2014 highlights

Single best thing: baby H!

Best personal decision: quitting my TT job

Best professional accomplishment: affiliation (senior research fellow) & hired to teach at local university

Best professional decision: turning down a sales/marketing job at an educational software company

Best trip: seattle & Olympic peninsula with the whole family

Best meal (restaurant): Parkside for brother's rehearsal dinner

Best meal (home cooked): Wild pork carnitas

Best dessert (restaurant): Nutella pot de creme at foreign & domestic

Best dessert (home cooked): LTC's "failed" chocolate cake with chocolate ganache

Best party: brother's wedding!

Tastiest breakfast experience: fancy kolache pop-up shop at foreign & domestic 

Best coffee: TFB latte with tweed coffee

Weekend highlights

Beautiful, beautiful weather here on Saturday - one day of sunshine and warmth between cold & rainy and bitterly cold. We headed to the local elementary school to play ball with the dog, let the baby crawl around and watch other kiddos and soak up the sunshine. After that we headed to a natural baby store for wool diaper covers (we need a new nighttime diaper routine) and to try out baby carriers. We had great customer service, got to try several things out and got to buy local. (I almost always succumb to the convenience of Amazon). We ended up with a great carrier and lovely, soft wool pants. 

We were supposed to head out of town this weekend to the ranch, but ended up changing plans. After the busyness of the holidays it was really nice to rest up at home. My parents generously offered to watch H on Saturday night at their house so we could go out. So thankful for family that lives just a few blocks away! We saw an excellent movie – the immitation game – at a fun place that serves dinner during your movie. Bottomless popcorn, two great beers (Green flash hophead Red for me), a blue cheese burger, Caesar salad, and a boozy milkshake! Indulgent, but not too indulgent!

Sunday morning had us all up bright and early, but we made the best of it by taking a family field trip to the grocery store. We have a lovely local market with an attached café. I often go on weekend mornings alone and see lots of parents (particularly dads) with kiddos. We had a lovely breakfast with pastries and coffee and then did our weekly shop. We got to exchange glances with other parents who had likely been up for hours too. I even got complimented on my boots by another mom and we saw one of my sister's friends in the checkout line.

Not sure what it says about me that both of our weekend highlights involved shopping. I think the lesson is that during this time of life, we might as well make our errands a fun thing. Since there's not a lot of time for anything else at this stage, might as well make the routine things fun.  I hope we can make that morning grocery trip a regular gig, at least on the weekends we are in town.