Author: Michael Pellegrini

Yesterday morning we returned home from a week at sea with my Mom aboard Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas. We visited ports in Juneau and Skagway, Alaska, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. The Explorer was the largest cruise ship ever to sail out of Seattle, and was also the largest passenger ship to ever visit any port (or glacier) in Alaska. As expected we had a great time, as well as a few challenges along the way, but without question we will never forget our first true family vacation, and I’m so thankful we got to spend it with my Mom. This week was the longest visit she’s ever had with the kids and I think it was good for everyone.

Before I get into the details of our trip I want to pay my respects to Bella. I know Jessica already wrote about her passing but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something. As I’ve said in several posts, the past 8 years have been the best of my life, and the only daily constant for me other than Jessica during this time, has been Bella. I remember when Jessica and I first started dating and her saying to me “I hope you like dogs because we’re a package deal.” I’ve never had a dog as long as I had Bella, and although I frequently complained about cleaning up her poop in the backyard, or vacuuming up her hair inside, the truth is I’d gladly trade it all back to have her with us once again. Her passing taught the kids (Ava especially because she’s old enough to understand) an important lesson about the meaning of life and death. Losing her has been sad for everyone and we will always have a special place in our hearts for her. Love my Bellers.

This past Christmas Jessica got me a present that I’d been talking about wanting for a long time. She found a deal on Groupon to drive a Ferrari or Lamborghini 3 laps on a track, and I was thrilled. I booked my ‘driving experience’ for Friday May 20th and marked my calendar. A few weeks later my Mom brought up the idea of us going on the Alaska cruise, which also happened to be on Friday May 20th. My plan was to stay the night at Kristy’s house (because it’s much closer to the ‘track’, which isn’t an actual track but just a big parking lot setup with a bunch of cones) on Thursday night, drive the supercar on Friday morning, then bust a move back to my house up north to pick up Jessica and the kids, then head off to the ship for our vacation. It was going to be a very busy day.

Everything seemed good until the week of, when I started going through the 20 page release form they required me to sign before driving the car. As I read through everything I started getting very concerned. I won’t go into all the details but basically it quickly became apparent to me that the discounted rate Jessica paid on Groupon was just a scam to get me in the door, then all the real expenses would start piling up. They were trying to sell you on all kinds of specialty insurance for different parts of the car that could become damaged, even though your personal insurance still had to be used for primary coverage. Then they warn you that if you rev the engine too high it’s an automatic $2,500 charge to your credit card. Any damage to the car would incur an immediate $7,500 charge just to get started on repairs. On top of it all they expect you to tip the driving instructors 25% of the original cost of the package.

It all seemed pretty sketchy so I went online to read reviews. There were over 100 reviews on Yelp and the average rating was 2 out of 5 stars. Not a good sign. There were a few people who gave it 5 stars, but even they said you’re out there for 90 minutes but only in the car for 5, and only driving for about 2.5 minutes, never going above 40-50 mph. The number of 1 star reviews was ridiculous and after reading most of them I was convinced that the whole experience was nowhere near what I was hoping for and would have been a major disappointment. I felt bad because I knew how excited Jess was to get it for me, but even she agreed that the whole thing felt like a scam. So long story short, I skipped it and just focused on the cruise. We’re going to contact Groupon about a refund since the package didn’t seem very well advertised. I definitely appreciate the thought though, and came out of it with a story none-the-less.

Anyway, enough with all that and onto the good stuff. Although I must admit, the first day of the cruise was definitely our most difficult. We left our house at 10:30 am and proceeded to basically stand in various lines all day. It started with the parking lot (we parked in an offsite lot that shuttles you to and from the ship). There were lots of people and only so many shuttles, so we waited about 45 minutes there. Then we got to the ship and waited in a long line to tag our bags. After that was a long line to go through security, followed by another long line to check in and get our sea passes. By the time we actually got on the ship it was nearly 3:00 pm. My Mom said that of all the cruises she has been on, these were the worst lines she’s ever seen.

Once we got on and got to our rooms we were in good shape. I say ‘our’ rooms because the way my Mom booked it, we had side-by-side balcony rooms with a private door in between them. This turned out to be great because the kids could run back and forth between the rooms. There ended up being plenty of space for everyone, and Jessica and I ended up getting the best of it because the girls insisted on sleeping with Nana every night, leaving us only Enzo to share a room with. One thing that we hadn’t thought about but turned out to be a nice surprise was how well everyone would sleep on the ship. The slight rocking motion was really nice.

If you’ve never been on one of these ships they’re basically like little floating cities. They have everything. There’s a street-style promenade with a bunch of shops, various bars and restaurants, swimming pools and hot tubs, a theater, conference rooms (which is where the Card Player Cruises poker room is located), a casino, an ice rink, a Flowrider for surfing and boogie boarding, sport courts, rock climbing wall (which Jessica scaled with ease), video arcade, chapel, and more. It’s crazy. At first it’s somewhat daunting, but before you know it you know your way around everywhere. One thing that was funny was that as soon as we got on the ship it felt very similar to the ship we sailed on with my Mom to Mexico back in 2010. As it turned out, this ship was the sister ship to the one we’d been on before, so the layout was identical.

We set sail Friday evening around 5:30, then spent all day Saturday at sea, before arriving in our first port, Juneau, Alaska, on Sunday morning. Juneau was the only stop of the trip where we’d be doing an official ‘excursion’, which in our case was whale watching. Since we didn’t think Enzo would get much out of it, we decided to leave him with Nana for the day and spend the day with the girls. As we rode the bus to the docks where our boat was located, we learned about the history of Juneau. I was surprised to learn that Juneau, which is the capital city of Alaska, has only 33,000 residents, yet is the third largest city in the United States (based on square mileage). The other two largest cities are also in Alaska. There are more miles of hiking trails in Juneau than there are paved roads, and as we learned from our guide on the boat, there are only 3 ways into Juneau: by boat, by plane, or by birth canal. There are no roads leading in or out of Juneau.

The whale watching excursion definitely ended up being one of the highlights of the trip. The funny thing was that for several months now Ava has been saying she wants to see Orcas, but to be more specific, she wanted to see a baby Orca. We weren’t sure what to expect when we got on the boat, but our guide soon explained that we would be seeing humpback whales. A slight bummer but certainly not a big deal. On our way out I was chatting with the guide and I mentioned that my daughter had been hoping to see some Orcas, but that I’m sure the humpbacks would also be amazing. He paused for a minute, then leaned in and whispered to me “Don’t tell anyone yet but we’re in for a surprise today. We’re heading out further than normal so we can see some Orcas.”

I kept my lips zipped, then soon enough the boat slowed down and our guide (or ‘Naturist’ as they call themselves) told us the news about the Orcas in the area. We all headed out to the deck and literally within a minute or two we started seeing them. The best part was that it was a whole family and Ava got to see her baby Orca several times. She was going completely nuts and screaming the whole time; everyone was getting a huge kick out of it.

After viewing the family of Orcas for a while we turned around and headed to another area to check out the humpbacks. They too are amazing, and because our guide Brendan was so knowledgeable, we ended up learning a lot about the differences between them. We also got to see a glacier while we were out, so it was a pretty incredible experience. On our way back the captain told us that last year, out of over 100 days in the whale watching season, they only saw Orcas on 15 of them. It’s definitely something we’ll never forget.

After the whale watching we went into downtown Juneau to enjoy some snacks at Tracy’s Crab Shack. We were seated outside at these big picnic tables surrounded by people from all over the place. There were a bunch of New Yorkers at our table, then at the table next to us were people from Alabama that kept yelling “Roll Tide!” A crow landed on the pier and one of the New Yorkers excitedly started yelling because they thought it was an eagle. It was quite entertaining. We actually did see several eagles that day in Juneau, but this crow certainly wasn’t one of them.

The next day we woke up in port at Skagway, Alaska. It was much more of an old-timey frontier town. There was a 19th century steam engine, and lots of people dressed up old west style. It’s not a very big town so the 6 of us walked around all day. We did some shopping, had a nice lunch at the Skagway Brewing Company, and found a great little local park for the kids to play at. The snowy mountain backdrop was gorgeous and everyone had a really nice day.

Tuesday morning our ship sailed up to an area called Endicott Arm so we could view the Dawes glacier. All I can say is I’ve never seen anything like it, and it was beautiful. One thing that really stood out to me was the color of the water. It was this crazy shade of greenish blue, but it was so crystal clear. There were all of these little glaciers floating in the water that had obviously broken off the the main glacier. Then the whole backdrop was entirely mountains. There’s no shore or flat ground either; it’s literally water right up to the base of the mountain, which is covered with green trees, and topped with snow. It’s how I imagine New Zealand to be. We saw tons of waterfalls where the snow runoff was heading back to sea. I’ve heard people say several times that Alaska is beautiful but until I saw it with my own two eyes I didn’t really get it. It honestly is an amazing place that everyone should have a chance to see at some point. I took a bunch of pictures but they don’t really do it justice; there’s just something about being in the middle of it that can’t be replicated, or explained.

We spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday at sea and kept busy with all of the ship’s attractions. The kids loved going up to the arcade and the girls now love playing air hockey together. It’s funny because when you’re out at sea like that it’s really easy to lose track of time. Consequently they change the sign in the elevator daily so you know what day it is. We did some family activities like art projects and dancing, we saw an ice show, but the main activity for us was ‘mucking’ chips for Nana.

If you don’t know what that means, basically the poker room is open whenever you’re at sea, and the house (Card Player Cruises) gets a little piece of every poker hand that gets played, in the form of chips. It’s called the rake, and it’s standard operating procedure for all card rooms. It’s how they pay their expenses and make a profit. As you can imagine, at the end of the day the house has raked in a lot of chips, and those chips need to be sorted and racked, or as they call it in the poker world, mucked. Well, the kids fell in love with it and insisted on helping Nana muck chips each day. So we would dump out these big buckets of chips, gather up a bunch of empty racks, and start mucking. As you would expect, Ava was in charge, and made sure that only she got to muck the red chips, which were of course, the highest in value. If your rack accidentally included a chip of the wrong color, Ava would call you out for having ‘dirty stacks’, another poker term she picked up on this trip. It was most entertaining.

Ava was also a huge hit with all the people on the cruise. To be fair, all 3 of the kids were, but Ava really ate up the attention. We would get on an elevator with a bunch of strangers, and as if on queue, Ava would announce “My name is Ava. This is my little sister Elise, but she’s a little shy, and this is my brother Zoey.” Everyone got a kick out of her, but there were also a few instances where she refused to listen to us and ended up getting in a bit of trouble. The worst of it was at the formal dinner on night 2. To her credit though, she was overly stimulated by everything going on, and couldn’t help but be on 10 the entire trip. I don’t know how she does it, but that kid just goes and goes and never slows down. She would usually outlast us at night and still be up before us the following morning. That’s just my Ava P. She’s like the Energizer Bunny (another musty stale reference from my childhood that they won’t understand by the time they read this).

One thing that I really enjoyed about the cruise was how friendly the entire staff was. Everywhere you go you’re greeted by a staff member and they’re always so genuinely nice. You end up meeting people from all over the world, but one that I absolutely cannot go without mentioning is Vanessa, our room attendant. There was an instant connection between her and our kids, and we just loved her. She has a 6 year old daughter back in the Philippines, and because of her work schedule, she goes 6 months at a time without seeing her. I cannot imagine. She was completely in love with Enzo and kept joking about packing him up and bringing him home with her. She also continuously joked with the girls about bringing her a baby Orca while we were out, so I went into a gift shop in Skagway and bought her a toy stuffed Orca from the kids. She was just the best all week long and really helped make the trip special for all of us.

We also met quite a few of our fellow cruisers on the boat who were from Australia. As it turned out, the Explorer started out a month earlier in Sydney, Australia, before heading to the Pacific Northwest as it’s new home. As I’ve said before, Aussies must be the friendliest people on Earth. I spoke to so many of them on the boat and they were all great. It just reaffirmed to me that we absolutely must visit Australia at some point in the future.

The last stop of the trip was in Victoria, B.C. on Thursday. I’d been there once before with my Mom, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Brenda, but that was about 20 years ago, so my memory of it wasn’t great. We had a nice day exploring the city, eating lunch by the water, and taking a nice long walk back to the ship. They were preparing for a yacht race (going on today actually) so there were lots of pretty boats to look at. Victoria is also the city of Orca’s and everywhere you go you see Orca-related art. The girls just loved it.

That night we had the Card Player Cruises farewell party, as well as a goodbye parade put on by the ship on the Promenade. It was a busy week, and yet it flew by so quickly. Before we knew it we were scooting off the ship Friday morning as they prepared to do the same voyage all over again with 3,000 fresh faces. They will continue doing this exact same trip until September. The timing worked out nicely for us though, because we returned home on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, meaning I had a four day weekend at home to look forward to before returning to work on Tuesday; a mini vacation in it’s own right.

By the time we got home we were all ready to get back to our routine, as well as enjoy a home cooked meal and a night in our own beds. I was especially anxious to get home and play guitar; it’s been awhile since I’ve gone a full week without playing and I didn’t want to get too rusty. The main focus of this weekend is potty training for Elise. She did really well with it on the ship, so we went shopping yesterday afternoon to pick out special underwear for her. As expected, there have been some accidents, as well as the occasional outburst (by parent and child alike) but we’ll get through it just like we did with Ava. In Elise’s case we’re doing this a full year earlier than Ava did, so it won’t be easy, but we know she is ready and up to the challenge.

Before I go I just want to say thank you again to my Mom for making this trip happen. If it wasn’t your insistence, we never would have gone, and I’m so glad that we did. As I said in the title, this was our first family vacation. Yes, we’ve traveled together as a family before, but always to visit and stay with family. Although there certainly was a family aspect to this trip, it was still our first time going on a true vacation together. It’s something that we’ll never forget and I hope she enjoyed it as much as we did. Here’s some of our favorite photos from the trip.

