Today I woke up early with Elise and made breakfast for everyone. Last Sunday we decided that we were going to make Sunday morning breakfast a family tradition. It’s nice to get everyone together for a morning meal and there’s so many different directions you can go with breakfast. This morning I made oatmeal with brown sugar and French toast with maple syrup and powdered sugar. It was my first time making French toast and I was happy with how it turned out. I’m not sure how this never came up during the last 6 years but I found out this morning that Jessica hates oatmeal. She tried to eat a little of it but couldn’t do it. I love it and was happy to help out.
After breakfast the four of us headed down to Idylwood park in Redmond. A couple guys that I work with brought their wives and kids down to the park and we all had a nice time hanging out and playing on the beach. Ava wasn’t very interested in being a part of the group activities, which meant I spent the majority of the time there following Ava around and keeping her out of things. I was glad that Jessica got a chance to meet some of my co–workers wives and hang out for a bit. Elise drew a fair amount of attention today, including random strangers that came over to say hi and ask about her.
Since we had lots of fresh produce from yesterday I decided to make a nice dinner for Jess and I before I had to leave for the soccer game. Brenda showed me how to make kale chips in the oven yesterday with a little olive oil and salt, so I made those, plus some breaded cod and a warm corn salad with heirloom tomatoes, basil, garlic, lemon, cayenne pepper and brown sugar. It turned out really tasty and we were able to have a nice early dinner before Ava woke up from her nap.
Speaking of cooking, Jim had a great idea yesterday of doing a family recipes website that everyone could contribute to. I really love the idea of having a central location to share everyone’s family recipes and it sounds like a fun project, so I’m slowly going to start working on that in my free time. Obviously there isn’t an abundance of free time available right now, so the project will progress slowly, but it will be a lot of fun and more than worth it in the end. If you’re reading this and you have some great family recipes in mind be sure to write them down. We’ll be asking for them soon enough.
Going to the soccer game tonight is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. I can’t believe its taken me this long to get to a Sounders game, but I definitely picked a good one to start out with. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we were playing the Portland Timbers, which is a big rivalry, and we’ve now got Clint Dempsey on our team, who is a true superstar in soccer. It turned out to be the biggest soccer game in Pacific Northwest history, with over 67,000 in attendance! Although I’ve never been to a college football game, I imagine that tonight’s crowd was more inline with that type of event than any other pro sporting event that I’ve ever been to. There was such an incredible energy amongst the crowd and surprisingly little tension between Sounders and Timbers fans.
Seattle ended up winning the game 1–0 on a corner kick header by Eddie Johnson. It was such an exciting play and the entire stadium went nuts. There were several close calls going down to the last minute, but we were able to hold out for the win. After the game I ran into an old restaurant friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was definitely a lot of fun and Sean seemed to have a great time. His birthday is a couple weeks away and he’s a huge soccer fan so this seemed like the best way to celebrate.
Time to call it a night and get ready for another busy week at work. This was definitely a great weekend that I will not forget. Looking forward to the company all–hands meeting this Tuesday. We do them every 6 months so this will be my second one. It’s pretty exciting to see all the cool new stuff that is going on throughout the company. Also looking forward to Rick and Chris arriving for their visit this week. We should be in for another good weekend with them in town.