Why didn't I think of that...

Roomba Frogger!

Some pictures

Teaching Garrett the finer points of protecting the blue line.



Spencer's "Special Week" at pre-school.



Garrett on the slide.



Haven't posted random pics in a while...

Our first cache

Went out this morning as a family for our first cache - a little out of the way piece of property in Snoqualmie. Took us a little while just to find the area, then took us a while once we were there. After some poking around, Amy finally spotted the cache, and Spencer thought the whole experience of "looking for treasure" was cool.

Found our second one a little later by wandering to the south side of I-90 in an area I didn't even know existed but offered beatuful views of the Cascades. This time it was just Spencer and I and we found it pretty easily. Anything that combines electronic gadgets and exercise can't be too bad in my book.



I was really impressed with how accurate my little GPS device was - both times the device put me within 10 feet of the actual cache. I did learn that the device can lose its signal with the satellites pretty easily, for example wandering close to trees.

All in all we had fun and I can see us really getting into this.

A little taste of home

One of the things missing out in Seattle is good food. On the positive side, Amy and I have eaten in far more than we ever have in our 10 years together which is a good thing. On the flip side, there are no "hey how about a great meal at xxx" restaurants that we get to treat ourselves to when we need a night out of the house. Worse yet, many crappy restaurants are extremely expensive. To be sure, there are some good seafood places, but outside that there is little to get excited about.

So we brought the good food to us last weekend, where we feasted on some Edwardo's Deep Dish Pizza shipped to us from Chicago. Mmmmm, good eatin'. Our neighbors are from Chicago, and we invited their family over. The kids got to eat frozen microwave pizza (although as you can see in the pic below Spencer and Jack pretty much played Buzz Lightyear and skipped eating) while the adults feasted on Edwardo's infamous Stuffed Spinach and traded stories about our days in Chi-town. Turns out our neighbor lived in the same building I lived in back in 93-94 when I first moved to Chicago. How freaky is that? So, Dad, what are the odds of THAT happening? =)

A new hobby, maybe

I am going to start trying Geocaching. I first heard about it a couple years ago in Indiana, but there was nothing nearby to "find" and I wasn't ambitious enough to start my own, so I let it go.

Washington, however, is a different story where people don't watch football (egads!) but rather spend a lot of time outdoors (which I think is against my religion). So, I looked up the site again, and voila! Lots of caches around Snoqualmie.

So, I took a look at Amazon and found what looked to be
a decently-featured GPS unit for under $100
. Received it yesterday, played with it outside (I'm sure some neighbors were curious what I was doing in the middle of the Greenspace staring at a small yellow box) and am psyched about giving this a try.