Pig Roasting Commence!

Today is the big party day!  Dad got was up starting the fire at 6:30 this morning, pig went on at 8:00 and the party started at 3:00.  We had such a great day seeing so many people and visiting.  Thank you to everyone who came out to visit, but most of all, thank you to dad and Lynn for hosting and roasting!

This is how our morning started.  Look at that stink face.  Classic Kylie.

Eric whipped up some cute fall decorations.

He even hacked down some corn stocks for ambiance.

Last night's jack-o-lanterns are today's party decor!

Squash on the vine, fall on the farm.

Lynn and my niece on a pumpkin ride!

Sisters!  Tiffany and I pose for the camera.  A sliver of Kylie is present as well.

Follow the pumpkin brick road...

Pitmaster dad roasting the main entree.

Kylie and her cousin.  Kylie is still a grouch.

The most adorable cupcakes ever made by Eric's cousin Holly.

The Pumpkin Carvery!

Tomorrow my dad is hosting a big party to welcome Miss Kylie to the world!  He will be roasting a pig (farm grown, of course) and we expect between 60-100 people to come out and say hi.  My sister, Tiffany, and all 3 of her kids are coming too!  I haven't seen Tiffany in about 4 years, so I am so excited to catch up and introduce her to Kylie!

For the party La Familia Oakley was put in charge of decorating, which meant mastermind Eric could let his Halloween decorating ideas run wild!  We stopped by the store and picked up a bunch of pumpkins, squash and gourds to carve, and some other items, such as tic-tacs and ping pong balls, to augment our decorations.  It was so much fun!  Even my 92 year old grandma got in on the carving action!

Eric made this awesome guy as an example of the fun that could be had carving a gourd.

Cookies and (really good) wine, an excellent source of carving fuel!

My nephew demonstrating how the plastic fangs work.

The actual carving was so much fun, we forgot to take pictures!  As you can imagine, it was a pumpkin gut covered delight.  :)  Here are the spooky finished products in the dark.

And here they are by day!  The party will be so well decorated!!

These are the pumpkins Eric & I carved.  Mine is the one that looks like a kid made it, and Eric's is the one that looks like Martha Stewart made it!

Here's a close up of some of the funny gourds and pumpkins that were made.  There was no glue, so all of the accessories are actually inlaid.  Wowza, that's some pumpkin talent!!

All Vacations Must Come to an End...

It's finally come, the last day of vacation.  Tomorrow we have to go home, but today we have one last day!  On the agenda today is to drive back to Seattle, visit Eric's aunt and have dinner with friends.  The rest we will fill in as we go!  :)

First stop, breakfast!  The smell wafting out of this place was to die for.  Why didn't we eat every meal here??

The goods...baked goods that is.  That blueberry pastry was pretty much the best thing ever.

Quick, wave goodbye to 'squatch!

Finally, back to the Sasquatch-free safety of Seattle.  You know that gorgeous weather we had on the coast yesterday?  Well, it's now gracing Seattle.  It's a beautiful fall day!

What you are seeing now is a classic Seattle lunch.  The iceberg lettuce salad with unknown white dressing, two ice cream scoops of Japanese sticky rice and chicken teriyaki meat.  You can get this meal all over the city, and it is delightful.  This is at Eric's favorite spot, Yummy Teriyaki on Queen Anne.

After lunch it was decided that cupcakes were needed stat!  We didn't really want to put La Princecita Kylie back in her much hated car seat, so we decided to take the monorail downtown to visit the Trophy Cupcakes in Pacific Place.  Since we were already on Queen Anne, we got to have a nice stroll through Seattle Center.

Eric took this amazing shot of the Space Needle.  It could be a postcard, don't you think??

 Eric looking cool with the baby while we await the arrival of the monorail.

EMP glistening in the sun.

Here we are blasting into the future, through EMP on our way downtown!

This is my new favorite cupcake, Black Forest.  Cherries, with cherry frosting and a cherry on top.  Triple yum!

On our way back we thought about going through this new Chihuly sculpture garden by the Space Needle, but we decided we didn't want to pay for such things.  It did look pretty cool, though, through the fence.

