How was your holiday?

We just got back from Portland this afternoon. Our thanksgiving dinner was a demonstration in excess. We also managed to work bacon into almost every single dish which is both deplorable and magnificent, no? Portland is such a great city, I can really see us living there.

So we brought the dogs down and they had a good time too though Noodle managed to o.d. on wild mushrooms and got violently ill in the house. That was disgusting, sad and funny all at the same time. On Friday we went down to the Pearl to do some shopping. I had high hopes to buy some cute clothes or housewares but everything I loved was too expensive (what a surprise :-/). We ended Friday night with drinks and several rounds of pool at a new lounge in Alberta called Soi Cowboy - the space is cute, the bartender is friendly and the food is very delicious.

That about sums up our holiday. I hope yours was full of good food and good times.
In parting I leave you with a pictorial review of the weekend:

noodle wearing rudi's wig:

on a nature walk:

fenix, ready to put away some turkey:

2 years ago on this day.........

J and I were married 2 years ago today. It felt like a big party and we all had so much fun. This shot is of us jumping the broom and it is one of my favorites from that day. These last 2 years have been so awesome and I'm looking forward to the next 50!

come read our latest endeavor

My friends and I have a new blog...

Sweet Teas

Our aim is to point out innovative style and we'll pay special attention to the funky and creative style of various brown girls that we spot on the streets of Seattle and Portland or wherever we happen to be.

i could live in sf...........

I really could. But alas it is far out of our budget to purchase a home there so we'll stay up here in the pacific northwest.

SF was really good to us. Jason and I had both been before we met each other but never together as a family. And of course this was Fenix's first time down there. I can say that we *all* had a really great time.

Where to begin.....
First day we got there, we quickly showered and jumped in the car with our friends to head over to Zeitgeist where we shared several pitchers of beer, burgers and delicious tamales with friends. Fenix bonded with the famous Tamale Lady of SF. She was really sweet and pretty infatuated with Fee. Oh and her tamales were sublime!




After Zeitgeist we headed over to another great spot in the Mission.... Bombay Icecream and Chaat. I had a scoop of mango and a scoop of coconut but there are many more exotic and delicious flavors (cardamom! sesame!!) to be had.


We stayed at our friend's house in Oakland and what a lovely house it was. Very spacious and well kept with good minimalist design. Alas I did not take many photos of the interior but we had a good time sitting in their cute and cozy backyard.


We made plans to leave Fee with a sitter so we could enjoy a night out with friends. We went to eat at Cha Cha Cha, purveyors of some very potent sangria. I don't remember much after we started our second pitcher but I know that we had a good time. Here's the view from across the street (after many glasses of the aforementioned sangria).


On Wednesday we went to Alcatraz. I was surprised at how cool it was - the weather was beautiful which made for a lovely ferry ride to and from. We saw so many interesting plants that we'd never seen before. It seems so sad that such a pretty piece of land was just a prison and military outpost.



That night was our first night on our own in our friend's house as they had headed off to more exciting things at Burning Man (maybe one day we'll get to go!). That night we went shopping at the local Trader Joe's and made a nice meal at home.

So much of our trip was food centric which makes sense since our lives are pretty much the same way. There were several things that I knew I wanted to try so we made it our business to hit those spots in the course of our travels. I'll make another post in a bit about the last couple of days of our trip.

the city by the bay

ohmygodohmygodohmygod we're having so much fun. it's awesome here.

the drive was something. we wanted to leave at 7pm, we left at 1130. that put the 14+ hour drive with too many hours with fee awake in the a.m.... but it was alright. reese took the first shift while I attempted to nap. she rocked the house and drove for 300 consecutive miles, handing off to me around 4am, deep into oregon territory. i took over and drove for the next 500 miles with stops for coffee, food, and bathroom. reese can hold it like a camel so she busted my chops every. single. time. that i had to pee. hey, i drank like 5 cups of coffee! a man's gotta pee, that's all i'm saying. all in all, we averaged 65 MPH with 32.1 MPG for the 800 mile trip.

