A Weekend Of Projects

One of the joys of owning a house is being able to add some touches to make it your own. This weekend started off with a few of those little projects that really started to make our place, ours. From the screen door we added to the front to the beginnings of the office upstairs, the house is slowly, maybe even room by room, starting to become ours. Obviously, the changes for the weekend started out front. The new screen door will allow us a nice breeze in the evenings and quite a dose of sunshine during the daytime. It’s a needed and welcome addition to the entry.



Moving on to the first room redo that we have going on, or as we like to call it, the office. Gone are the closet sliding doors, having been replaced by Evie’s art nook. A perfect little area for all of her creativity to come out and be put on paper, canvas or whatever medium she wants to work on. We will get to getting some cubbies and cabinets for her to hide all her work away soon, but this is part one of the art area for her.



Moving around the room, the primary walls are now a dark blue color, which will be accented by a white desktop with a computer and sewing area. It will also have plenty of room for crafting as well, but we’ll make sure we make every effort to keep in clean and organized. I’ll post some additional images of the desk top once we convert the closet doors to the tops of the L-shaped desk and anchor it to the wall. then we will need to find a few drawers and some wall cabinets to really create a usable space.

For now, this was the weekend project, and things are coming together nicely.

My Most Amazing Trip To… Part One

A funny thing happened last week, and I really couldn’t talk about it until yesterday, but that’s besides the point – because yesterday – well two days ago – this is about to get weird… I left Seattle yesterday (Saturday, May 13th) and arrived in my destination 16 hours later – or almost Monday. Yeah, this international dateline thing is very strange. Anyways, sorry to ramble, but here I am, in humid and hot Taipei, Taiwan. I was fortunate enough to be placed on an HTC Elevate promotional trip to view the launch of the next new HTC device, LIVE FROM TAIWAN!



I’ll be honest with you and say that yesterday is not something I am going to highlight too much, since 15 hours were spent in the luxurious Boeing 767’s that I was travelling on, and frankly, there’s only so many ways to present the back of a seat, so I won’t bore you with that. Of course, I do have to mention the staff on the plane – with a special shout out to the “PDX to NRT” leg – You were amazing! Never before have I been trapped next to Captain Elbow for 10 hours and felt so well taken care of. I don’t know how such a small person can take up so much room, but he did – and you still made the flight enjoyable.



From there, I cleared through customs as quickly as possible and moved along to the hotel, the Regent Taipei. If you ever get the chance to visit, I highly recommend this hotel. City views, shopping, food, everything you need is here and the rooms are AMAZING. Today (day 2) we have a pretty busy morning, followed by a pretty lazy afternoon – which means some sight seeing time! Then we have a dinner tonight before we get some “rest” for the launch of the new device tomorrow! Anyways, if you want to catch the live stream, it will be at www.htc.com/launch on May16th at 2:00 PM Taiwan time, or 11PM (May 15th) in Seattle. Should be fun.

I’ll make sure to post some additionally fun photos as soon as we are out and about today. Make sure you are following me on Twitter (@waazzupppp) and the hashtags #ElevateU and #HTCLaunch to see all our adventures!

Did 10,000 People Really Read This?

Back in May of 2010, I started this little blog as a bit of a diary, and a bit of a reminder of what goes on in my life. My daughter was almost one and I was in the middle of my 3rd year of being married to my amazing wife. I never really thought that I would keep this up as long as I did, and honestly, with how many huge breaks there have been, I’m not sure it counts as ‘consistent’ updates, but I’m trying to get better. Today, I checked my unique reader stats for the first time in a long, long, long time and saw something very amazing – 10,033 unique visitors have hit this site. That means, somewhere on this planet, over 10,000 people have read something about me and my family and that’s pretty cool.

So, whether you are one of my tech friends, a dance dad or anything in between, thanks for reading and I’ll try and keep the fresher content coming.

So, We Bought A House…

It usually takes awhile for things like this to set in, but we really just did something crazy, yet amazingly cool… We bought a house. It wasn’t like we came into a ton of money suddenly and went out and found a dream home, but we are no longer letting someone else make money on the place that we live. Instead, we are building our future, together, inside our own four walls. Sure, one of them is shared, but still, we own this land – or at least we will once the bank is paid off. I’ll sign off on this for now, but I’ll definitely post more about the little projects that we are doing inside to make this great place all ours!

So, I Played A Round Of Golf This Weekend...

Yeah, so the rains, winds and snows have made it next to impossible to get out and play some golf over the winter. Fortunately, it seems we caught a break yesterday and I was able to sneak out to Riverbend for a round. What started out as a bit of a guessing game based on my range session about 15 minutes before teeing off, turned out to be one of the better rounds I've played in quite some time. While it wasn't perfect, my driving was pretty decent, short irons and wedges were sharp and my putting was pretty much on fire.

From the opening tee shot to the end of the round, I was able to hit good shots from just about everything in my bag that was a 6 iron or under. I had a few "issues" with the longer irons, but overall, they were small in comparison to how well I played. The round ended with a +4, 76 on a rather wet and soggy course. I'll take that all day long and be very happy with it. With all the stresses from the outside world right now, it was good to kick back and relax for a great round.

PS - I'm shooting these with a new mobile from HTC, the HTC U Ultra. You can trade up here if you want images as good as these - Trade Up to the HTC U Ultra!

Encore Dance Seattle

It was time for another weekend round of dance competition, this time, it was the Encore Dance Seattle event. The girls took the stage in the 7-8 year old category - a bit out of their normal range, but a little push is always nice - and performed their dance "Whistle While You Werk It" one more time. The performance went well and scored the girls a High Gold for the day. The competition had really stepped up this time, so there were no special awards or extra bonus prizes this time around. The biggest hurdle was jumped this weekend in the fact that it was the first time all the girls has performed together on stage. No sick kids or injuries this weekend, which just made it a win-win for everyone.