Just before boarding the ship for the first time

Formal night dinner with Nana, night 2.

Elise being a good girl at formal night

Looks can be deceiving because this was not exactly Ava’s best night. Memorable though.

Like a boss

Nana having fun with the girls

Setting sail on day 1

Visiting the bear chair in Juneau

Getting started with the muck

Visiting one of the many Orcas we found in Victoria, B.C.

On the docks in Juneau

‘Hanging’ out in Skagway

The little monster

On the lookout in Alaska. Elise kept using her binoculars backwards.

Mom climbing the rock wall. When she rang the bell at the top Ava yelled out “Mommy I’m so proud of you!”

Playing with the selfie stick in Victoria

At work with one of my little helpers

Lunch in Skagway

First and foremost I want to start this off by wishing my wife, my Mom, my Mother-in-law, my sisters, aunts, cousins, and friends (basically all the Moms in our lives) a very happy Mother’s Day! It’s a special day that you all very much deserve, so I hope it’s a good one. Normally I’d be spending this morning making a nice brunch for Jessica, but this year is a little different. Jessica will be working brunch at El Gaucho Bellevue while I spend the day with the kids, then tonight we’ll do a nice dinner at home. Yesterday I stopped by Central Market (which is the really nice grocery store in Mill Creek) and picked up fresh Kusshi oysters, dungeness crab, jumbo prawns, scallops, and calamari. I’m looking forward to treating her to a seafood extravaganza this evening.

To explain to the kids a little bit about the character of their mamma, Jessica received a phone call from Tony, the GM at El Gaucho Bellevue, asking for a favor. Although she normally only works Wednesday and Thursday nights, and of course he knows she is a Mom, he had to ask her if she was willing to work Mother’s Day brunch. They already had over 600 reservations on the books and basically needed all hands on deck. He also promised her that she would be the first one to get called off, should they end up over-staffed. Without hesitation she said yes, and later on decided that even if she were given the opportunity to get called off, she wouldn’t take it. It’s too good of a shift to pass up, and we’re going on vacation in a couple weeks, so working made sense. Yesterday she got another call from Tony saying they actually could get by without her and offered her the day off, which was cool because he stayed true to his word, but so did she, and declined his offer. That’s classic Jessica – always putting what’s best for our family ahead of herself. Obviously we’re quite lucky to have her and greatly appreciate everything she does. Happy Mother’s Day honey, as Ava would say, we “love you around the volcano.”

Although I won’t get to spend Mother’s Day with my own Mom, I’m very much excited to be spending a week with her on the Alaska cruise, which is only two weeks away! We’re all getting very excited for the trip. The girls seem to really understand that we’re going on a trip with Nana on a big boat and we’re going to see all kinds of exciting things. I know this is something my Mom has been looking forward to since she presented the idea several months ago, and of course getting this week with her grandkids will be something she never forgets. Hopefully this will suffice as a delayed, but unforgettable, Mother’s Day gift.

Finally, speaking of Grandma’s, Amy and Tom left earlier this week after a nice long visit. Amy was here for 2.5 weeks, and Tom joined her with us for the final week of the stay. We always enjoy spending time with them, and they always provide so much help with the kids. It sort of dawned on me that first night after they left while Jessica was at work that I hadn’t made dinner for the kids, or given them a bath, or barely even changed a diaper for that matter, in two weeks! They really take on the kids head first when they’re here and it gives Jessica and I a lot more free time, so we appreciate it very much. As far as I know they’re in Germany right now. Tom had to go for some work he’s doing with a company based in Colorado, and Amy went along with him to visit her niece Lauren, who lives with her family in Frankfurt. Lauren’s husband John is an officer in the Marine Corps, so they have already had an opportunity to live in some pretty exciting places. Randomly they were stationed in San Diego at the same time we were there, which is when I got a chance to know them.

Regarding the kids, everyone is doing really well. Ava is such a little helper these days, and she really seems to thrive when given a task. Maybe you need her to run upstairs to grab something, or keep Enzo busy while you change Elise, whatever it is she is always eager to help. She also likes helping with things that you don’t really need help with, like vacuuming or making dinner, but I usually do my best to find some way for her to help. She definitely understands that she is the oldest of the kids and seems to thrive in that role. She’s also doing well at school and looks forward to going every Tuesday and Thursday.

Earlier this week Jessica and the kids met up with my sister Dana at the Snohomish Aquatic Center. Everyone had a blast and Ava couldn’t stop talking about it all night. She’s still unwilling to go completely underwater based on an incident we had at the pool last summer, but we’re getting there. She definitely loves to go swimming, but I think we need to get her into lessons ASAP. Jessica said Elise was absolutely fearless in the water (much like her Daddy) and Enzo, who unexpectedly went under a few times, always popped right back up and kept going. All night Ava kept saying, I want to go back to the pool with Auntie Dana and Anna.

Speaking of my niece Anna, I guess we know who the star athlete in the family is. Anna, who is 15, has been playing soccer as long as I can remember. She set a goal as a very young child to become a soccer star and get a college scholarship out of it. Her dedication throughout this whole time is beyond impressive, especially to someone like me who tried so many different things growing up. Her ability to stick with one thing and become great at it is so inspiring, and I hope my kids take notice of it. We really need to take them to one of Anna’s games sometime soon. In her last game, Bellevue High (Anna’s team) won by a score of 13-2. Anna scored all 13 goals.

Elise is doing great and growing so fast. Based on one of my recent posts when I talked about Elise and how sweet she is, Jessica said I need to be careful because I seem to favor her a bit. At first I felt bad when she said that, but then thought about it some more and agreed with her. I do favor Elise, but not because I love her more or anything like that. Obviously my love for all 3 of the kids could never be compared. The reason I favor Elise is simply that at some level, I think she needs it. Being the middle child is rough, and let’s face it, she will always be Ava’s younger sister. At this point I think it’s fair to say that Ava is always going to have a big personality; she’s the life of the party and people are naturally attracted to her. Like her Mom, Ava is going to be the ‘cool kid’ in school (something that I definitely was not) and so I can’t help but worry about Elise feeling like she is always in Ava’s shadow. I hope they both understand this when they get older. In many ways Elise’s personality is closest to my own as a child, and in all honesty she needs a little more coddling than Ava. I have to be careful with it though because she recently said to Jessica that sometimes she gets sad on purpose because she knows that when she is sad Daddy will pick her up, take her outside to ‘search for tigers’, coddle her, etc. She’s a smart little girl so I have to be careful in how I reward her. It’s too bad this parenting thing doesn’t come with an owner’s manual. Not to worry though, it’s just part of the dynamic when you have three distinctly different little personalities all forming in the same household.

Enzo is doing great lately and continues to prove his fearlessness on a regular basis. He hasn’t needed any breathing treatments in about two weeks and seems to be fully recovered from the bug he had. It’s a good thing he has his little Star Wars helmet because Jessica caught him the other day barreling down our driveway on Elise’s scooter with the biggest smile on his face. Thankfully she was there to catch him before he bit it going over the curb. I just love how he’s only 15 months old and is already riding scooters! He recently had a checkup and has finally come back down onto the charts; he’s now at 98% for height in his age group. He’s such a little boy too. I guess I’ve gotten used to having girls so Enzo’s insistence on climbing everything in sight is new to me. If you come to our house now you’ll see the dining table out near the middle of the kitchen, because that’s the only place we can put it where Enzo isn’t able to climb up on it. He just loves to climb on things and stand there with this little grin on his face because he knows he got away with something. He’s also doing really well with his vocabulary. He’s even starting to string a couple words together and make his own little sentences. As I’ve said before, the girls deserve plenty of credit for his advancements with walking and talking at such a young age. He’s such an awesome little dude and has completed our family in ways we never could have imagined.

Regarding the title of this post, Jessica has been asking me for at least the past few years to go get my eyes checked. I’ve always resisted because I have good vision and can easily read tiny print, or things that are far away. However over the past 6 months I’ve been noticing that my eyes feel really fatigued at the end of the day. It makes sense considering I’ve basically been starting at a computer screen for the past 5 years. So finally this week I went to see the optometrist to get my eyes checked. They did all kinds of tests including blowing a puff of air into each eye to test your eye pressure, taking pictures of the back of my eyeballs, and doing all the typical stuff where you read random letters at various sizes. I have to admit I was feeling cocky throughout the tests because I was able to read the smallest letters they put in front of me without too much difficulty.

At the end of the tests the doctor explained to me that I am far-sighted, meaning I can see things well at a distance. To me that just means you have good vision, but it doesn’t account for the constant fatigue I’d been experiencing. As he explained, I’m good at seeing things far away, but not as good at seeing things clearly up close. To compensate for this, I’m using the muscles in my eyes that are normally reserved for seeing far away, to see things up close. Those muscles aren’t meant for seeing up close, so they end up getting worn out, and that is what I’ve been experiencing. He said I would benefit greatly from wearing glasses whenever I’m on the computer, and that it also wouldn’t hurt to wear them when watching TV or driving. I’m certainly not required to wear them when driving, but at the same time it wouldn’t hurt.

So I swallowed my pride and said okay, let’s get glasses then. I tried on quite a few pair and finally ended up choosing something I really liked. I felt a little guilty because the ones I selected are Ferragamo’s, and they weren’t exactly the cheapest pair available, but they were definitely my favorite. I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance I had to my Dad when wearing them. I was a little nervous to tell Jessica what I’d chosen, but she was totally cool about it. I joked with her that I’d always wanted a ‘pair of Ferragamo’s’, but always figured it would be a pair of shoes, not glasses.

When I first put them on yesterday it was crazy. The best analogy I can make is it was like going from regular TV to high definition, although by the time my kids read this they won’t know what the hell regular TV even means. To put it another way, it was like going from an analog world, to a digital one. Everything snapped into such a level of focus that it honestly made me dizzy for a second. I remember walking around at the grocery store right after getting them and feeling slightly off balance; not because the prescription was wrong, but because I wasn’t used to this level of detail and clarity, and it was playing tricks on my mind. It was really weird. I also felt like random strangers were looking at me differently, which is obviously all in my head, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve been wearing them constantly since then and have basically gotten used to it. When I got home the girls saw me and giggled. Ava says “Daddy you look funny” and Elise says “Daddy why are you wearing Mommy’s glasses?” It was pretty cute.

Finally, during Amy and Tom’s stay, we got all new carpet upstairs. Unlike the visit when they helped us with the wood floors downstairs, this time we had a professional installation company come out to do the work. We went with a nice carpet as well as a nice padding underneath it, and all I can say is that it’s lovely. I’ve never had brand new carpet before, but it feels so nice to walk around barefoot on. I’m just as excited about this as I was with the new wood floors downstairs. At this point the only rooms in our house that don’t have brand new flooring are the two upstairs bathrooms.

We got to do another band practice on Friday and things are better. I was under the impression that the house was empty while we practiced, so I was slightly self conscious when finding out at the end that Dana and Anna were home the entire time and heard everything. Oh well, gotta get used to people hearing you at some point, I just wasn’t expecting it. We’ve added the song ‘Cold Shot’ by Stevie Ray Vaughan to our repertoire and are having fun with it, as well as all the others. I’m struggling with ‘Texas Flood’ the most, but we’re getting there, and most of all, we’re having fun in the process.

Here’s just a few recent pics, but something tells me we’ll have plenty more to share after our vacation. Plus I’ve got that whole Ferrari/Lamborghini thing going on the day we leave. Lots of good stuff coming up in the very near-term, including a visit from Grandpa Rick shortly after our vacation. Until then, Happy Mother’s Day!

The little climber, doing his thing

Grandma and the girls at Mommy’s birthday dinner

Jessica wanted a selfie after I picked up my specs.

Fun at the park with the girls while Zo stayed home with Grandma & Grandpa

So at this point, since the start of 2016, the majority of our family has needed to be seen at an emergency room.. The only ones who have not made this ‘right of passage’ so far are Elise and myself. I hope I didn’t just jinx it by saying so, especially since we’re not even half-way through the year!

The latest Pellegrini to make their way to the Swedish Mill Creek emergency room was Enzo, who had to go there at 2:30 am on Thursday night / Friday morning. The poor little guy was a bit out of sorts all day with a fever and cough, but he went to bed easily at his normal time, so everything seemed fine.

Jessica was at work that night doing a really cool auction fundraiser for the Seattle Seahawks. She actually had head coach Pete Carroll and team president Peter McLaughlin at her table, so that shows you how much confidence the management at El Gaucho Bellevue has in her. Apparently it was a ‘Celebrity Server’ type of event where Seahawks players were pairing up with Gaucho servers for the night and serving all the patrons of the event. She actually had two players assisting her, but I have to admit I’m not familiar with either of them (one was a rookie and the other was going into his 2nd year). Regardless, she got to chat with Russell Wilson, who was mostly busy playing songs and singing on the piano all night, but made a few stops to visit the Pete’s at their table. The team’s GM John Schneider has a child who is autistic, so the event was held to raise money for autism research. She said people were raising $30,000 donation paddles during the auction like it was nothing. One guest ended up spending over $100k! Although I love the new career I’ve carved out for myself over the past 5 years, I have to admit that these are the types of nights that I miss from my restaurant career. I’m just glad Jessica was there to experience it.

Anyway, she got home from work around 1:00 am and could hear via the baby monitor that Enzo wasn’t doing very well. She went to check on him and saw that he had a high fever, as well as significant trouble breathing. She gave him some medicine to break his fever but it wasn’t working, plus his breathing troubles were getting progressively worse. She deliberated for a bit but ultimately his doctor’s office didn’t open until 7:00 am and she knew there was no way she was going to sleep knowing he was struggling to breathe. So at 2:30 am she woke me up and said “Michael don’t freak out but Mom and I are taking Enzo to the emergency room.” Obviously this got my attention immediately so I woke up as she explained what was going on.

