Bucket List #81 | Windemere Cup

I'm really not sure why, but I had heard of the Windemere Cup prior to moving to Seattle. It's a fairly prestigious rowing competition held yearly on Lake Washington.

It was so random, but the whole thing is free and we thought it would be fun to go cheer on the Huskies. We were pleasantly surprised by how fun it ended up being! There were thousands of people gathered, the weather was beautiful, and the final race was quite exciting! (The New Zealand olympic team barely edged out UW)

The weather was great and the event was set up with all kinds of fun extras - a bouncy house for the kids, food trucks, flags, and a photo booth.

We arrived pretty early, and got a decent spot, but I wish we'd have gotten there just like 20 minutes sooner and been closer to the water. That way we could have avoided some of the rude college students who showed up later. :)

Overall, this is such a fun event, and will we probably go back if we're around next year. We give it:

Bucket List #97 | Cherry Blossoms

Washington is famous for a lot of things, but one of them is cherries. Before we came here, I didn't even like cherries. I never really have. They seemed like a lot of work to eat around the pits - and then they are usually just mushy or really sour and not worth it.

But that was all before we came to the land of amazing cherries. They are enormous, sold at tons of roadside stands, and I'm telling you - they are the best cherries I've ever tasted. I'm completely converted. I just wish they were cheaper!

Anyway, before you can have the delicious Bing and Ranier cherries that they sell here, you need to have cherry blossoms! And one of the best places around Seattle to admire them is right on the UW campus. I happened to have an afternoon doctor's appointment this week right when the trees were in full bloom, so we decided to come early and make a picnic out of it. :)

No joke, this quad is gorgeous. I mean, the campus is gorgeous in every season, but it was over the top with the trees in bloom.

And oh man, they smelled just as good as they looked...

I was amazed at how many people came to enjoy the day with us.

If you can catch them in the right season and get a nice, sunshiny day, I would say the blossoms on UW campus are well worth the visit.

At least, we thought so!

The Godparents

When Walt first went to daycare, we had to list an emergency contact that would be allowed to pick him up if we were ever unable to. After some thought, I called my cousin Molly and asked her if I could list her, since they lived the closest to us at the time. Ever since then, we've joked that she and her husband, Jordan are Walt's godparents. :) They are an excellent choice, I must say.

When they called and asked us if we had plans over President's Day weekend, we were thrilled to have them for a visit! They were fabulous house guests and even made us lunch on Sunday.

It was Jordan's first time in our town, so we did some of the classics:

They were great sports and even tried Peruvian food with us.

For the record, not the greatest Peruvian food we've had....

We also did a lot of lounging, Olympics watching, and treat-consuming.

I'm so glad they came to visit. It was a perfect, relaxing way to spend our vacation weekend, and so awesome to reconnect with our family!! Love you guys, come again soon! I swear, it's a lot warmer in the springtime...:)

Friday Harbor! Bucket List #9 & #53 | Lime Kiln Point + San Juan Islands

I know I sometimes complain about Landon's travels for school...the truth is, I'm totally jealous that he globe trots without me. Luckily, some of the time I am invited along, and those times pretty much make up for the other times when he leaves me home.

Last weekend, we were invited to a retreat for Landon's lab crew at the university. "Retreat" in this case, was code for "all expense paid weekend at Friday Harbor with two hours of work thrown in."

The San Juan Islands are famous around here for being gorgeous - and for whale watching. So obviously we've had them on our bucket list from the beginning. We leaped at the chance to explore, especially with our accommodations and meals taken care of! We're on a student budget, what can I say?

We elected to go Friday night so we'd have a little more time on the island. Walt is really starting to love riding the ferry! He calls it the "big boat" and loves that he can run around and look out the windows. I'm with him there - I'm starting to realize that air travel is the least comfortable and most expensive way to get around. Trains and boats are pretty much awesome.

We treated ourselves to a nice seafood dinner right on the shore, picked up a few groceries and headed off to our cozy cabin in the woods.