A Weekend Away: Sequim And The Olympic Game Farm

We all have those days where you just want to get away from it all. Normally, we just do a bit of a day trip drive and call it good. This weekend was a bit different though. With all the stress of life happening, we decided to make a run for the hills and find a hotel with a swimming pool to crash at for the night. We looked around the internet for a bit and then found the perfect thing – Sequim and the Olympic Game Farm. So we made our hotel reservation and jumped on the ferry for the ride from Edmonds to Kingston. We’ve probably made this drive a few dozen times, so it was a pretty familiar trip, right down to the summerish weather we got.



We arrived over in the Sequim area pretty early in the day, so we decided to hit the Game Farm first. Since the pass you purchase is good all day, we figured we could take the tour once or twice, then head to the hotel to check in. The Game Farm was spectacular as usual. It’s a drive through tour of a ton of different animals from all walks of life. From peacocks, like you see here, to the reindeer you see behind it. There’s something for everyone.



Evie and Ara’s personal favorites were definitely the llamas. These little guys really freaked them both out. Myself, I enjoyed the little guys quite a bit. This one and I had a bit of a pose off going, but I think he won.



As we progressed through the route, we came upon the yaks, which quickly became Evie’s favorite for the 20 seconds that we drove through them. She was back to tigers not too long after this, but the fact that she let one eat bread out of her hand is pretty impressive. From there, we finished the route with only some minor scuffs and scrapes on the car from the bison. Note to all that travel to this wonderful place, please do NOT stop on the wild game trail, you may have cleared the big guys, but the cars behind you have not!



After that, the kiddo was starving, so we hit a little place in town called The Oak Table. It was recommended by almost everyone around, so we jumped in to find the little place pretty crowded, but not so much that we couldn’t get a table. After we ordered, it took a bit for the food to arrive, but honestly, it was the best omelet that I have ever had. I guarantee you that we will be back there the next time we hit Sequim on a trip.

After lunch, we had an early check in at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Sequim. I was really expecting a ‘Motel 6’ quality room, but much to my amazement, it was actually a pretty nice room with a very nice bed. We could have done without the kids windsprinting up and down the hallways until 12 AM, but other than that, the hotel was very nice. The pool was excellent, especially for the two plus hours we had it completely to ourselves thanks to the front desk letting us check in early. One word of advice for this hotel though – if you can get them to move you to the END of the building, it’s a bonus. Our room was about 20 feet from the elevator and they are not sound proof doors.



After a delightful evening of swimming at the hotel (I think we logged about 5 hours the first day) and dinner at a local Thai restaurant, we settled in for the night. In the morning, we hit the complimentary breakfast early and then played at the pool for another few hours before checkout time. After we checked out, we decided to hit Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. We were about 95% sure we were lost on the way there, but eventually that crazy road wrapped around to the entrance to the park. Unfortunately, the gorgeous weather that we experienced on day one had completely flown away by day two and we were getting cold and miserable quickly. Still, the park was amazing and we can’t wait to plan a trip back when the summer weather is here.



Since we were in route back to the ferry, we decided to stop and grab lunch before we went too far. We stopped at a pretty well reviewed place called the Snug Harbor Cafe. I won’t go too far into my review of this place, but the food was ok and the service was good – if you were a regular. If you weren’t, you pretty well got forgotten in your little corner of the world, but that was probably ok. As we watched from our corner table, we saw the wind, the rain and even the snow begin falling and blowing through. It was a pretty crazy weather day. After a quick stop in Port Gamble for some real coffee, we jetted back into Kingston to catch our ferry home. All in all, it was a great little overnighter.

Dancing The Day Away At Starpower Seattle!

The first dance competition of the season is in the books. Starpower Seattle was first up on the list this season. We were down a dancer (stupid flu season!) but the girls did a fantastic job. They rated a 4.75 out of 5 and won just about everything under the sun for the weekend in their category. They took first in their category, 5th overall in their division and also won awards for Girl Power and top entertainers! It was a total blast and everyone had a great time. Now for 5 long weeks off until the next one. Maybe I can get some golf in if the weather gets a bit better!

The Official Start Of Our Year–The Reveal

This weekend was the official launch to our year. It’s not a big party or anything normally associated with ‘new year’ stuff, but rather a dance event. This big event is known as “The Reveal”. The Reveal is the showcase that is put on just before the start of competition season for our dance teams. This is Evie’s second year on the Mini-Elite squad at Platinum Dance Center. This year’s theme is Rosie The Riveter, and they are performing to a fun song called Whistle While You Work It. 

The routine went off without a hitch, even though Evie didn’t perform her signature Kick-over move due to a strained shoulder – yes, my 7 year old dancer has been to a physical therapist to have her shoulder looked at already… Wow! – and the company members looked amazing! This is going to be a great competition season for all of them. The official season begins next Saturday, so wish Evie luck!

It’s Been A Long Time…

For a brief period last year, I made it back to blogging here. I didn’t keep it up for long, but what has happened since then has been pretty much amazing. I didn’t do a 2016 recap, nor do I find it likely that I will, but maybe it’s time for me to make a weekly post again, or at least it might be time for me to visit here a bit more often. Let me bring everyone up to speed on life and the two cent version of our year in review, then I can get on to keeping up with what’s happening now. I’m going to kill this off right here, after I’ve edited the post about 12 times, but let me start my Sunday evening posts with just this thought… This year is going to be amazing!