it begins. So, 2 shiny gold dollars showed up under Jackson's pillow his first morning back in Sammamish (I think about 6:00 am after a forgetful night to be exact).

Mackenzie started to write letters in her name for the first time and learned how to spell her name on our visit. She was entertaining and charming as always.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for hosting our visit, and thank you Aunt Julie for making the drive down to see us. It was so wonderful to see you all, and we can't wait to get back!

bottleneck

blog content is currently backed up... waiting for Steph to blog about the Cali trip. I think the delay is because she is crafting a masterpiece of wit, whimsy, and sincerity.


I can't wait, it's probably going to be awesome!!

Halloween 2009

I'm a little late on posting pictures... my bad:)

This is the first year that both kids have been big enough to do a full round of trick or treating without needing to be carried at some point, so we were able to net a pretty impressive haul. This year Mackenzie was a beautiful Snow White and Jackson was a very intimidating Clone Trooper. And we love the energy in our neighborhood for Halloween. This year we counted 153 trick or treaters that came to our house!

Pumpkin carving

The kids watched Michael Jackson Thriller for the first time, part of the Halloween build up

One of Steph's favorite parts of Halloween... the one day a year where Mackenzie can wear makeup!

Finally on their way to score some candy!!

Stay tuned for the next post... Steph's once a year blogging effort, following her trip to California with the kids to visit their great grandparents.

Ghosts of Halloween Past

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009...

STAY TUNED!!!!