I wish I had more pictures of the facility, but I guess I was just enjoying myself too much! UW owns a pretty big patch of beach-front property on San Juan Island, with condos, lab space, offices, an indoor tide pool, a private pier with rowboats and kayaks, a full-service dining hall, game room, outdoor playground, and lecture hall. There is probably even more there that I just didn't have time to notice...they even have wi-fi in the cabins!

We spent Saturday morning just exploring and wound up at Lime Kiln Point, another item on our bucket list. This is a famous whale-watching beach where you can often see orcas. Sadly for us, October is not the prime season to find them, and it was too cold to stay all day. :) We'll definitely be back and hope for a peek! This is the part of the trip where for some crazy reason, Walt decided to be a grump. He wasn't seeing the awesomeness of our trip, and just wanted to hunker down somewhere and play with the cell phone. It was kinda cold, I'll give him that. Mostly, it was a good reminder for me that you can't control your kids' attitude or force them to have fun. You can only offer experiences and hope they soak up something, and have good memories when they look back someday. I imagine that my childhood was somewhat less idealist that I recall. My mom probably has many stories just like this one - but I don't remember it that way at all.

Sometimes it's good to capture these kinds of memories, too :)

We also found a random alpaca farm on the island. It was a little taste of Peru in almost Canada. Good times. :)

It was a short weekend, and we only caught a glimpse of what the San Juans have to offer. We'll definitely have to plan another trip in the spring. But we were grateful for the opportunity to spend some time together and see some more of Washington. Walt was just glad they had chocolate milk in the cafeteria.

The Prelim

At the end of his first year of studies at UW, Landon had to participate in a formal evaluation process with all of his peers. They call it the "Preliminary Examination," although it's more like an oral defense.

He spent his summer combing through research articles, working on lab results, and preparing a paper that was submitted to his committee. Then, last Friday, he gave a 20 minute presentation and was then questioned for an hour! The whole thing sounded completely exhausting to me.

Landon is such a great example to me of what hard work, a good attitude, and treating people with respect can accomplish. He always blows people away in this type of setting because he is brilliant, but also because he gives a lot of thought to his work and is always very prepared to meet challenges head-on. He's also not afraid to ask his own questions.

Needless to say, he passed his prelim. :) Walter and I are so proud of him! We took him out for a celebratory lunch...and then had brownies for dinner. Don't judge, it was kind of a big deal.

One year down, 3 (ish?) to go! We're on our way...

Real Science

Since we were already downtown after Tugboat Storytime (see previous post), we decided to meet Landon for lunch.

These two boys are inseparable. They both have a contagious enthusiasm for life. Walt was so excited to see his Dad in the middle of the day. And so was I! After lunch, Landon graciously took us on a tour of his lab. Although we hang out on campus quite often (I cannot get enough of it, it's so beautiful), we had never seen where the magic happens, so to speak.

He took us through his whole process, and it was really incredible! It's hard to describe, but I just felt in awe of him the whole time. This guy is pretty much a genius.

Sometimes, I think we get into a pattern - we live life, Landon goes to school every day, I tell people he is working on his PhD...it's all routine. We forget how amazing it is that we're here. Landon has already had the opportunity for more education than about 70% of Americans get, and now he's getting even more. The things we are doing here and now are going to bless our lives forever. And the science itself is pretty fantastic! Other people watch news about the kinds of things Landon gets to discover in a real science lab on a daily basis.

I know he would tell you it's no big deal. He sits and polishes rocks for a good portion of his day, and watches the machines to make sure they function right, and spends tedious hours learning about process and recording data. But to someone who isn't there every day, I have to tell you, it is impressive.

His lab looks like a documentary (or an episode of The Big Bang Theory:)). And sometimes it hits me. Landon works so hard, and is so smart, has literally traveled the world and studies with some of the foremost thinkers in his field -- and he still makes the time to keep us, his family, as his top priority.

We are so proud of this guy and everything he is accomplishing. Go team go!