The City of Seattle is diligently trying to replant the grass here, but their efforts are being thwarted by these pesky flying rats eating all the grass seed.  Can't they read the sign?!

One last look at the Space Needle and this totem pole before we head back.

We had a great vacation and got to see so many people!  Thank you to everyone who hosted us or came out to visit, it was really a great week.  Until next time, Seattle!

Into the Bogs With Ye!

So, for the last part of our major tourist day we checked out the local "World's Largest Frying Pan," Marsh's Free Museum and the Cranberry Museum!  So much doings!!

Here is Eric and Kylie posing with the giant frying pan.  It is a replica of what was once the world's largest frying pan.  It was made for Long Beach's annual Razor Clam festival and was actually functional!   Though the original is long gone, the replica is still pretty fun and a classic tourist photo op.

Behold, Marsh's Free Museum!  Home of Jake the Alligator Man and millions of tons of crap for sale!

Here I am posing with an authentic wooden cowboy!  Say Whiskey!

This was taken inside the Museum.  What do they sell here, you ask?  Why, all of this fabulousness!  I am personally eying the horse statues to pull my living room together...  

Crab mosaic, celebrating the best creature to ever grace the sea, the Dungeness Crab! 

This is a statue of a razor clam.  Eric said it was a good thing I recognized it, because he thought it was something obscene.   We've even dug razor clams before!

Our last stop of the day was to visit a cranberry bog and museum!  It was pretty interesting, we had never been bogging before.  Let the boggery begin!

Bog-peeping.  Psst, the red ones are the bogs.

Kylie and I taking in the bogness.

 

Family bog enjoyment time!

Here's a closeup of the berries growing in the bog.

These are some of Washington State University's experimental bogs.  Do you think I could go to WSU and get a degree in boggery?!  What am I waiting for!!

 

Ocean Spray Cranberries, not just from Maine!  Next time you enjoy a cranberry, it might have come from here.

On our way out we purchased a zip lock bag full of fresh cranberries for use later.  Yum...

And finally, the sun sets over the Pacific.  What a day!  I feel like we shoved about 3 days worth of activities into one day.  Thanks to Miss Kylie for keeping her crabbery to a minimum!!

Next Stop...Cape Disappointment!!

With the weather looking spectacular, we continued our touristing on Cape Disappointment.  There are two stories about the naming of this Cape.  The first story goes that in 1788 a British fur trader named John Meares was cruising down the Pacific Coast looking for folks to trade with and he got bored and turned around to go home near the end of the Cape, and totally missed "discovering" the Columbia River.  The other story says the Cape got its name from the Lewis & Clark Expedition who were totally disappointed after their western trek to find no boats and no one in the Pacific when they finally reached it.  (Thanks Wikipedia!)  Anyway, for us it was on to the next lighthouse, which included a "difficult" hike.  It was more like...odd.  It went from nature trail to Coast Guard Installation back to trail, and on and on.  Still pretty fun though.

Eric and Kylie ready for a hike!

It's getting very spooky in this here woods...

Dew in the morning.

The path, all grown over.

Spiders in the sunlight.

Be on high alert!  It's Deadman's Cove!!!

Here Squatchy-Squatch....

Oh no!  Don't fall in!!!

Look at that sky.  And twisty dead tree.  But that sky!

And there's another lighthouse.  The actual Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

Looking out over the ocean.

The view into the mouth of the Columbia River.  It really is monstrous!

The world in tiny-vision.

After the hike we went to lunch in Long Beach, where we had this obscene peanut butter pie.  It was so good, but the restaurant was totally cheaping out on us.  The pie came this way, with the end cut off.  Other signs of being totally cheap:  I received a coffee straw in my diet coke and could not drink it fast enough to get a refill or quench my thirst, my fish tacos had almost a head of iceburg lettuce cut up on it to hide the severe lack of fish, and Eric's fish and chips, though delicious, were the size of 4 frozen fish sticks for $15.  There has got to be a better way to save money then being so obviously tight-fisted with the food.  I mean, at least give a girl a whole piece of pie and a regular straw!!