december in a very small nutshell

the rest of december went by in a flash.

the kids and i went to prince street pizza in pasadena one day for their home alone-themed “lovely cheese pizza.”

the annual SFAM-ily GTG was held at the tam o’shanter, our new favorite tradition.  the white elephant gift exchange was, as always, the highlight.

i made cookie boxes for everyone and forgot to take pictures, so here’s a screenshot of the instagram story that lilcee posted.

we celebrated the old man’s 30th birthday!

i got the old lady to sign me in at the ‘land for a solo christmastime visit.  there were many, many selfies but i won’t subject you to more than this.

christmas eve was spent with my family, which has been a lot of fun over the last few years.  and with my gram now a full 101 (!) years old, we cherish every chance we get to spend some time with her.

christmas day was full of fun, friends, family and food.  we’d decided to host at our house and invited my parents along with the families of the old man and the old lady, which made for an interesting day.  heh.  and it was such a hectic time that i didn’t take a ton of pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine what it was like.

i kicked off new year’s eve with a barre class and closed it out with a bowl of the bean’s famous spaghetti carbonara…and the jonas brothers on tv.

 happy 2026, everybody! lol forever.

last seattle adventure

for the last day of our trip, we decided to rent a car and do some exploring.  but first, we stopped to grab some brunch at a spot that had caught our eye the day before:

we hopped in the car and started wandering around.  i didn’t take a ton of pictures, but we did drive onto one of those car ferries because it sounded like fun.

we ended up at this lighthouse, and saw some wildlife.

by the time we headed back toward our hotel, it was dark outside.

seafood sounded good, so we opened yelp and found a cute little place called half shell near the market.  as we walked over, we stopped for another photo op at the OG starbucks.

lest you think we subjected ourselves to another 36-hour train ride, i’m here to tell you that we absolutely did not.  instead, we got up early and headed out to the airport to catch a quick flight home.

and that was the end of wan-niversary 20.0!

heyyyyyyy i’m still here!

welp.  it’s been a minute.  whoops.

a lot has happened in the last - oh, six months.  SIX MONTHS!  yikes.  i guess i better pick up where i left off, though, and that’s our anniversary adventure in seattle.  and now it’s been so long that i’m just going to throw in the highlights because i’m old and my mind is hazy.

seattle is beautiful.  and chilly.

yelp told us to go to le panier bakery, so we did.

and although we didn’t buy anything, we went to the original starbucks.

walking through the public market is always a good time.

more sightseeing as we walked off those delicious french pastries.

we hadn’t been able to secure a reservation at the pink door, but we did manage to snag a couple of seats at the bar.  this is always our workaround for last-minute dinners out at popular spots, and it almost always pays off for us.

so being the nerd that i am, i’d always wanted to check out the underground city since we hadn’t had time to go last time we visited.  i love all the silly touristy things and the hub was willing to go along with it, so we spent our afternoon on this tour:

and then for dinner, we met up with my cousin seven and mr. seven at the butcher’s table.  again this was a last-minute decision and we scored seats at the bar downstairs.  

we walked back towards our hotel and stopped to take pictures at the empty, closed public market.

we had a nightcap in the bar at the four seasons, and then we called it a night.

i guess i did an okay job of remembering most of our day after all.