We made pancakes in the morning for bfast. Amanda called Ann and Mike to confer about the party. The upshot was that Amanda and Susan and Mike would go to Costco for party supples while the rest of us would go to the zoo.

Once they arrived at our house, the plan changes as obviously both Mike and Ann wanted to explore the wonders of Costco. So My mom and I took LK and Connor to the zoo while everyone else ran off for party supplies.

The zoo was fun. We paid for parking as I did not want to wrestle with two toddlers parking farther away and my mom is not as agile as she used to be. In spite of the overcast and threatening weather, there were many many people at the zoo. Connor was well behaved and walked about holding my mothers hand, while LK demanded to be held practically the whole time.

We did not really see very much… only the farm area really plus a bit of the outside playground area. We were about to head up to the food places for lunch, but Amanda called so we went back home to eat.

After lunch, Amanda, Susan, LK, and my mom took a train ride downtown for fun. I went off to pick up the birthday cake from Kauai Desserts, a bakery associated with Kauai Family Restaurant in Georgetown. Yum, guava cake!

I dropped off the cake at home and then headed downtown to pick everyone up. I met them under the viaduct as they were killing time at the aquarium. Lonan expressed his desire for “brrrrito!”, so we went to El Sombero for dinner.

After a bit of Beatles: Rock Band, I put LK to bed. Susan did some prep work for LK’s party tomorrow. I tried to get my new wireless bridge working, but success was elusive.

Now there is a documentary on, but I don’t thing anyone is watching it. Amanda and Susan appear asleep, and my mom is reading something on her Kindle.

I did a lot of cleaning in prep for guests coming into town. My mom came into town first. I was going to take the light rail down to the airport so that my mom would know how to use it in the future, but it was raining, and I did not want to deal with the 0.8 mile or so walk home from the nearest station while carrying luggage.

As is usual, she came in around noon, and we had lunch at Southcenter. I also picked up two pairs of jeans because all my current ones are kinda ratty.

After more cleaning and patching of our Aerobed, I went and picked up the Kai from school. He and his Lola got reacquainted while I made dinner: ravioli with homemade tomato sauce. Simple but tasty.

It is now 9:14pm, and Susan just arrived.

2010 FEB 18 : THURSDAY
The Japanese Garden opened up recently for the year, so in the afternoon we went for a visit. There were a lot of people there. The Kai kept dangling dangerously over the water on one of the bridges in order to get closer to the fishies. One woman there said she has seen any kids fall in the water; we have never seen anyone.

Amanda had to give a talk at the Medical School, so we had planned to stay nearby until she had to go, but I had been fooled by the warm weather earlier and was getting chilled at the garden. To kill more time we went to City People’s and randomly browsed. I noted they had a lot of those expensive red Radio Flyer wagons for people to haul their gardening stuff around. I had no idea how expensive they were until recently… around $90 for the standard model.

We eventually dropped Amanda off for her talk, and headed off to University Village to have dinner at Blue C Sushi. I decided that Blue C was not worth going to with the Kai because although he enjoys it, it is not worth it to have him eat $20+ of sushi while having to watch him constantly while not personally being able to enjoy dinner. I knocked over my warm sake bottle while containing the gyrating Kai, which was a bummer.

Afterwards, we walked about UVillage, hung out at the playground, and wandered about Barnes and Noble before heading back to pick up Amanda. We stopped at Trophy Cupcakes for some decadent desserts (Ann has said the place will be the first to go when civilization collapses) because Amanda implied she wanted a gift when we dropped her off. Lonan Kai kept saying “Taking cupcakes to Mama!” They definitely were tasty.

2010 FEB 20 : SATURDAY
The weather continued to be unseasonably nice. Mike and Connor came over for bfast, and then we headed out to Madison Park to hang out at the playground and the beach. Both of the kiddies remained very well behaved for a long time. We eventually came back home for a late nap for the little one.

After the nap, we stuck the Kai in our new bicycle carrier and took a ride down to Seward Park. We relaxed a bit at the playground and by the water and returned home before it became dark.

2010 FEB 21 : SUNDAY
Amanda had a double shift at her house call position, so she was gone from 6am to 10:45pm or somesuch.

I took the Kai for a brief walk in the morning before Ann, Mike, Connor, and Liam dropped by to pick me up. We headed out to Bellevue for Adina’s second birthday party. The party was fun, although the Kai was very clingy. We got back home way past normal naptime. Although he passed out in the car, he woke up again as I took him inside and kept repeating “Lonan Hungry!”, so I feed him cheese and crackers which he ate while laying his head on the table.

After the nap, we walked about the neighborhood before going to Emerald City Fish and Chips for dinner. Yummy. The Kai can really slurp down the fish and chips and cole slaw just like his papa.

Amanda went to some party store today (or yesterday, since it is 2am) and bought decorations and whatnot for Lonan and Connor’s party this weekend. Amongst the items was a horse piñata; it looks cool, but I dunno about having toddlers whack it to death with a stick.

Mike called up and invited us over for pizza since it was Connor’s actual birthday. We deliberately arrived before Connor to surprise him (and he did seem to be surprised). Before his arrival Mike played a medical game on his Wii that he picked up at the nearby Hollywood Video that is going out of business. Basically, you took the persona of a doctor in rural Alaska and simulated doing surgery on people. Seemed kinda gory for a Wii game to me. Mike eventually had to leave for an indoor soccer game that he forgot about. We stayed with Ann and Liam and Connor until it was time for bed.

My wireless bridge… the thingamabob that connects the Xbox 360 to our wireless network… has finally died. They don’t seem to sell bridges anymore, at least cheap ones, so I ordered another inexpensive appliance that I can modify/hack to get the xbox wirelessly connected again. In the meantime, I have a very long Cat5 cable I can use instead.

I made a parsnip/mushroom/cashew loaf for dinner with roasted beets. It was alright. Lonan Kai was not impressed. He should have been because we sent all of our kitchen knives out to be sharpened, so I only had a bread knife to cut things with. The parsnips and beets were from our CSA that we signed up for again recently. Amanda wanted to get ourselves out of our dinner rut. The CSA people will deliver directly to our house now; I don’t have to bike to a dropoff point to get our goodies.

We watched part three of a documentary on Yellowstone. Amanda fell asleep after a third of it.

I started writing a weekend recap, but wrote this instead. I need to get back to writing in the weblog more frequently as large weekend recaps take too big a chunk of time to write all at once.