Since the girls were sound asleep there was nothing for me to do besides lay there in bed. I couldn’t go back to sleep because I was worried about Enzo, so I just layed there and waited for them to return. They got back at 4:00 am and said he was doing better. They did a chest x-ray on him and it came back negative. All they really knew was that he had a virus, but there was nothing they could do besides break his fever and give him a breathing treatment. They also gave him a prescription for an albuterol inhaler, which requires a baby mask in his case.

After all this commotion in the middle of the night I decided to work from home on Friday. I try not to abuse that privilege but it certainly comes in handy from time to time. Enzo has been getting better each day since then, and today he went in to see his regular doctor, so I’m anxious to hear how that went.

If you read Jessica’s most recent post then you know all about the trouble she experienced on our anniversary. That was so crazy. I kept telling her on that Saturday evening that something was wrong and she needed to go get checked out, but of course she didn’t want to go. By the time 10:00pm came around I basically forced her to go to the emergency room. The only other times I’ve seen her in that type of pain was during childbirth. It was scary so I’m glad she finally gave in and went to get checked out. I also owe a huge thank you to my cousin Kristy for helping us out that day. She was 90 minutes away and still arrived at our house at 5:00am so I could get to the hospital to be with Jessica. If it wasn’t for Kristy I wouldn’t have been able to be with Jessica for her surgery. The timing was crazy because all of our friends in the neighborhood were on vacation for Spring Break, so Kristy really saved the day.

I ended up getting an unexpected week at home with everyone and I must say it was a really nice surprise. Although I’ve always had respect for all the hard work Jessica puts into caring for the kids, I can’t help but respect it even more now that I’ve walked a mile in her shoes. Selfishly there are times when I wish she could go be a software engineer at Microsoft for a week and let me take care of the kids, but unfortunately that’s never going to happen. Regardless the kids and I had a blast. We got really lucky with the weather that week, so basically everyday I would take them out to the park while Mom stayed home to rest. She recovered quickly and before I knew it my week was over and it was back to the grind. One positive thing we’ll take from this experience is the value of the ‘stay-cation.’ I think I’m going to start taking a week off every Spring Break to spend with Jessica and the kids. There are so many fun attractions in the Seattle area to visit, so hopefully we can make a tradition out of this.

I have to apologize for not writing a post recently. I just looked back and saw that it’s been over a month since my last post. I think that may be the longest stretch I’ve ever gone without writing since starting this blog nearly 5 years ago. During that time writing posts has become the 2nd most cathartic thing I do (behind playing music of course) so going on this long of a dry spell kinda sucks.

In my last post I basically put it all out there in terms of my take on the current political campaign season, so after that I figured I should probably put my money where my mouth is. On the day before Easter, while Jessica and the girls were out at an Easter Egg Hunt, Enzo and I went to the Washington State Democratic Caucuses to show support for Bernie Sanders. I have never caucused before and honestly didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I can easily say that it was a very positive experience. Not surprisingly Enzo was a big hit, but it was a nice opportunity to meet some of my neighbors and have a good political discussion. I hadn’t planned on speaking up to the group, and certainly didn’t have anything prepared, but after a woman spoke up about why she is supporting Hillary Clinton the mediator for our group asked if anyone would like to speak up on behalf of Bernie. Instinctively my hand raised and suddenly I found myself in front of our group, holding Enzo, explaining why I support Senator Sanders. I won’t go into all of that again because it’s not important; I’ve already made all the points I need to in my last post. The important part is that we were there showing our support, listening to what others had to say and not being afraid to make our own points and share our own perspectives. I’ll definitely be doing this again in the future.

Regarding the length of time since my last post, all I can say is it’s been quite a month. I don’t want to say I didn’t have the time because I don’t care for that excuse, but I’ve added a couple things to my schedule that have been taking up the majority of the little free time I already had.
For most people having a full-time corporate job at Microsoft, plus a wife and 3 young kids is more than enough to keep them busy, but I’m an odd duck who likes to pile it on, so I’ve decided to add a second (part-time) job to my life, as well as join a band. Yep, for real.

First my new job: for the past few months I’ve been working on a new website for Card Player Cruises, which is the company my Mom has worked for over the past 9 or 10 years. The pace has really escalated over the past month though, as we prepare for the launch of our new website. Don’t bother going to look for it right now because we haven’t launched it yet. I’m still working 7 days a week to get the new site ready to go live. I can’t wait to launch it and will definitely share the link once it’s ready. I’m very proud of it and consider it the best solo project I’ve ever done. Plus it’s nice to be in such regular contact with my Mom. Once it goes live the number of hours I’m working for them will decrease, but I’ve already got plenty of ideas for future improvements and new features.

Now regarding the band, I’m really excited to be playing music with people again. It’s been far too long since I’ve jammed with people on a regular basis and I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy it. It all started off innocently enough: Jessica’s Uncle Butch and Aunt Carol have a niece named Shayla who is married to a really nice guy named Greg. He’s about my age and recently took up playing guitar. We talked about it a few times at family get-togethers so I invited him over to jam sometime. He started coming over to play guitar and we pretty much hit it off. Although he was brand new to it I could tell he had potential, so at a certain point I asked him if he would ever consider playing bass. If so we could hook up with my nephew Kallan, who is a good drummer, and form a blues rock trio. Greg jumped at the opportunity, went out and bought a nice bass guitar and amp, and the 3 of us quickly started jamming.

Kallan is currently playing guitar in another band with his Dad (who is a drummer) but he’s been telling me for a while that he wants to play drums in a blues band. Right now we’re just working on cover songs but hopefully soon we’ll start writing some original material as well. We’ve currently got 5 songs in our repertoire: Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix), Sunshine Of Your Love (Cream), Texas Flood (Stevie Ray Vaughan), La Grange (ZZ Top), and Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix). If we can add about 5 more songs we’ll be ready to start playing gigs.

Our ultimate goal is to be able to play local shows for our friends and family to attend. I joked with the guys that the pinnacle for me would be for us to play shows and earn enough money from our performance to pay for babysitters so Jessica and Shayla could leave the kids at home and come watch us play. We don’t have a name yet, but it’s Kallan on drums, Greg on bass, and myself on guitar and vocals. I get plenty of practice playing guitar at home every day but practicing singing isn’t quite so easy, and trust me – I need it. The only way to practice singing is to really belt it out, which isn’t something you can do at home with kids, so I’m limited to the car and band practice. Doesn’t matter though, we’re all just there to have fun and enjoy the moment. No one’s trying to become rich and famous here, but it’s still a lot of fun. Not to sound too much like Phil Jackson, but the journey is the reward, so I’m glad to be able to share this experience with them. Hopefully sometime around the end of this year we’ll be ready to start playing shows. I would assume we’d mostly play at bars and small clubs, plus maybe the occasional outdoor event. A car show would be cool…

Tomorrow Grandpa Tom arrives to spend a week with us. Grandma has been here about 10 days and has been super helpful with the kids as usual. Thursday is Jessica’s birthday so I think we’re all going out to dinner that night, then Friday night Jess and I will go to dinner alone while the kids hang out with G&G. Friday will also be an exciting day for us because we’re getting all new carpet upstairs at our house. That means that in the past 9 months we will have replaced the flooring on literally 95% of the house. It’s going to look really nice, and of course we picked the environmentally friendly carpet with corn-based fibers.

Since I probably won’t be writing another post in 3 days I just want to wish my amazing wife Jessica a very happy birthday. Thank you for being so supportive and always putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own. The excitement never seems to end around here but I’m thankful to get to share it with you!

Not only is it March Madness for the sports world right now, but it’s also March Madness at Microsoft. Our fiscal year ends on June 30, which means we’re just about to begin our 4th quarter. One thing I’ve learned working for large publicly held corporations over the past few years is that Q4 is always crazy. It’s your last chance to drive annual revenue before reporting to the shareholders, and in the world of Azure that means unveiling a bunch of new cloud computing services, as well as supporting broader company initiatives.

Microsoft’s annual Build conference is going on in San Francisco March 30 – April 1. It’s the biggest conference we do as a company, it’s aimed at software developers, and the Azure website is doing a lot to promote it. We’ll even be streaming the event live the whole time it’s going on. There’s obviously a lot of work to be done in order to support this, and I’ve basically insisted to our team leaders that I take on the majority of the development work required to support the conference. This ain’t my first rodeo, but it is how you earn your stripes. I’ve learned over the last few years that becoming more senior in my field is more about your growth as a leader than your growth in technical skills. Hopefully these next few weeks (and months) will contribute in that respect.

A couple weeks ago, on March 2nd to be specific, I had my one-year anniversary at Microsoft. I won’t say it’s hard to believe it’s already been a year, because it’s been so busy since I started, but I will say that my first year has gone by very fast. As I’ve shared in many previous posts, March 2nd, for whatever reason, has been a pivotal day in my life. Yes, it’s the day that my Dad passed away, but it’s also the day I started working at El Gaucho, as well as the day I started working at Microsoft. You can imagine the joy I had when I realized that Jessica’s first night serving tables at El Gaucho Bellevue was, of course, March 2nd.

Speaking of Jessica, I enjoyed reading her post last week, mainly because many of the observations she shared were as new to me as they would be to anyone outside our direct family. For example, it’s impossible for me to know how Elise acts when Ava is gone at school because I’m always working at that time. I don’t even know where Ava’s new school is for that matter. So it was fun to hear her perspective like that in long form. After reading her post I was inspired to do the same thing in my next post. Although I certainly don’t get as much solo time with the kids as she does, I still get my fair share (every Wednesday & Thursday night to be exact), and it’s reasonable to think that my perception of the kids as their father would differ at least somewhat from Jessica’s.

I’ll start with Elise, my little Daddy’s girl. The first word that always comes to my mind when thinking of Elise is ‘sweet’. Everything about her is sweet to me. She’s got the sweetest little smile, the sweetest little voice, and the sweetest little ponytail. When she hugs you, she wraps completely around you and basically melts into you. She simply embodies that word in every way for me. She’s also our most emotional child, and considering that she is now going through the terrible two’s, that means there are plenty of emotional outbursts to deal with. Whereas Ava’s way of dealing with the TT’s was to be downright mean at times, Elise tends to internalize things (like her Daddy) and it all comes out of her in uncontrollable waves of emotion. I’ve found she’s not that hard to console though. If you hold her, take her on a short walk, and give her your undivided love and attention, she’ll snap out of it pretty quickly. It’s probably fair to say that Elise isn’t quite as graceful on her feet as her big sis, but it usually comes off nothing shy of endearing. The other night she fell down the final four or five stairs leading into our living room. Jess and I were sitting there watching a movie and Elise basically did a cartwheel down the stairs, except rather than using her hands to brace herself, she just used her head. For a couple milliseconds she was literally standing on her head on the 2nd step, before crashing to her feet on the hardwood floor. Not something you want to see as a parent, but she’s a tough cookie and she bounced back pretty quickly. We couldn’t help but laugh later once we knew she was okay. Never seen anything like it. Love you so much Weese.

Enzo is approaching 14 months old and he’s doing great. He’s still waking up most nights, which is something the girls grew out of much earlier, but he’s been quite advanced at basically everything else. He was our earliest crawler, our earliest walker, and now our earliest talker. We’re just getting into that exciting phase where his vocabulary is growing noticeably on a regular basis. He’s got beautiful big eyes, although I still don’t know what color they are. Jessica thinks they’re green but I think they’re brown. Enzo’s favorite activity these days is climbing, so if you leave him alone for any length of time you can expect that’s what he’ll be doing when you return. He also loves to get into everything, and I do mean everything. Like his Daddy, he loves playing with pots and pans in the kitchen, but if that’s not an option he’s more than content to simply unload everything from every drawer he has access to. Like his big sisters, he’s a very sweet kid with an infectious smile. And he’s my little boy. I love him to the moon.

Ava is the leader of the group, and sometimes I think she thinks of herself as the leader of the whole family. She has a strong personality, an incredibly natural sense of humor, and fierce determination. She’s also the toughest little kid I’ve ever seen, and I love that about her so much. Other kids are naturally attracted to her, and she always rises to the top as the leader of the group. I don’t have that quality but I admire it in her so much. I’ve already seen it time and again, yet she’s not even 4 and a half years old! Going through the various phases of adolescence won’t be easy with Ava, due to how strong-willed and determined she gets about everything, but hopefully getting through something with Ava will mean it’s all downhill with Elise and Enzo. She’s showing an interest in playing music, which I’m thrilled about, but regardless of which direction she chooses in life I know she will be a success. She’s got a special spark and I love her so much.

Jessica told me something funny yesterday, which was that she and the kids were at the park enjoying the sunny weather, and they came across another family with a daughter named Ava and a son named Enzo! Can you believe that!? What are the chances!? I thought it was the craziest thing. Jessica said she overheard their Mom talking to the kids and simply had to go over there and introduce herself. I told my neighbor about it and he said I should run out and buy a lottery ticket. Too bad I’m so anti-lottery.

What I did go out and recently buy, however, was another electric guitar. I know, I know. What could I possibly need another guitar for? I’m not going to waste anyone’s time trying to justify it, just rest assured I’ve justified it to myself, and more importantly to Jessica. In all honesty it was the least expensive guitar I’ve purchased since high school, and since giving one away to Kallan for his birthday I’ve just felt like something was missing. The best part about it is that Elise loves it! Although it’s official color is Transparent Amber, Elise has already started referring to it as “my orange guitar.” Of course it would be. It’s her favorite color (orange) and it has stripes like a tiger. I asked her recently if she would like that one to be hers someday and she said “yes, that’s my favorite orange guitar.” Guess we know where that one will be going.