we got hustled by bums at a rest stop, that was pretty awesome. everybody had to pee that time, so we did it and got out. his majesty needed some new clothes, too, but we just went down the road to the gas station and fee and the dogs did their business and we were on the way.

only a couple times where i had the falling-asleep-we're-all-gonna-die moments. the pre-dawn dusky non-light is murder on my eyes. when i said that to reese she was like yeah try driving through the dark with one good eye. uh, no thanks! i have to concentrate so hard to see anything that i get exhausted. on the way back we're going to pull over for that half hour and take a goddamn rest.

anyway, blah blah, drive drive, and we're here. gas is cheaper than i expected, it's about the same as in seattle.

we went out last night to zeitgeist, then for kulfi, then home to take care of the dogs and cater to his majesty's every need. the city was awesome. it felt like parts of hoboken and seattle and queens and chicago and a bunch of other places. and everybody - everybody! - was dressed like super fucking sharp, it was awesome. super chill city, too.

anyhoo, so we're here. we're going to go do some stuff. we'll post pics soon as we can.

shame on us and vacation musings

yeah yeah i know what you're thinking... we haven't posted in ages. it's a travesty. But we've had good reason. First Fenix was sick and let me tell you that the trajectory on puke from the belly of an 8 month old is surprisingly far reaching. Blech. So no surprise that Jason and I both got sick too. It was a bad scene all around. But we are finally on the other side of that nonsense. As a matter of fact we are headed out for a much needed vacation. Me, J, Fee, Luna and Noodle are driving down to SFO:

We will be on vacation all next week. I can't wait to see friends and for Fenix to see his new friend that he doesn't even know yet, Declan. It's going to be a blast.

We'll be trendy types and make our way to Burma Superstar for lunch. We'll be tourists and visit Alcatraz (we've both been to SFO but have never been there). We'll shop. We'll drink. We'll drive over to sonoma wine country and restock our home wine supply. All this in one week.

I really can't wait!

See you when we get back.

awesome little moments

Earlier this week Fenix and I were in the store looking to buy new clothes for him. This particular store usually plays some pretty awful 'lite fm' style music that is hardly tolerable. But while we were browsing this one really great old song came on.... "You've Got a Friend" (James Taylor and Carole King).

At some point I ended up getting really into it and I was singing out loud to Fenix who was sitting in his carseat on the shopping cart. I think he was digging it too because he was smiling and laughing so much as I sang.

That's when someone came by and totally caught me and started cracking up laughing at this spectacle.

What an awesome little moment that was. I haven't stopped hearing that song in my head ever since.

So I hope you have a happy Friday and to get your weekend going I'll leave you with this:

camping, a recap

So our first camping trip with the baby was a huge success. He enjoyed it immensely and we had a lot of fun. Here he is, overjoyed with the great outdoors:


We actually came away learning a bunch of cool stuff from this trip. For example, I felt bad about feeding Fenix cold cereal and cold fruit puree for breakfast. Well we had some peaches that we brought for a snack and I thought it would be smart to wrap the peach in foil and throw it in the fire to roast.

After the peach got really hot and mushy we took it out of the fire and scooped out the flesh and what do you have? Warm fruit puree (aka baby food)! You could do it with an apple or a plum or a banana... whatever you've got. So easy, so yummy.

Speaking of fruit in the fire, what got me down the road of roasting the peach was our dessert from the previous night. I had read a recipe for inside out caramel apples as a camp dessert so we whipped some up. You just core an apple and stuff several caramels down in the hole where the core was. Wrap the whole thing in foil and throw it in the fire. Cook until it's mushy and eat it up with a spoon. I can confirm that this was a delicious and easy recipe and it is now a permanent fixture on our camp menu.

A much more important discovery of this trip was this incredible invention called the "rocket". A rocket is a small pouch of biscuit that you roast over the campfire and fill with delicious things. Here's how it works:

First you have the rocket apparatus which is basically one short piece of a very wide dowel with a very long piece of narrow dowel attached to it.

