March 2018 – Pellegrini Page

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and we’ve got a nice day to look forward to. We’ll be driving up to Sedro Woolley to spend the day with our good friend the Palmers. Like last year, they’ll be hosting an Easter Egg hunt in their massive backyard, then later in the afternoon we’ll all sit down to an excellent family dinner. I’m not sure what’s on the menu this year, but it really doesn’t matter – Leon is an amazing chef and someone I definitely look up to in the kitchen. I may even bring a guitar along, as the kids always get a kick out of someone playing music for them, and I never need much of an excuse to jam.

Another exciting upcoming event for us is our 8th anniversary, which is on Tuesday. I’ll quickly do the obligatory bit and then move on: “It’s hard to believe it’s already been 8 years. Time really does fly by.” We usually celebrate by going out to dinner, and I guess that still holds true this year, except that we’ll need a larger table. In my last post I wrote about taking the girls out to a nice Italian dinner at a nearby restaurant called Calabria, then taking them to our first Daddy-Daughter dance.

Well, that dinner really made an impression on them. Elise’s dance school is just a few doors down, and recently after dance she saw the restaurant and started going on and on to Mom about the dinner we had. Then we had a similar experience with Ava raving about it. So, based on all the excitement we thought it would be fun for the 5 of us to go out to Calabria for a nice fancy anniversary dinner as a family. Since our anniversary falls on a Tuesday, we’ll have to wait until the following Saturday to go out, but it will be worth the wait.

The funny thing is the kids don’t really get the concept of simply going out to dinner, so they keep asking what we’re doing afterwards. They seem to think we’re going to another dance, or something of that nature, so we keep trying to explain that dinner is the event. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, so we’ll see if we end up finding something else to do after we eat.

There’s a few other events in the near future we’ve been planning. On April 14th we’ll be attending Madi’s birthday party, which they’re doing at an indoor trampoline park (similar to what we did in Vegas). Those places are fun for everyone so we’re looking forward to it. Speaking of Vegas, we’ve selected the week we’re going (last week in June), so it’s just a matter of purchasing tickets at this point, which I expect will be done in short order. We’re timing it so that we go right after school, Ava’s hockey session, and Elise’s dance recital have completed. Can’t wait to get some hot weather and pool time!

The other thing we’ve been planning is Elise’s 5th birthday party, which will be right after we get home from Vegas. Normally each summer we take the kids to at least one Everett Aquasox game, which is the Single A minor league affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. The games are close to our house, it’s a really family friendly environment, and the kids absolutely love seeing their mascot – Webbly.

Well, when we asked Elise if there was anything she wanted to do for her birthday, she asked if we could go see Webbly. We were intrigued by the idea of doing a baseball birthday party, so we looked into it. As it turns out, Elise’s birthday falls on a Saturday, the Aquasox have their final home game that night before going on a road trip, and it’s one of the few ‘Fireworks Nights’ of the season, meaning there will be a fireworks show after the game.

Based on all these factors it seemed meant to be, so Jessica got in touch with someone from the team and we have started planning a party. We decided to do it right by going with a party package, meaning all you can eat for all of our guests, all you can bounce (for the kids going to the bouncy houses), a meet & greet with Webbly, Elise’s name on the scoreboard during an intermission, and she even gets to go out on the field to throw out a pitch! Obviously she’s going to love it, but beyond that, it will be a very memorable occasion for our whole family. We’ve started extending invitations to guests and interest seems to be high, so it should be a lot of fun.

As of last Sunday, Jessica is back to working Sunday nights at El Gaucho Bellevue. The offer has always been there, and since I’m already gone playing hockey for a few hours on Sunday evenings, she felt it made sense to go back, but just that one night per week. Tomorrow is an exception because it’s Easter, so neither Ava or I has hockey, and Jessica won’t be working, but then we’ll be back to (our new) normal the following Sunday. It’s a nice chill night to work (compared to the craziness of Friday and Saturday night), she gets to see all our friends, and they love having her, so it seems like a good fit.

Things have been crazy for me with work, as usual, but even more than normal this week because I’m on call. Now that I’ve made it to the weekend, the worst is behind me, but the long consecutive days start catching up to you, so I’m more than ready for a relaxing weekend. Based on Jessica’s encouragement, I ended up purchasing a new amplifier on eBay this past Monday, and although it wasn’t scheduled to be delivered until this coming Monday, it ended up coming early, literally as I was writing this post.

It’s a Cornford, which no longer exists as a brand, but they’re these incredibly high-end boutique amplifiers that were hand built in England from the late 90’s until about 2012. I’m not sure what happened to the company, but their products are legendary, and very hard to find. The funny thing was, I hadn’t even considered a Cornford while shopping around because they’re so hard to find, but I was looking on Craigslist last Sunday night, and found a Cornford for sale right here in Snohomish county. My jaw practically dropped, because again, they’re very rare. I’ve never even seen one in person. It was too late at night to call the owner, so I figured I’d call on Monday, but my on-call shift started on Monday morning and I was so busy all day that I didn’t get a chance to contact the owner until after work. Not surprisingly the amp had already sold.

I was pretty bummed, but now I had this specific amp in mind and started looking around for it online, and ended up finding one (and only one) on eBay all the way out in Michigan. It was slightly more expensive than the one I’d found on Craigslist, but again based on Jessica’s encouragement, I ended up getting it. Getting it delivered today is awesome because the only other thing I’m doing today besides writing this post and going to the gym, is playing guitar. I’ll crank it as much as I can at home, but what I’m really excited for is taking it to jam with my buddies, where I can really let it loose. I’d been having amp issues for a while, so this is going to be a drastic upgrade. I’ve owned a lot of nice amps over the years, but gotten rid of them because they were all so large, heavy, and too loud for practical use. This one is smaller, lighter, and just as good (if not better) than any of the classic amps I used to own. I never really thought I’d own an amp of this caliber, but look forward to keeping it forever – after all, you don’t get rid of a Cornford.

I’m currently working on a big / highly visible project at work, which is to rebuild the entire header and menu for azure.com. I’ve been on it for two weeks already, and it’s going to be another 2-3 weeks before it launches, but it’s so important that we can’t afford to ship it in less than a perfect state. This is different than building a special component, page, or set of pages, because it lives on literally every page of the entire website, so it gets seen and interacted with by millions of users over time. I could tell some of my teammates were relieved not to get this project, but I don’t see it as pressure. Instead, I see it as just another opportunity to deliver big results, and so far it’s going really well. I’ll definitely mention it on here once it goes live.

I have to be honest in saying that the main reason I’m writing a post today is because I didn’t want to break my consecutive months streak, which dates all the way back to July, 2011. That’s longer than I’ve been a parent, which pretty much already feels like forever. Normally I would wait until some exciting things have just happened (like our Easter Sunday and Anniversary dinners), then write about those, but the family blog is important to me and I didn’t want to skip the month of March. The truth is, sitting down to write these posts is a bit of a time commitment, and sometimes it’s hard to make that time when you’ve got so much else going on, but it matters. Not just to Jessica and myself, but it’s really going to matter to the kids someday. It’s the greatest gift I can give them, and staying on at least a monthly cadence is something I’m committed to.

I look forward to filling in the details about our upcoming adventures sometime in April. We recently received some of Leon’s photos from Enzo’s 3rd birthday, so here’s a few of those, along with a handful of other recent goodies. Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

His little smile kills me