I was listening to one of my podcasts this week and heard a great interview with Warren Buffett. The interviewer was asking him why we’re so enamored with rich people and wealth. It turned into a deeper conversation about money and happiness, but then Buffett said something that really struck me. “I could have 20 houses but I wouldn’t be as happy as I am living in the same house I purchased in 1959. I could have 20 cars but I wouldn’t be as happy as I am with my one car. The problem with having lots of possessions is that they begin to possess you.” I loved that statement so much, but also instantly realized that there was a lesson for me to learn there, particularly when it comes to guitars. I’m certainly going to enjoy this new one, but it’s going to be a good long while before my collection begins to grow again.

Several weeks ago I wrote a post about my fascination with this year’s presidential campaign. At that time I was in more of an exploratory mode and wasn’t completely sure which candidates I was in support of. Well, a lot has changed since then, and although I’ve waffled internally about whether or not to share my opinions in our blog, based on Jessica’s encouragement I’ve ultimately decided to do so. I would never write anything political on social media, mainly because I wouldn’t expect the hundreds of people I’m ‘friends’ with to really care about my political perspectives, plus I feel I’m much better conveying an idea long form rather than short, but this blog has a much smaller audience, and therefore has a better chance that someone reading it cares a little bit more about my opinion than someone I haven’t seen since high school. I fully realize that whenever you share your political opinions, it’s a guarantee that someone who reads it will disagree, but that’s a good thing. Some might even call it your birthright. I think it’s what part of what makes us great.

I came into this presidential campaign season fairly certain that I’d be voting for a Republican candidate. Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-Obama in any way. I actually think he’s done a remarkable job considering the situation he inherited 8 years ago. I remember how tough those times were for many people, but besides all that, these past 8 years have been the best 8 years of my life, both personally and professionally. In that time I met my wife, had 3 amazing children, got my college degree, bought my first home, and changed careers, so it’s been a very good stretch for me. However I’m a big believer in the pendulum of life; doesn’t matter if you’re talking about politics, sports, music, whatever. The pendulum keeps on swinging, so it seemed natural to me that after 8 years with a conservative leader like George W. Bush, we would shift to Obama, who has been the most liberal president of my lifetime. Now that we’ve had 8 years with Obama, it once again seems natural that we would swing back to the conservative side, and I have no issue with it at all.

Early on in this race I even said to myself “There’s no way I’m voting for Hillary Clinton for President” because she was, in my opinion, the embodiment of the establishment. As it turns out, however, there was one way… One very specific way. As someone who was considering an allegiance to the Republican party I have to admit that the overall buffoonery that has been displayed thus far by the GOP has all but entirely pushed me away. It’s unfortunate too because I thought several of the candidates had some very interesting things to say, but unfortunately Donald Trump has ruined it for me.

I have to admit that when Trump first got into the race I was intrigued. Jessica most certainly was not. She saw right through him from day one, but I’ll admit it, I drank the Kool Aid for a bit. I remember thinking to myself “Hmm, this guy isn’t worried about being politically correct. I kind of like that. He’s also not a professional politician; he’s a businessman, and a successful one at that. He’s got his own money, so he won’t be in the pockets of all the political pundits out there.” Based on those reasons I decided to start paying more attention to Trump, although I quickly realized how short-sided my argument really was.

Quickly the red flags started popping up. Initially all I wanted to hear from Trump were some policy proposals, but he kept not giving them. I quickly grew tired of hearing that we’re going to be great again and we’re going to win so much we’ll be tired of winning. What does that even mean? When did we stop being a great nation? It’s funny because I hear all these people mimicking Trump saying we’re going to make America great again, but I certainly didn’t hear any of them saying we weren’t great before Trump came along with his stupid slogan. All he wants to talk about is building a wall between us and Mexico, and having Mexico pay for it. That’s not a policy proposal, it’s a construction project, and a ridiculous one at that. That was the first red flag. The he says he’s going to ban all Muslims from entering the country. Another red flag. Then he says he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose any voters. Another red flag.

Then came the rallies, and that is when my general attitude towards Trump turned from malaise to disgust. I saw him telling his security to kick protesters out into the freezing cold and not give them their jackets. I heard him encourage his crowd to be violent towards protestors, and even offer to pay their legal fees. Since when is it acceptable for grown men to push and shove teenage girls? To spit in other people’s faces? To punch people in the face because you don’t agree with them politically? I kept asking myself “Aren’t we better than this?” If this is our path towards greatness then our definition of greatness has been skewed.

Overall, I can’t vote for Donald Trump because he’s not presidential. I’m not one of those people that wants to elect a president that they would be comfortable sitting down and having a beer with. I know plenty of guys that are great to sit down for a beer with and none of them (myself included) are anywhere nearly qualified to be president. I want my president to act presidential; I want him to take the high road when someone takes a cheap shot at him, rather than fire back with some sophomoric double entendre. I want someone representing us that the rest of the world won’t mock us for electing. Can you even imagine how our reputation would suffer globally if we elect that guy as our leader?

It’s too bad too, because I think there were some interesting candidates for the Republicans this year, but none of them were able to grab headlines like Trump, and apparently that’s what it takes these days. I’m still a big fan of John Kasich, but at this point he has been mathematically eliminated from receiving the nomination, even though he is still technically in the race. I love his message based around unity, rather than Trump’s message which is based on division and segregation. I nearly lost it the other day when I heard a leader from a white supremacist group say that if you’re not going to vote for Trump you should be forced to renounce your citizenship.

I’m not overly concerned though because I feel quite confident that Trump will not win the presidency. I hope we’re all ready for President Hillary because it looks like that’s what we’re going to get. In all honesty I’m not sure that I am ready for her, but at this point it definitely feels like the lesser of two evils. What is more concerning, however, is that even though Trump isn’t going to be president, you cannot deny the fact that he has struck a chord with millions of people throughout this country. Their frustrations are real and should not be overlooked. When Trump’s campaign is over, all those people will still remain, and dealing with those frustrations needs to be a high priority of our next president. The system needs a shakeup in my opinion, I just hope we can find nonviolent ways of doing it.

On the positive side, I’ve used the last couple months to figure out which issues matter most to me. I used to complain about taxes, but that was the easy way out. What I’ve realized is that I don’t mind paying my share of taxes, I just want them to go to the right places. For me, the basis of the issues that matter most to me is the safety and well being of my family; and those issues are gun control and climate change.

As a parent of young children who will soon be entering the school system, I’m concerned for their safety. The fact that I’m scared for my kids’ safety at school is ridiculous, but that’s the world we live in. Or should I say the country we live in? When I was a kid we did earthquake drills, now they’re doing active shooter drills. To be clear, I have no problem with people owning guns, even though we personally do not and never will own guns. I have several family members who own guns and one thing they all have in common is that they all did it the right way. They registered for a license, went through a background check, and attended training courses. They also keep their guns locked and safely stored in a safe. That’s how it should be done. If someone wants to own a handgun for personal protection and target shooting, I’m totally cool with that. I also have no problem with someone owning a rifle or shotgun for hunting.

What I do have a problem with is civilians owning assault rifles. Those types of guns are designed for one thing and one thing only – to kill humans. So I can think of no good reason that civilians should be allowed to own them. I also think that there should be no loopholes in the law when it comes to purchasing a gun. If you want to buy a gun you’re going to have to go through a background check. Period. If you’re a felon, or you have any form of mental disease, I feel you shouldn’t be allowed to purchase a gun. I realize there are other (illegal) ways of obtaining guns, but it doesn’t change the fact that stricter gun control has already been proven in a number of countries to lead to a reduction in gun-related violence and death. Why do we have to continue to learn our own lessons the hard way? Why can’t we accept the proof that is already out there? Sometimes I feel we’re too hard-headed as a nation, and this is a good example of why.

Regarding climate change, I took a science course at the University of Washington many years ago on this topic, and even then the evidence was overwhelming. The increase in burning of fossil fuels is damaging the ozone layer, and causing severely negative effects on our planet. Global temperatures rise and set new records year after year, yet we do so little. There’s no debate to be had. Anyone that doesn’t believe climate change is real simply needs to educate themselves. Remember, people used to believe the Earth was flat and wondered where the sun went every night as well. I will admit that even though I’ve never doubted the effects of climate change, it wasn’t always a top political priority for me. For a while there my political agenda was almost entirely based on finances, but then I put my views in the context of my family, specifically my children. Obviously I want my kids to live long lives, to have children of their own, and eventually grandchildren. If the longevity of your family is a high priority for you, then how can climate change not be a priority as well? This is why I loved it when Leonardo DiCaprio said in his Oscar acceptance speech that climate change is the biggest threat we face as a species.

So there it is – that’s where I stand. Once again, I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but I’m glad it’s okay that we’re allowed to disagree. You know where you’re not allowed to disagree politically? The Middle East. Is that what we want to become? One of my favorite quotes from this campaign season came from Chris Christie. He said “If you’re looking for the candidate that you agree with on every single issue, the only place to look is the mirror.” What’s been most important to me over the past couple months is that I’ve been able to narrow in on what is most important to me politically. Although I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, I would hope that at least no one could question my motivations. I write about them constantly, in fact I’m writing this directly to them (as always), and I want them to understand not only what is important to me, but why.

Must. Play. Pac man.

Sunday lunch with our favorite bugs

Swing fun

Visiting an old friend at the park near our house in Bellevue

My sweet little Elise (and Pippo of course)

Weese playing her orange tiger-striped guitar

Well, it was bound to happen. We’ve been incredibly lucky over the past 4 years in the sense that none of our kids have ever really been sick or injured. I don’t want to make this out to be some type of serious injury, because it’s definitely not, but it did require a trip to the emergency room, along with 3 stitches, and of course it happened on the only Saturday of the year that I’m away from my family.

Saturday a couple of my co-workers and I attended a web development conference in Seattle. There was a little chaos before the event started because everyone was told that the event was taking place in South Lake Union, but then when we arrived it turned out that it was actually taking place in the heart of downtown, near Benaroya Hall. So we had to scramble to get downtown and find parking. 5 minutes after the conference started I get a phone call from Jessica. It seemed odd that she would be calling me at that time since she knew I was at a conference, but I answered.

Long story short, Jessica and the kids were at the gym with our friend Solana and her two boys. They do this regularly because the gym provides childcare to members while they’re working out. The kids always love going there. I don’t know exactly what happened but the gist of it is that Ava was dancing, she was on a hard surface, and she fell and hit her chin on that hard surface. The cut was pretty deep and they weren’t able to stop the bleeding with a band aid, so they found Jessica to see what she wanted to do.

Apparently Ava was totally fine throughout this whole experience, which doesn’t surprise me one bit. She constantly impresses me with her toughness and this ended up being just another example of that. She was wearing Enzo’s new Russell Wilson jersey because it’s much too big for him to wear right now, and amazingly she didn’t get a single drop of blood on it.

Anyway Jessica explained to me what was going on and of course I offered to leave the conference and come home, but she convinced me to stay put for now. She just wanted me to know what was going on, but had control of everything on her own. She took the kids to Swedish Hospital Mill Creek and was shown into a room immediately. I guess when a single mom comes in with 3 young kids she tends to get a little preferential treatment. I’ll always remember that hospital because that’s where Jessica had the ultrasound when we found out we were having our little Enzo. I remember the technician saying “I’m pretty sure it’s a boy”, then after a long silent pause I replied “How sure are you?”.

According to Jessica, Ava did amazingly well the whole time. The only time she got a little freaked out was when the (male) doctor got right up in her face to look at the cut in her chin. She has always been leery of strange men, which is totally fine with me, and didn’t care much for him invading her personal space. She ended up getting 3 dissolvable stitches and a special band aid. I spoke to them on speaker phone once they got in the car to come home and she said “Daddy my owie doesn’t hurt anymore!”

After all that excitement Jessica thought it would be best to just go home and relax for the rest of the day. I got home from the conference around 5:00 with a special box of ‘Frozen’ band aids. They were such a hit that Elise eventually decided to wear one of her own (see photo below). By the next day Ava was completely back to normal, so it was all no big deal. Jess and I agreed that it was best that it happened to Ava, since she’s the oldest and most likely the toughest at this point in time. Again I’m just so proud of her for being so tough and so good throughout the entire experience. It’s ironic that all this would take place the one time I’m away doing my own thing, but of course Jessica rocked it and took care of everything perfectly well.

We’re getting excited about our upcoming trip to Alaska and Canada. It’s still 3 months away, but we’ve been talking about it regularly. I spoke to my Mom yesterday and she said we’ve got side-by-side balcony cabins with a private door connecting them, meaning the kids can run back and forth between the two. That’s going to be really nice because it means all 5 of us won’t be crammed into a single room. We’re looking forward to seeing whales and icebergs, as well as doing some fun shore excursions like dog sledding. We’ve been watching that show Gold Rush lately, so maybe we’ll even pan for some gold.

Speaking of upcoming trips, we recently made plans to go back to Iowa for Christmas this year. Rick and Chris were quite generous in offering to fly us out, and after talking about it over dinner, we decided to go for it. I know traveling with the kids during Christmas won’t be easy, but it’s worth it. We had a great time in Iowa last month and already when I think back about that trip I don’t think about our travel difficulties, I think about the great time we had with family and friends. Plus we’ll be staying for a week so our travel days will be spaced out a bit.

In between these two events we’ve got my family reunion in Moscow, Idaho in July, so there’s already a lot to look forward to. We’ve also got some work planned for the house this year, including a new front porch and new carpet upstairs. Just like that our year is basically planned out, and we haven’t even made it through February yet.

Jessica and I recently worked Valentine’s Day weekend together in the Pampas Room at El Gaucho. We worked all 3 nights (Fri-Sun) and by the end of it I was exhausted. I haven’t done a string of consecutive bartending shifts like that in a long time and it wasn’t easy. I have to be honest, I was pretty happy to come back to my desk job on Tuesday. Anyway it was basically the same burlesque show we worked on New Year’s Eve, except rather than doing a Prohibition Era theme like before, this time we did a Venetian theme. The employees were all dressed as Gondoliers with black and white striped shirts, red scarfs, and ridiculous hats. I’m not big on themed service, but we had fun. Jessica would have had to work anyway, so I’m glad I got to be there with her. Plus our babysitter worked out extremely well so we’re hoping to have her over again soon.

Tomorrow night is Jessica’s last night at El Gaucho Seattle. It feels a little crazy because between the two of us we’ve got many years at that restaurant, but she’s transferring to El Gaucho Bellevue, meaning she’s staying in the company and will continue to be a part of ‘the family’. A bunch of our old friends from Seattle are now working in Bellevue, so I expect her transition to be seamless. She’ll be training there on Friday night, then working her normal Wednesday Thursday schedule starting next week.

That’s basically it for now. Off to work! Here’s a few recent pics of the kids, as well as their silly Gondolier parents.

Kallan’s 21st Birthday dinner in the 410 Room at El Gaucho

Bartending on Valentine’s Day weekend

Elise enjoying her Valentine’s Day treats

Ava showing her love for Minnie Mouse

Enzo trying out his new PJ’s from Nana

Sister love

I know I’m getting old because the two things that interest me most these days are politics and Jazz. And my right hip’s been killing me lately. I’ve never taken more than a passing interest in the Presidential elections of years past, but this time around I can’t seem to get enough. Every weekday morning I listen to a variety of political podcasts from both sides of the spectrum. The best part (to me at least) is that I still don’t know who I’m voting for. To take it a step further, I don’t even know which party I’m voting for. I honestly don’t. I feel like it’s common for people to pick a candidate based on one or two issues that they strongly identify with, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m doing my best right now to listen to each candidate with an open mind, and try to hear their entire message, rather than just the bits and pieces that I most closely identify with.

In order to get the most well-rounded coverage, I listen to podcasts from a variety of sources, including NPR, ABC, CBS, and FOX. Unfortunately, due to the electoral college system, I don’t really feel like my vote means anything, because regardless of which party I vote for, I live in a state that has always (and will always) vote for the Democratic candidate. Regardless, I like feeling well informed and I’m excited for the heat to get turned up in this race over the coming months.

I don’t know exactly where my interest in Jazz came from but it hit me pretty hard recently. I remember watching the movie ‘Whiplash’ last year and thinking to myself “This music is awesome! Why don’t I listen to this stuff more often?” Since then I’ve caught myself noticing little jazzy parts in songs and really liking them, so at a certain point I just decided to jump all the way in. Not surprisingly I immediately gravitated towards the more guitar-driven form of Jazz, and I now spend most afternoons at work listening to the sounds of great players like Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, and many others.

If you would have asked me 10 years ago what I thought of Jazz I would have told you I hated it. At that time, if it wasn’t saturated with distortion and screaming vocals, I simply wasn’t interested. Over time, however, my tastes have gradually changed, and I welcome that. I don’t want to be the same person I was 10 years ago, and I’m consciously enjoying this change in perspective that I’ve been having as of late.

In order to increase my knowledge and appreciation of Jazz, I recently started watching the Ken Burns PBS documentary “Jazz”. It’s a 10-part series, with each part taking around 2 hours to watch, so we’re talking about a lot of content there, but that’s cool. I’m in no hurry to get through it. I’m just enjoying learning all about the history of “the only true American art form.” I quickly came to realize that all the music I’ve loved over the years was in some way related to Jazz. The blues, country and R&B came directly from Jazz, then Rock ‘n Roll came from the blues, then heavy metal came from Rock ‘n Roll, but ultimately it all started with Jazz.

The other piece to this jazzy puzzle is that I’m teaching myself to play Jazz guitar. As a rock and blues player, I’ve always been intimidated by Jazz guitarists. All their fancy chords, finger-picking, and exotic scales were just too much for me, but now I’m embracing all that stuff. I bought a great book on Amazon full of Jazz guitar lessons and I’m really enjoying it. I don’t mind going back to the basics because I know I’m going to learn so many cool things that will influence my playing moving forward, regardless of style. As usual, I feel like I’m always either learning something new, or I’m stagnant, and I really hate being stagnant.

This past weekend was a good one for us. We spent Friday evening at El Gaucho celebrating Kallan’s 21st birthday. We had dinner in the 410 Room, which is a private room that I’ve worked in hundreds of times, but had never eaten in before this. The room was named after Victor Rosellini, who owned a famous restaurant in Seattle back in the day called Rosellini’s 410. My Dad was a friend of Victor’s, and a regular at his restaurant, so I knew that name well before I ever started working at El Gaucho. I remember one night when I was a busboy, the GM of El Gaucho (who was an old friend of my Dad’s) took me into the 410 room, which was full of investors and high rollers. He said “Gentlemen, I want you to meet the son of the infamous Elmer Pellegrini.” I’ll never forget Charles Ainsley, bigtime regular / bank owner / Gaucho investor getting up out of his chair, coming over to me, and saying “Your Dad was one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I was floored. Here I am this 19 year old kid and the guy from the painting on the wall is coming over to shake my hand? Unbelievable.

So it was the perfect room for all of us to have dinner in, and not surprisingly we had a great time. The kids were all so well behaved, I couldn’t have been more proud of them. It was really cool to be able to show them all around Daddy’s old stomping grounds. Obviously they won’t remember it, but I always will. The part that I was most looking forward to was after dinner. For reference, about a year and a half ago I wrote a post titled “My Guitar Living Will”, and in that post I went to great lengths to tell the story behind each of my guitars, as well as who I would want each guitar to go to if I were no longer around. Well, one of those guitars was always meant to go to my nephew Kallan. After writing that post I told Kallan to read it, then the following morning I got up for work and saw a missed call from him in the middle of the night. Apparently he read that post and was so touched by the fact that one of my guitars was meant to go to him that he couldn’t help but call me and leave me the nicest voicemail about how much he appreciated it.

Fast forward to this weekend. Kallan didn’t know it, but I’ve been planning on giving him that guitar for his 21st birthday ever since writing that post. We arrived to dinner a little early and I stuck the guitar in the closet. Then, after everyone finished their dinner, I made a little speech about how I’ve been looking forward to this night, and then presented him with the guitar. The funny part was that he told me during dinner that lately he’s really been wanting to get a new guitar, so it was perfect. Obviously he was thrilled, and so was I. Receiving a nice gift is always great, but so is giving one. This is something neither of us will ever forget, plus it’s probably safe to say I’m off the hook for any more big birthday presents for him anytime soon. Next we’ve got Anna’s sweet 16 coming up in December. Jessica and I are already talking about what to do for that special occasion.

Saturday was a pretty quiet day for us, although I did get a bunch of work done on our cars. My car had been idling a little rough lately, so I did some research and concluded that it was most likely due to my PCV valve. I removed it from the engine, cleaned it out really well, and reinstalled it. As hoped, the car was instantly running much smoother, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that one. I also changed my car’s oil and filter, then aired up the tires. On Sunday morning Jessica cleaned and detailed her van, then I replaced the front brakes and aired up the tires. Both vehicles were in need of a little love so it was nice to get all that stuff done.

Sunday evening was dedicated to watching the Superbowl, which obviously means I was also busy in the kitchen making a bunch of food. I found this great New York style pizza dough recipe a while back and thought making pizza’s for the Superbowl would be fun. I had to plan in advance though because the dough needs to cure in the fridge for 72 hours before baking. Luckily I didn’t forget to make the dough on Thursday night, and it turned out great on Sunday. In addition to the pizzas, we also enjoyed homemade tortilla chips, guacamole, and pico de gallo. Considering we weren’t having any company over there was definitely a lot of food, but that’s just how I roll.

The game wasn’t all that exciting, but I was happy with the outcome. I wanted to see the old Sheriff Peyton Manning go out on top and ride off into the sunset. Plus I can’t stand Cam Newton and all of his bullshit celebrations, so in the end it was a success from my perspective. Just a little ugly getting there. I guess as a Seahawks fan I’m used to watching defensive-minded football, so in a sense this was right up my alley. I will also say that Lady Gaga blew me away with her rendition of the National Anthem. I’ve always said that Whitney Houston’s National Anthem at the 1991 Superbowl was the best I’ve ever seen, and I’m not going to change my mind now, but this one easily took 2nd place.

This weekend is Valentine’s Day, which neither Jessica or I could care less about, but when you’re connected to the restaurant industry you can always expect to be busy. Since it falls on a Sunday this year, that means the entire weekend will be busy. So just like New Year’s Eve, Jessica and I will be bartending downstairs in the Pampas Room all 3 nights. I wasn’t going to be available but our neighbor hooked us up with a babysitter, so that freed me up to work. It’s going to be a long weekend, especially Friday since I’ll work all day at the office, then head downtown to bartend all night, but luckily we now get President’s Day off at Microsoft, so at least Monday will be relaxing.

In other exciting family news, we recently found out that we will be joining my Mom for an Alaskan Glacier cruise in the end of May. Strangely enough the day we depart is the same day I’ll be driving the Ferrari and Lamborghini. I actually had to reschedule my time from 11:00am to 9:00am, just to make sure I had enough time to make it to the ship. What a day that’s going to be! I get to drive two supercars in the morning, then head out on a cruise with my family that afternoon. Jessica is super excited to see whales and glaciers. I’m just excited to get a week off work. All 5 of us are going, plus my Mom and all of her co-workers at Card Player Cruises will be there, so it should be a blast.

We recently received the photos my friend Leon took at Enzo’s 1st birthday party, so I’ll part with a few of our favorites. To all you corny Cupids out there, Happy Valentine’s Day, but do yourself a favor and don’t go out to dinner. It’s amateur night.

I can’t believe today is our baby boy’s first birthday! Time must be moving faster as I get older, because it really doesn’t feel like it’s been a year since he was born. Enzo has taken everyone by surprise (including his doctor) at just how fast he continues to develop. Standing at 6 months, walking at 9 months, now he’s even talking! As I’ve said many times before, I think we should give most of the credit to his sisters, whom are his constant motivation. He’ll probably spend his entire childhood trying to keep up with them, but that’s a good thing. He’s already turned into such an amazing little boy, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a bit of a change in his relationship with his sisters. When he was first born Elise always wanted to be around him. She was also very protective of him. At the same time, Ava didn’t have much use for him. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, she was just indifferent towards him. These days things are much different. Elise seems to have figured out that it is because of him that she is no longer the baby of the family, and there appears to be a little resentment there. Consequently she’s a bit hard on him. For example, if Elise is sitting on my lap and Enzo comes over to me, she will push him away from us, which always upsets him. She does the same thing with Ava for that matter. I’m okay with it though because she’s toughening him up in ways that I never experienced as a child. He will definitely be a lot tougher than I was as a kid, which is a good thing. Ava, on the other hand, absolutely loves her little brother. She usually refers to him as “my baby” and she loves playing with him. He loves it as well. When he starts getting fussy Ava will run and find his binky or a bottle to help soothe him. I’m not worried about Elise though, she’s just going through the terrible two’s in her own way. These kids are going to be close whether they like it or not; it’s simply a byproduct of growing up together so close in age.

Although today is Enzo’s actual birthday, we won’t have his party until Saturday the 30th, which coincidentally was my Nana’s birthday, as well as my half-birthday. Speaking of half-birthdays, today is my sister Lora’s half birthday, meaning Enzo and Lora are exactly 6 months apart, just as Nana and I are. Anyway we’re meeting family and a few friends at a bowling alley in Kirkland for his birthday party, then we’ll probably go out for dinner after. Grandma Amy flew in on Tuesday evening to visit us, and my Mom will be coming up from Vegas tomorrow afternoon for the weekend. It’s going to be a full house but I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.

Jessica was supposed to work tonight but ended up getting called off, so we thought it might be fun to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner. The girls love going there and Mommy and Grandma always enjoy a nice house margarita. We told the server about Enzo’s birthday, so at the end of dinner he brought out the sombrero with desert and everyone sang to him. At first he was into it but eventually it kinda freaked him out and he started screaming. We realized on our way home that we also had Mexican food the night he was born. I remember getting take-out from the restaurant across the street from the birth center. I guess at this point we have the makings of an Enzo birthday tradition. Didn’t take long. Enzo (the little eater) was quick to eat more than his fair share of the sopapilla they brought out.

In other family news, Ava recently started going to a new pre-school and seems to be doing well. She quickly made a couple friends, but I guess she had a tough time with the teacher one day. She didn’t want to listen when she was told to stop playing with some toy, so the teacher spoke to Jessica about it. Apparently Ava is the youngest kid in the class, but we think that’s good for her. Obviously she’s the oldest one at home, and she has already proven to be advanced for her age, so it’s good for her to be around older kids. We made sure she apologized to her teacher, and that seems to have been the end of it. She had school today and the teacher made a point to tell us that she did really well, so it looks like there’s nothing to worry about.

Elise is also doing well, and I think she really enjoys having a little more time with Mommy when Ava is at school. It’s funny because Elise’s version of the terrible two’s is very different than Ava’s was. With Ava, she was very defiant, and sometimes downright mean, but Elise tends to internalize things much more than Ava. Consequently she gets upset and talks about being sad. I don’t think it’s anything to be overly concerned about, it’s just her way of dealing with all the changes she’s experiencing. The good news is that it’s not very difficult to make her laugh and shake it off. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve when Elise gets sad, and they almost always work. It’s not uncommon for me to get her laughing, then she’ll say “Daddy I’m not sad anymore.” I’m always happy to hear that. No matter what she’s still the sweetest little thing ever.

I heard on the news this morning that today is the 30th anniversary of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion. I was only 5 when that happened, but I vaguely remember it. I definitely remember my Mom saying she cried when it happened. It’s crazy to think that exactly 29 years later I would be having my son.

I’m going to keep this post brief, which is abnormal for me, but don’t worry. Jessica has decided to start writing monthly posts again, so you can keep an eye out for that over the next few days. One thing that’s kinda sad is that today we took the final monthly photo of our kids. For those that don’t know, Jessica took a monthly photo of each child throughout their first year. Since we’re done having kids, that makes this the 36th (and final) monthly photo. There’s been a few other things that we’ve now moved on from as a family, such as baby formula. Overall these changes can be seen as progress, but as their father, it makes me a bit sad. I’m so much more aware of time now than I ever was before having kids. The fact is that you can’t get any of these moments or experiences back, so I try not to take them for granted. Before I know it they’ll be all grown up and I’ll be a crusty old man. It’s all good though, getting to see these kids grow up, and getting to share all these experiences with Jessica, is the greatest present I could have ever asked for.

Happy first birthday buddy. Ti amo tantissimo! (I love you with all my heart!)

Last night around 11:00 we returned home after an excellent trip visiting Jessica’s family and friends in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The main purpose of the trip was to attend Jessica’s grandparents’ 60th anniversary party, but we took advantage of being back in Jessica’s hometown and kept very busy each day visiting various family members and old friends. Before I get into the details of the trip, I want to give a very heartfelt thank you to Rick and Chris. Not only did they host us at their house, but they went so far out of their way to make sure our visit was perfect, and it was. They remodeled their basement and turned it into it’s own little condominium, they stocked us up with everything the kids could need, they fed us incredibly well the whole time, they got us car seats and a stroller. What they did was amazing and we appreciate it so much! I also want to thank Joel and Melanie for letting us use Melanie’s SUV while we were there. That was a huge help to us as well.

So the trip started very early Thursday morning. I was going to say bright and early but this was well before sunrise, so I guess it was dark and early. Jessica and I were up at 3:30, then the kids shortly thereafter. By 4:00am we were on the road, headed south to SeaTac airport. We had already packed the van the night before, plus the kids had gone to bed in the clothes that they would be traveling in, so getting out the door was relatively painless, other than the fact that we were up at 4:00 in the morning.

Our first flight that day was from Seattle to O’Hare airport in Chicago. The good news with that flight is that you’re getting 90% of your traveling done in one flight. The better news is that all three kids behaved themselves like angels. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for our return flights home, but more on that later. When we got to Chicago we were so happy; the kids were doing great, and we were only a short layover and a 40 minute flight from Cedar Rapids. Then we got our first bump in the traveling road. We boarded this tiny jet, and before leaving the gate the captain comes on the intercom and says that weather conditions in Cedar Rapids were deteriorating quickly. The fog was so thick that visibility was only about a quarter of a mile, which is their minimum requirement for landing. He said that we were carrying extra fuel because there is a chance that we won’t be able to land in Iowa, and that we will have to either land in Wisconsin, or just come back to Chicago.

For the only time that day, I dozed off on the plane for about 20 minutes while holding Enzo. The sound of the landing gear coming out was what woke me up. The plane was descending and everything seemed like a false alarm, then suddenly they had to pull up. I remember Ava loudly proclaiming “We’re going back up!” At this point Jessica and I look at each other and with concern, even though we know there’s nothing we can do. When you looked out the window it was pure white, that’s all you could see. The pilot got back on the horn and said they missed the landing but were going to circle around and give it another try before turning back. At this point I’m sure that we’re going to miss it again and head back to Chicago, which is a 4 hour drive from Cedar Rapids. Then we’d have to either rent a car, or have Rick come get us. I kept my window open as we descended but you couldn’t see anything at all. Then all of the sudden the white fog was gone and I was looking at white, snow-covered ground. By the time I actually saw the runway we were only about 100 feet above it, then an instant later we had landed safely. What a relief!

We knew Rick was going to be there waiting for us at the airport, so when Jessica said to the girls “Are you ready to see Grandpa?” they would say “Yes! And Grandma!”. We knew Chris was at work that day so Jessica says “No honey, I think we’re just going to see Grandpa right now.” A second later Jess says “I see Grandpa up ahead, go get him girls.” Ava and Elise go running off, and we hear them say “Grandpa, Grandma!!!”. Jess and I look at each other and we’re like “Grandma?” Then we look closer and see that Grandma Amy is there with Rick, which we weren’t expecting at all. Turns out she and Tom had just arrived from Colorado an hour earlier, and of course they had all the same issues with the fog that we had.

As soon as we got to Rick’s house he gave us the tour of “The Pellegrini Suite” as he calls it, and we were blown away. We just couldn’t believe everything that had been done. It’s a fully-functional living space with a nice area for watching television, a dinner table, a kitchenette, a huge bedroom that we all ended up sharing, and a full brand new bathroom. It was just awesome. I guess it’s fair to say that we have our own place in Iowa. I mean obviously we always would have had a place to stay, but this is beyond that. It’s like our own little home.

Friday night we were visited by Amy & Tom, and Joel & Melanie. We all just chilled out after a long day of traveling, had a nice ham dinner, and got caught up. Jessica said it was the first time that both of her parents, her brother, and herself had all been together in that house since 2002, so that was a really big deal. We exchanged stories about the weather flying in, talked about final preparations for the party on Sunday, and enjoyed watching the kids open their Christmas presents from Rick and Chris. It was a great way to start the trip.

Friday we were hoping to take the kids sledding, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. There was snow on the ground, but it was raining pretty heavily, which was turning the snow into slush. It hadn’t gotten cold yet, at least not by their standards, but it was so wet out that sledding would have been miserable. So since that was out of the question, Jessica thought it would be fun for her Dad to give us a tour of Cedar Rapids. The kids could see where Mommy grew up, and Jessica could see how things have changed over the past decade or so.

We all hopped in Melanie’s car, which had all the car seats, and Rick proceeded to give us a 2 hour tour of Cedar Rapids. It had to be one of the most thorough tours I’ve ever been on. We saw every house they lived in growing up, saw where everyone worked, went up and down every street in downtown Cedar Rapids talking about what used to be there and what was there now, and saw the areas that were destroyed by the flood of 2008. Not surprisingly the kids only lasted a little while before it was nap time, but Jessica and I really enjoyed it. From my perspective, Cedar Rapids reminds me a lot of Aberdeen, Washington, which is where my Dad grew up, so there was a sense of nostalgia there for me as well.

In addition to seeing tons of family on this trip, one of the things that we were really excited about was getting to visit with Summer and Jodi, two of Jessica’s best friends that she used to work with years ago. I’ve met them both (as well as their husbands) several times and have always had a blast hanging out, so I was excited too. They both live up in the Minneapolis area, and they both still have family in the Cedar Rapids area, so they both drove down to visit us. Summer was staying with her Mom, but Jodi and her two daughters would be staying with us at Rick’s house.

A couple hours after our tour of Cedar Rapids, Jodi and her daughters Leona and June arrived at the house. They are very close in age to Ava and Elise, so it wasn’t surprising that the kids hit it off immediately. We were also paid a visit that evening by Larry and Sherry, the guests of honor for the weekend’s festivities. Amy and Tom brought them over so they could see the kids, which they had been looking forward to. I knew Tom’s daughter Emily and her family were arriving that day, so I asked them if they made it in, and he said no. They flew from their home in Houston to Chicago, then they were supposed to take the same flight to Cedar Rapids that we had taken the day before, but it had been cancelled for two days due to weather! They had no other option besides renting a car, so that’s what they did. Brutal.

I knew that Jessica would want some time that night to catch up with Jodi and her girls, so I decided to go out for dinner and drinks with several members of her family on her Mom’s side. We all met up at Amy’s brother Devin and his wife Mary Jo’s house, which I was excited to see because I had heard all about it. Turns out Larry and Sherry used to own this place back when the kids were young, but then sold it in the early 80’s. Devin had an opportunity to buy it about 10 years ago and ended up doing so, which is really cool. It has the biggest front yard and longest driveway I’ve ever seen, but it makes sense because they had horses at the time and the front yard is where they rode them. There’s also a swimming pool, hot tub, and a barn where the horses used to live. The house itself was very nice, but almost all of our time was spent in their “Man Cave”, which was built onto the barn as an additional finished, heated living space.

When I walked in my jaw dropped. It was as if I had just walked into my dream room. It’s about 100 feet long and 50 feet wide with finished concrete floors. There’s a pool table, a drum set, two electric scooters, a dart board, a tv viewing area with a bunch of seating, an office, a full kitchen, a full bar, a bathroom (with toilet and urinal of course), and a Lexus convertible parked indoors for the winter. Instantly I start walking around thinking to myself “I’d keep the pool table, I’d keep the drum set, guess I’d keep the Lexus for that matter, then I’d have my guitars and amps over here, and my computer setup for recording over there.” It was just amazing. It’s not something you could do here unless you could afford to buy the lot next to you and demo it, but it was awesome to see. Not surprisingly there were people hanging out over there throughout the weekend.

By the time we arrived at Devin’s house, Derek, Emily, and Cole, who were staying there, had already arrived after their drive from Chicago. Everyone was starving so the whole big group of us went out to dinner at The Irish Democrat (or ‘the ID’ as they call it). It’s funny because that was one of the places Jessica wanted to go to while she was in town, but she never got a chance to. I told her they had this really good appetizer called Cheese Wontons and she’s like “Yeah, that’s exactly why I wanted to go there”. Didn’t mean to rub it in.

Dinner was really good, as was the variety of conversation, then afterwards Joel, Melanie, Derek, Emily, and myself decided to go out for drinks. Joel was kind enough to drive for everyone, so we all kicked back at a bar called Zeppelins and ended up drinking until closing time. I can’t even remember the last time I was at a bar until 2:00am, but it was fun seeing everyone for the first time in a while. We all had a really good night, but I don’t think anyone was feeling great the following morning. I certainly wasn’t.

I managed to come in through the garage door at Rick’s house and make my way through the house down to our bedroom without waking either of Rick’s hunting dogs, which he couldn’t believe. When they woke up that morning they thought I had never come home because the dogs never made a peep. By this time there were 5 adults, 5 children, and two dogs in the house, so sleeping on Saturday morning wasn’t an option for me. Me and my headache got up with the rest of them and cowered over a plate of bacon and eggs with bottomless coffee (and a few Aleve to boot).

Before I knew it Summer and her parents arrived, then Jodi’s parents arrived to pick up their granddaughters for an overnight stay. So now the house is packed! We’re all in pajamas, I’m still walking funny, and the kids are going crazy. Lets just say it was pandemonium for a bit there, but kudos to Chris and Rick for being so cool. It’s not easy to have your house invaded but they were a class act the whole time.

Saturday afternoon a bunch of us went over to Devin and Mary Jo’s house and hung out in the man cave. Derek and Emily are Texans fans, so they were hoping to watch their playoff game on tv. Unfortunately Devin had just cancelled cable out there, but not to worry because we had Derek, the electrical engineer. This guy stuck a paperclip into the coaxial output on the tv, then wired it with copper wire to a piece of metal, and suddenly we had a homemade HD antenna that just so happened to receive the channel we needed to watch the Texans game. Pretty impressive indeed. It was bittersweet though because they got blown out by the Chiefs 35-0.

The kids had a blast though, rolling balls on the pool table, playing the drums (which all the adults absolutely loved), climbing around in Devin’s Lexus (and honking the horn of course), and riding electric scooters with Uncle Devin. By this point the weather had taken a serious turn and it was down into the single digits. It kept going down from there throughout our trip. I’ll tell you what, you have to stop and think twice when it’s that cold out before running from the man cave to the house, which is about 150 feet. I got to experience a new kind of cold on this trip and that was the very beginning of it.

Saturday night was a night we had been planning with Jodi and Summer for months. We took an Uber and met up at Biaggi’s, which is the restaurant that they all worked together at about 15 years ago. Summer brought her brother Sam along for dinner, which was great because he was a super cool guy. We ended up hanging out with him all night and I totally feel like I have my first friend in Iowa now. After dinner Sam took us to a variety of bars around downtown Cedar Rapids. It was when we would be walking from one place to another that I truly experienced extreme cold. I’ve been in cold weather before, like snowboarding in the Rocky mountains, and even Chicago in December, but this was a different level. With the wind chill it was -20 degrees! I remember taking a breath in through my nose and feeling the little hairs inside my nose freeze. It felt like pine needles from a tree were stuck in my nose. After 10 minutes out there your teeth start going numb.

You could tell who the locals were because they were the ones wearing minimal winter gear. They were dressed similarly to how people in Seattle dress in the winter, which surprised me. I’m out there with long underwear under my jeans, wool socks, wool sweater, down jacket, winter hat, and gloves, yet I’m still freezing. I knew I stuck out like a sore thumb but I was too numb to care.

At the end of the night we decided to go to one final place called the Starlight, which was one of their old favorites. We lost track of time, so when I checked my phone it was already 1:50am. I knew we’d need an Uber home so I got on the app and it said there were no cars available, then it gave me an option to pay a double rate to get a car. Since my options were to either pay the double rate, or freeze to death, I chose option A. The car wouldn’t be there until 2:15, but of course at 2:00 we had to leave. Luckily the building had a set of double doors, so we stood in that area to wait for the car. Then someone comes out and tells us we can’t wait there. We pleaded and told them that the car would be here in 10 minutes, but they said no, and they pushed us out in the cold. Luckily we still had Jodi with us, and she is all too familiar with this kind of weather from living in Minnesota. She told us it was time to start moving so we don’t freeze. So there we are out front of a bar, Jessica and Jodi and dancing and I’m jogging in place. The funny thing is we weren’t even drunk, although I’m sure it would have appeared that way to anyone driving by. We were just trying to keep warm. I swear you start feeling your body die in that kind of weather. It felt like a countdown to my expiration. Luckily the car arrived on time and got us home no problem.

Sunday was the big day of the trip, and of course the Seahawks were playing a playoff game just 4 hours away in Minneapolis. Summer was trying to convince me to drive up and go to the game with her husband Jeff. Turns out that tickets were super cheap (like $45) because it was so cold. I wanted to go so badly but I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I missed the event we had come for. Had we done the party on Saturday instead of Sunday I definitely would have gone to see the Hawks play, but it just wasn’t in the cards this time.

The event, which was a combination of an anniversary party and a renewal of vows, was a huge success. There was a nice big turn out, the photographer was awesome, as was the Jazz trio who played live music the entire time, and everyone had a really nice time. However we had a little bit of drama in the morning before the party. Turns out Amy gave Jessica her laptop while we were at Devin’s on Saturday afternoon. That laptop had the slideshow for the party on it, and Amy wanted us to add a few photos of our family to it. I didn’t even know we had it, so when we took the kids back to Rick’s house that night, Jessica was so focused on getting the kids out of the car and into the warm house that she forgot about the laptop. It ended up staying in the car overnight and froze solid. By the time she found it the next morning it was toast.

Jessica was freaking out about the slideshow, so I decided to step in and save the day. Luckily I had brought my work laptop on the trip just in case something came up. Even more luckily, on her last trip to visit us Amy gave me about 450 of her old family photos to store in my cloud storage account. These were the photos they wanted to show in the slideshow, so I was able to pull all of them down, add a bunch of our own family photos, and put together a new slideshow just a few hours before the event. Everything worked perfectly well, which felt great, but I think Amy’s laptop is officially dead.

The event, which was held at the Czech museum overlooking the Cedar Rapids river, was a huge success. We started off with lots of family photographs, then moved into a large reception room. There were tons of Larry and Sherry’s old friends there, as well as a wide variety of family. The ceremony part of the event was great. There was laughter, tears, and some great speeches. Devin made a point in his speech to mention all the new family he was finally able to meet this weekend, and asked all of us to stand up for recognition. Jessica, who was doing the actual ceremony and vow exchanged, had to cut out half of her speech because Grandpa Larry got excited and presented the ring much too early. Sherry, who had no idea she was getting a new diamond ring, was overcome with emotion and burst into tears, as did most of the room. It was a really special moment.

Our kids were a big hit throughout the party and had tons of fun playing with all their new cousins. Once again I couldn’t have been more proud of how they conducted themselves. Ava, who is constantly showing an increased propensity for the stage and entertainment, went up on stage by herself, grabbed the microphone, and said “Hi, I’m Ava!”. Everyone laughed, then she dropped the mic, got on the drum kit, and started playing while the band was on break. I swear we’ve got a little entertainer on our hands.

Before this trip I told Jessica that I would do anything she wanted the entire time we were there, but that I had one requirement, and one thing I’d like to do. My requirement was that I get to watch the Seahawks game, and the thing I was hoping to do was go to a guitar store. Since the party was going on during the Seahawks game, Rick recorded it for me on the DVR. The plan was to come home from the party, pick up some pizzas, and watch the game. So we get home, I change out of my suit and put on my Seahawks sweatshirt, then wait to go get pizza’s with Rick. At the last minute before we left, Jessica said she had spoke with her Mom and they were hoping to get the laptop back to see if they could fix it. So we said sure, we’ll just drop it off at Devin’s house on the way to get pizza. Rick and I walk into the man cave, and Jessica’s cousin Braydon see’s my sweatshirt and says “Oh hey, the Seahawks won”. I freaked out; I’m like “No! No! I mean yes! But no!”. I had kept my phone off all day so I wouldn’t find out what happened. It was 100% my fault, not his. As they all said, I was wearing a Seahawks shirt, so what could I expect. And they were right. To my defense though, I had no idea we were going over there until the last minute, and it never crossed my mind that I should change clothing before leaving Rick’s house. I didn’t think I would even leave Rick’s truck. Whatever, I’ll take the win any way I can get it. We still watched the game and ate some delicious Detroit style pizza. I will say that it’s different watching a game when you know the outcome. You can’t get too worked up from a bad play because you know that ultimately you’re still going to win.

Monday Jessica and I took the kids up to the kids museum at a mall near Iowa City, which is about a half hour away. Unfortunately when we arrived we found out that they were closed on Mondays. To taunt us, there was a schoolbus full of kids just arriving for their own private day at the museum. So we wandered through the mall, did some shopping, let the kids play, and rode the Merry-go-round. Of course Elise picked a kitty cat to ride on and Ava got on a Cheetah. She was so obsessed with that Cheetah that she continued to talk about it for the remainder of the trip. There was an ice skating rink inside the mall, which I had never seen before, and an olympic style figure skater was out there practicing. Needless to say the girls LOVED watching her practice her routine.

After that we drove into Iowa city and Jessica took us on a tour of her old stomping grounds, the University of Iowa campus. We saw the old Iowa capitol building, the football stadium, her first apartment, an old bar she worked at, and her sorority house. On our way back home we stopped in a little town called North Liberty, so that I could go to a store called 965 Guitars. It’s called that because it’s on Highway 965. I ended chatting with the owner for a while and found it funny that he was a Nash guitar dealer. Nash is a local guitar company based here in Olympia, Washington, and I’ve been wanting one of their vintage style stratocasters forever. I played guitar for a bit and bought a tee shirt before heading out and back to Rick’s.

That night a bunch of Rick’s family came over for a delicious prime rib dinner. There ended up being 23 people there, so it was a full house. One of the guys was a Vikings fan and he had drove up to the game the day before. Of course I chatted with him a bit, and remained quite modest about our close win. Rick’s prime rib was outstanding and everyone had a really nice time. It was our final supper in Iowa and a really nice way to close out the trip.

Our flight home on Tuesday wasn’t until 4:45pm, so we had all day to relax at Grandpa’s house. Jessica had been coming down with something and woke up feeling sick, so we just laid low all day. Leaving was obviously difficult, but as we promised everyone, it certainly won’t be another 7 years before we’re back. Jessica really enjoyed being home and it was great for me to meet so many new relatives, as well as get to know the place where she grew up.

This is the point where the hard part of our trip began. One of the most annoying things is that we booked our flights and hand-picked all of our seats for each leg of the trip 9 months in advance through Expedia. Then they proceeded to screw us by changing our itinerary multiple times. For the flight from Cedar Rapids to Denver they had each one of us in a different row, which obviously wouldn’t work, so we had to talk to other passengers, explain the situation, and get them to switch seats with us.

I don’t know what happened with Elise but for the final half hour of that flight to Denver, she just went completely insane. She was screaming uncontrollably, flailing about, and refusing to wear her seatbelt. There was nothing either of us could do to calm her down, and everyone was miserable. Then we get to the Denver airport, change diapers and go potty, then get to our connecting flight. On the way there Elise was acting wild and she ran right in front of a woman, who then tripped over her and they both fell to the ground. Jessica and I were mortified! Immediately this poor woman is apologizing to us and worrying about Elise, while we’re trying to apologize to her and make sure she’s okay. It was awful but luckily everyone was fine.

Then we get to our gate and Elise can’t be controlled. As we’re boarding, we realize that she had just pooped, right after we had changed her! Now we’re all split up on the plane and we have a dirty diaper to change. Once again, I had to ask the people around me if they’d be willing to switch seats so our family could be together. Luckily I was surrounded by friendly grandmother types and they were happy to oblige. Most of the flight was fine but then we had the same problem. Elise went completely psycho for the final 30 minutes. She was screaming that the plane was going crash, that there was a monster on board, she was screaming for Daddy to save her, and of course there is nothing I could do because I was holding Enzo, whose ears were popping, and he was screaming uncontrollably. It was awful, and honestly it’s why we don’t travel much as a family. Ava did great, although she almost peed herself waiting to land, but the other kids just aren’t ready for this yet, and everyone paid for it big time on that final flight.

Luckily no one around us said anything rude or gave us dirty looks. It was quite the opposite actually. People were saying “Don’t worry, we’ve all been through this before. You’re doing everything you can.” It was a nice reassurance that there’s still some humanity out there, but we still felt terrible. Elise, we’re certainly not mad at you because it wasn’t your fault, it was ours, but when you’re on an airplane and a child starts screaming and crying, please just smile to yourself, think of this story, and realize that you were that same child once upon a time.

We learned two lessons from this traveling experience: first, we should have left earlier in the day rather than late in the day, and second, we will never book anything through Expedia ever again. I’m going straight to the source and booking with the airlines from now on. By the time we landed everyone was at their wits end, and not surprisingly the kids were asleep within 5 minutes of entering our van.

I took today off work and I wish I could say I slept in, but no, the girls and I were up at 6:30. I guess we’re still on Iowa time. No biggie though, I knew I was going to need a lot of time to write all about our trip. I don’t yet have the professional photos from the event on Sunday, but here are some of our own pics from the trip. I’ll put up the rest in a future post once I receive them.

Thank you again to everyone who was so gracious and kind to us on this amazing trip. I promise you’re going to start seeing more of us, regardless of travel difficulties.

She was so peaceful on the way there. Not so much on the way home.

Opening presents at Grandma and Grandpa’s house

Enzo sporting Uncle Joel’s hat

Building a snow dragon with Grandpa in the front yard

Ava and Cole riding the scooter with Uncle Devin

Watching the Texans game in the man cave. Apparently no one was too impressed.

Ava and Cole had a blast playing together the whole time

Playing drums with Grandma

Looks like someone was still waking up from their nap

Sam, Summer, Jodi, Jessica, and myself after dinner at Biaggi’s

Grandma Sherry looking beautiful on her big day

Our good friends Jodi and Summer

Elise riding her kitty cat

Ava riding her Cheetah

So we had a very fun, busy, and memorable New Year, but before I can get into all that I just want to say thank you again to my cousin Kristy and her daughter Madeline for having Ava, Elise, and Enzo over for a sleepover at their house on New Year’s Eve. I know it’s not easy to watch all three of our kids, especially when you don’t do it on a regular basis, but they did it with a smile and we appreciate it very much. At least they have the rest of the weekend to recuperate.

We had an early in-time at El Gaucho so we dropped the kids off at Kristy’s at noon, ate a quick lunch at Taco Time up the street, then hurried downtown to get started with work at 1:00. We got there in time, and I had a chance to say hello to many of my old friends who still work there. Jessica and I were bartending downstairs in the Pampas Room, which is a room that we both have plenty of history in. I’ve been working long nights in that room going all the way back to when it was a weekend Jazz club in the late 90’s. Jessica has worked plenty of long nights down there as well, but of course the best night we’ve ever had down there was the night of our wedding reception, nearly 6 years ago.

We were doing a double showing of our ‘Burlesque Dinner Theater’, which meant there was a ton of setup and prep work to get done before the first show. I’ve worked this show about 10 times in the past so I knew what to expect. It’s not really my cup of tea, meaning it’s not something that I would pay to attend, but I’m more than happy to work it. To me it’s sort of like an awkward combination of performance and sexuality, but plenty of people seem to really enjoy it. Unlike normal dinner service, which tends to flow more organically, these events have to follow a very strict time schedule. There’s only so much time when the guests first arrive to get them a drink, serve their first course, then get them cleared and set for dinner. In between each course various performers come out to do their act while we work behind the scenes to orchestrate their meal. As usual everything went off without a hitch, but that doesn’t mean you’re not busy. Quite the contrary actually. I was in the main service well at the bar, which means I’m head down slinging cocktails all night long. The night was sponsored by Buffalo Trace bourbon, so we had a special cocktail menu featuring a variety of their products.

We also tried something new this year, which was to give the night a prohibition era speakeasy feel. The staff was dressed in old-timey hats and suspenders, and we served drinks in kettle cups designed to ‘hide’ the alcohol in case the Coppers show up. The host would do this speech at the beginning of each show where he explained to the audience that we were ‘breaking the law’ as part of an underground speakeasy. “If the Coppers show up and ask if there’s any alcohol here we need to tell them…” and then the whole staff would yell out in conjunction “It’s a social gathering!”

We were so busy the whole time that the night just flew by. Certainly the most memorable performance of each show was the yodeling dominatrix. First of all she was the tallest woman I’ve ever seen in my life. I saw her doing sound check before the show, and even in flat shoes she had to be 6’4” or 6’5”. It was crazy. But for the show she comes out in this full leather dominatrix outfit with a whip (of course) wearing the tallest platform stiletto heeled shoes I’ve ever seen. So she’s literally about 7 feet tall walking through the crowd up onto the stage. It felt like the Greek God of Bondage just arrived, and the crazy part (as if we haven’t gotten to that yet) is that she’s here to yodel her way through an AC/DC song! Yeah that’s right; her and her accordion player (who is also quite the character) performed a cover of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”, but when the chorus comes along, instead of singing “I’m on a highway to hell” she would sing “I’m on a highway to yodel”, but she would actually yodel the word ‘yodel’ full on Sound Of Music style. I’ve definitely never seen anything like it, and probably never will again. The crowd loved it, and I even saw some old guy palming her a $100 bill after the show because he enjoyed her performance so much. I’m sure she’s had plenty of old guys slipping her C-notes in the past, but I’m glad I got to see it.

At a certain point near the end of the 2nd show the performers had gathered near the bar as they prepared to go up on stage to take a final bow together. I had been busy making hundreds of drinks the whole time and didn’t even notice them there. Sort of like a whale coming up for air, I finally look up from the well, and what do I see right there across from my bar?? Well, there’s a giant leather-clad dominatrix holding a whip, a mostly naked man wearing bits and pieces of a bird costume, an almost completely naked woman (except for a few strategically placed quarter-sized pasties covered in sparkles), and another woman who eats fire for a living. It was one of those surreal moments where I’ve sort of lost context for my surroundings and all I can think to myself is “What the hell is going on here!!??” The funny part is that the only one who was out of place in this equation was me!! What a funny moment. I mean can you imagine all the jokes that can come from a setup like “A giant yodeling dominatrix and a naked birdman walk into a bar…”

There was another funny moment for me when I was chatting with a couple at the bar who were long time El Gaucho regulars. I recognized them both immediately, but I could tell that they didn’t remember me. To their credit, I was wearing a hat and I have facial hair now, plus I never really knew them very well before, so it makes sense that they didn’t recognize me. Anyway as the night went on the guy started getting a little tipsy, and he was sitting right next to my service well, so he was chatting me up between stage performances. I could tell he was trying to impress me by telling me stories of all the nights he’s had at El Gaucho in private rooms and such. At one point he was talking about this amazing wine dinner he attended about 3 years ago. They were featuring the wines of Delille Cellars in Woodinville, and there was a special menu that paired each course with a particular wine. The head Sommelier from Delille was even there to describe each wine. What he didn’t realize was that I’m the one who served that party! We had just moved back to Seattle from San Diego at that time, and I was filling in because they were in a bind. It was funny because here he is trying to impress me talking about that evening, but I already knew all about it because I was there. I could have spoken up and told him that I was his server that evening, but I didn’t want to burst his bubble. I just went along with it, smirking a bit none the less.

Before I knew it everyone was counting down to midnight. I gave Jessica a big kiss, then got right back to work. The crowd dispersed shortly thereafter and we were able to get things cleaned up in record time. As mentioned in a previous post, this was the first time Jessica and I have bartended together, but as expected it went so well. She took care of the dinner customers at the bar, plus helped me out making drinks in the well. She is just the absolute consummate professional when it comes to dining and service. You can only hope to have someone as good as Jessica working with you, but you certainly won’t find anyone better. With all of her restaurant experience, as well as her interior design experience, combined with all of my restaurant and website experience, it would almost be crazy for us not to open a restaurant together someday. I guess that’s another topic for another time though.

We ended up getting out at 1:20am, meaning we worked 12:20 minutes without ever sitting down or taking a break. Working downstairs means there’s a lot of running upstairs to grab something, so according to Jessica’s Fitbit she did approximately 65 flights of stairs that night, including over 24,000 steps. A busy night indeed! The really good news came when we found out that our little crew downstairs was responsible for 40% of the total restaurant’s sales! That’s unheard of. You have to realize that we’re working with half the crew compared to upstairs. We have half as many tables, and our kitchen down there isn’t even half as big as the one upstairs. Plus they had a really good night upstairs. I heard that they sold $20k more upstairs this year compared to last year, so for us to make up such a significant part of the total restaurant sales was a really big deal. Obviously the reason I’m there is to spend time with my wife and see all my old buddies, but making some nice cash certainly doesn’t hurt.

For me, El Gaucho Seattle is and always will be a very special place. It’s like when you hear people talking about their old college glory days; that’s what EGS is to me. So many of my formative years were spent there. Even before I started working there I was part of the restaurant’s history, vicariously through my Dad. He was the regular at the original El Gaucho down on 7th & Olive, so I grew up hearing stories of the mink-lined booths and the early morning Hunter’s breakfast. My Dad, the bookie, regularly used their office to take calls from his customers, so it was almost a foregone conclusion that I would someday also become a part of that place. I just love that now Jessica is also a part of their history. The Pellegrini name and El Gaucho have been tied together for a long time, and I hope it always stays that way.

By the time we got home and got to bed it was nearly 3:00am and we were both completely exhausted. My feet and back were killing me, and Jessica’s “whole body was sore”. We woke up a little after 9:00, got dressed, and headed down to Kristy’s to pick up the kids. As soon as they opened the door I could tell they had a rough night with Enzo. Kristy, Madi, and Enzo all looked exhausted. She said they all went to bed easily and that it was almost too good to be true, but that Enzo woke up in the middle of the night screaming and they had a hell of a time getting him back to sleep. He’s getting another tooth right now, so I’m sure that had something to do with it.

Kristy said other than that everything was great. The girls had a ton of fun and kept talking about it throughout the day. Everyone, including Mom and Dad, was exhausted so we all had a very lazy day at home to start the new year. We were excited to watch Iowa in the Rose Bowl but that quickly turned into a major disappointment. Jessica gave in when they were down 21-0 at the end of the first quarter. I watched a bit longer but turned it off at 35-0.

We had a concerning moment earlier this week when I went out to the dog kennel and found an arrow sticking into the side of our fence. It had been shot from behind our house and into our yard. Obviously it was shot with force because it had penetrated our wood fence. Initially I’m looking at it kind of confused going “What is this – Sherwood Forest!? Isn’t there supposed to be a scroll or a wanted poster pinned to the fence by this arrow?” There are a couple boys that live in the house behind us and we normally get balls and frisbees in our yard, which is never a problem, but a dangerous arrow is something completely different. I was initially pretty upset about it, but I’ve since cooled down. I want to speak to their parents about it, but of course they’re out of town right now. I got their Dad’s phone number from another neighbor and left him a voicemail yesterday. Hopefully he calls back soon so we can talk. I’m not going to freak out on him, and I’m not going to call the police, which several people have recommended, but I need to be assured that this won’t be happening again. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a one-time accident; Lord knows I did more than my fair share of stupid things when I was a kid, but whenever safety is concerned you can’t take things too lightly. If it happens again I’ll be forced to take more serious measures, but for now a simple conversation will suffice.

Not much else going on this weekend, but we’re flying out to Iowa early Thursday morning. They just got 8 inches of snow, so it looks like we’ll be getting the full midwest winter experience. It’s going to be a very busy trip, but we’re really looking forward to it. Once we get back there will be some new changes for us: Jessica is going to transfer from El Gaucho Seattle to El Gaucho Bellevue. We were never planning on her going back to Seattle after maternity leave because the Bellevue store is so much closer to my office in Redmond. They convinced her to come back to Seattle for the Holiday Season, but now that that’s over she has decided that making the double commute from our house to my office, then from my office to downtown Seattle just doesn’t make sense. It forces me to leave work at 4:00, which has become an issue, and it’s too stressful for everyone involved. Working at the Bellevue store means I don’t have to leave work quite as early, and Jessica doesn’t have to stress out about getting to Downtown Seattle in time. It’s a little sad because to some degree it feels like the end of an era, but we’re still part of the Gaucho family, so it’s all good!

That’s about all for now. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories and pics to share once we return from Iowa. Until then… Happy New Year!

A few days ago we celebrated our first Christmas as a complete family. I remember Ava’s first Christmas when she was just turning one month old; we were still living in our little beach shack in San Diego in a relatively empty house with only one visitor. Things are a bit different for us now. We spent Christmas morning opening presents and Skyping with family, then around noon Kristy, Madi, Edgar, Uncle Jim and Aunt Brenda came over to spend the day with us. There was plenty of good food to eat, basketball and movies to watch, and lots of new toys for the kiddos to enjoy. It was exactly the kind of day you look forward to all season long.

For a couple days leading up to Christmas I would hear a little pitter-patter of footsteps in the morning, accompanied by what started out as whispers between the girls, but would soon turn into excited shouts as they ran downstairs to open their presents, only to find out that it wasn’t yet Christmas morning and they needed to contain themselves for at least another day. There’s no question that Christmas is most special when there are children around to enjoy it, so seeing the girls get so into it this year was really fun.

Today baby Enzo turns 11 months old, and he is as active and vocal as ever. He got some fun toys for his first Christmas, but of course spent most of the morning playing with boxes and torn up wrapping paper. One toy that he especially loves is his new remote control, which will hopefully distract him from his endless obsession over grabbing the actual universal remote that controls everything downstairs. He can frequently be found walking all around the downstairs carrying his remote and shouting out the beginnings of what sound like words (for those that don’t know, he is a very loud child). He says the word “yeah” a lot now, but we’re still waiting for something a little more tangible like “Mommy” or “Daddy”. Thanks to his big sisters he has been advanced on everything up to this point so I’m sure speaking is just around the corner.

Elise had a great day on Christmas and looked as cute as ever. Jessica tied her hair up in a bun and dressed both girls in their new Christmas dresses from Grandma. She received all kinds of new toys and dolls, plus a new pair of tennis shoes, a new pair of boots, some new books, and some new clothes. She had been talking all week about getting to play with Madi so it was great to see them all having so much fun together. She got worn down after a while and took a nap on the couch, but then bounced right back and picked up where she left off, enjoying all the fun new stuff at her disposal.

Ava, who was celebrating her 5th Christmas, had an absolute blast. There were no meltdowns on Christmas morning (which is more than we can say for last year), and she did a good job sharing many of her new toys with Elise and Enzo. She also received lots of new toys and dolls, plus new books, clothes, and shoes. One of the highlights for Ava was a new set of remote controlled cars from Grandma and Grandpa. Elise got one as well but wasn’t quite ready for it, so Jessica and I ended up playing with hers while Ava “raced” our car around the house. These cars have all four wheels on the bottom, plus one wheel on top where the rear window should be. This allows them to do all kinds of cool spins and stunts that normal RC cars can’t do. They were a big hit all day.

Jessica had a very nice Christmas that included some awesome gifts, but also some much needed time off. She has been working a ton throughout the month of December, so getting a week off around Christmas was perfect. Some of the highlights for her this year included a FitBit from me (so now we both wear them constantly), a very special family photo with Santa (more on that below), and for the second Christmas in a row, a Louis Vuitton purse from Grandma. Very nice indeed.

I also had an amazing Christmas this year, although I must admit I’m feeling a bit spoiled. Jessica got me a pair of Uggs slippers that I’ve been wanting, and honestly just that would have been more than enough, but she went above and beyond this year by getting me probably the coolest present I’ve ever received – three laps around a track in either a Ferrari F360 Modena, or a Lamborghini Gallardo, OR BOTH! I was absolutely stunned. Luckily she filmed me opening this present so my reaction can forever be saved. You have to realize that I’m the guy who waited until September of this year to buy the special Forza edition of Xbox One. If you’re not familiar, Forza is the racing game created by Microsoft specifically for Xbox, and it’s the only game I play. It’s so realistic that I’ll sit there late at night racing for hours. I just can’t believe that I’m going to get behind the wheel of these amazing supercars, plus she paid extra to have the whole thing filmed! Obviously I’ll be sharing the video once I have it, but first I need to get everything scheduled. It’s going to be a few months before my big day, but I’m already over the moon about the whole thing.

As mentioned above, another highlight of our holiday season this year was our visit with Santa Claus. Jessica and the kids picked me up from work a couple Fridays ago and we all headed down to Bellevue Square mall to get our picture with Santa, as well as attend “Snowflake Lane”, which is an outdoor winter show they do every night in December. We went straight to Santa as soon as we arrived, only to find out that it would be an hour waiting in line. Even though everyone was dressed for the photo, we knew there was no way we could keep them all occupied in line for an hour, so we decided to skip it. Jessica figured she could take the kids to the mall on a weekday and not have to wait forever in line. So we ended up going to Nordstrom to get Jessica her FitBit, but as we got off the elevator on the top floor, we were greeted by some employees asking if we wanted to get our picture taken with Santa. There was only a 5 minute wait, the prices were the same as in the mall, and we were already dressed for it, so of course we went for it. I must say that our photographer was an absolute pro and did a great job of getting the kids to look and smile. He was juggling stuffed animals and making funny faces. The kids loved him. As it turned out, not only is it our best family Christmas photo, it’s our best family photo ever! Jessica said while waiting in line that all she wanted for Christmas was a family photo with Santa where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. Glad we were able to check that one off the list!

Although Christmas is now behind us, we’ve still got plenty of fun stuff to look forward to in the very short-term. First we’ve got New Year’s Eve later this week, which the kids will be spending at Madi and Kristy’s house. As mentioned in a previous post, the kids will be having a sleepover with them while Jessica and I will be bartending the burlesque show at the Pampas Room at El Gaucho. It’s going to be a double showing that night, meaning it will be a long and busy night, but it will be so fun bartending together, and of course the kids will have a blast at Kristy’s house. Then a week later we’re heading out to Iowa for Jessica’s grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. There’s going to be a huge party with a bunch of family members that we haven’t seen in years (some of whom I’ve never even met), plus some of Jessica’s friends will be driving down from Minnesota to visit us. Grandpa and Grandma Rudd have put in so much hard work to convert their basement into a mother-in-law for us to stay in. Based on the pictures I’ve seen it looks beautiful, so we’re really looking forward to getting there. They’ve also secured car seats and a double stroller for us to use while we’re there, which is a HUGE help because that means we don’t have to carry all that stuff through the airport. They’ve really gone out of their way to accommodate us on this trip and we appreciate it so very much. Looks like the weather is going to be on our side as well, so this is shaping up to be a really fun trip.

Thank you to all our loved ones for making this such a special and memorable holiday season. Although it’s not quite over for us yet, it has already been one of the greats. Can’t wait to write about our upcoming trip to Iowa. Happy New Year to all our friends and family! Here’s a few recent pics from our holiday season.

11 months old today

My sweet little Elise

Posing in front of the tree before seeing Santa

Ready for the neighborhood Christmas party!

Wearing my Dad’s old Christmas sweatshirt. Enzo seems to approve.

Ava’s first reaction on Christmas morning

Madi reading to the girls

Sibling love

Santa’s little helper was very tired, and serious, by the end of the day.

I’m just glad that Pippo made it into this photo