You take a biscuit (from one of those cans of horribly processed premade biscuits) and you mush the uncooked dough evenly over the end of the rocket. After the dough is on their good you roast it over the fire, turning it slowly being sure to cook the part closest to you first and working your way down towards the 'butt' (the end of the rocket).
When the biscuit is cooked it should slide right off of the rocket apparatus leaving a deep pocket that is ready to accept the filling of your choice. In this case it was scrambled eggs with mushrooms and chorizo.

So on our way home from this trip I got to thinking how I could really expand on this and create an entire arsenal of rocket ideas. First of all, that processed biscuit dough is not the greatest but a homemade dough is often too short to work with in this application. I will need to experiment with some recipes to figure out what would work. And better still, what if instead of biscuit dough we used pizza dough and filled the pocket with cheese, tomato sauce and sausage or grilled veggies? You see where I'm going with this?? I am even having thoughts of dessert rockets filled with warm apple compote. The possibilities are endless.

So I bet you want to go camping now don't you?

sorry so quiet.

Hi people. I regret that we haven't been blogging much at all over the last 2 weeks but it's just been majorly busy round the McG household and we have been enjoying the start of a beautiful Seattle summer.

Now regarding Fenix, he started solids last week. In the world of babies this is a monumental step. One day it's breast milk and formula exclusively and the next someone is shoveling tiny spoonfuls of lukewarm rice cereal in your mouth. What must that be like?! Well he seems to love it. As a matter of fact, he loves it so much that he starts whimpering in between spoonfuls if you don't move quickly enough. So far we have tried rice cereal, butternut squash and sweet potatoes. Next up, oatmeal, peas, carrots, bananas, apples and pears. I am planning to make his food using a food mill but since we are in this trial period I bought small jars of organic baby food. I didn't want to commit to a big batch of any one thing until I knew that it agreed with him/he liked it.
Here he is after a belly full of brown rice cereal:


So back to the work thing, I am starting next Tuesday - it's actually my former place of work. They were so nice as to let me come back on a part time schedule. Fenix will be in day care for those 2 days. I think this is going to be a nice balance... I'll have every other day off, four day weekends and I will be with Fenix more often than not. The least amount of time that we can sign up for at the day care facility is 30 hours so that means that every week we'll have about 10 extra hours that I can use to go to doctor appointments or run errands where it would be nice to not have to schlep poor Fee along with me or better yet I can use it to get a leg up on my schoolwork.

Lastly our great friends Chad and Ty said their goodbyes and moved to Portland this past weekend. I didn't get emotional when they left but now that they are gone and day to day life is setting in I feel this yucky emptiness. I miss them so much already. I hope that some day soon we are all living near each other again like the good old days. It'll happen. Yeah. :-)

Hello from dirty jerz!

It's not really dirty but that's what we call it anyway. So far we've seen lots and lots of family and friends and eaten some great food (pizza! bagels!. It's been a blast and save for one day when it rained like crazy the weather has been glorious. When I get some time I've got some awesome pictures to post and even a really sweet video! I am gonna be sad when it's time to go home on Wednesday. My niece and nephew are perfect little munchkins and it's been great to spend so much time with them.
So that's the deal. See you when we get back....

baby shower/team awesome power

On the 17th my beautiful friends Ty and Lauren hosted an awesome baby shower for Fenix, Jason and I.

I can honestly say that we all felt so loved by everyone there. So much generosity and thoughtfulness. It was fantastic.

Enjoy some pics from the affair below (thanks to Lauren D. for the photos!):

seattleites! come buy our stuff!

Next weekend marks the 2nd annual yard boutique. I am lucky to have a group of fashionable, crafty and resourceful friends so last year we decided to do an upscale yard sale of sorts. We pledged to sell only our nicest used clothing and accessories that we didn't need/want anymore. The sale was a success. We had beautiful weather, lots of customers and there were refreshments - lemonade (spiked and virgin), wine, water and PBR as well as homemade fresh baked goods for sale (first drink was free!)

Well we are doing it again this year. New location, more cool stuff, same cool chicks running the show. Hope to see you there!

Here's the info: