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Counteracting Friday with some sunny pictures of tulips:

And a bright close-up:

It’s been one of those antsy weeks where home is so much more interesting than work, and it’s all that I can do to stay at my desk instead of running home and starting the next project.

Two weekends ago, we stopped by a baby store on a whim in between other errands. It was surprisingly fun, and since then we’ve both been steadily reading about cribs and other baby things. A few days later, our ultrasound revealed that we’re having a boy, and the game of envisioning the baby’s room stepped up a notch. At the crib store, we’d tried out several rockers and gliders and thought they were quite lovely but exceedingly unrealistic (the price tags of the “cheap” options were over $800 – right). In any case, I started stalking craigslist for the brand of rocker, and after dismissing many posts (ugly wood color, ugly chair model, very ugly fabric, etc), I found one on Sunday that looked just about perfect. We drove to one of those gorgeous Wallingford craftsman houses and brought home an allegedly eight year old chair that’s in perfect condition.

It’s incredibly comfortable. It will live in the family room for the time being, in the sunny corner by the windows. I keep smiling to see it there.

Most mornings, we woke up at dawn to the loud groaning/roaring of a howler monkey right above our roof. He was gone by the time we emerged from our room, but I was so delighted to get to see him in the tree above the B&B entrance one of the afternoons.

Our shower was another interesting viewing spot for creatures. It was open to the sky, and one wall held a planter with all sorts of leafy plants.

I was very leery of seeing enormous spiders (we didn’t see one all trip – yay), but we saw all sorts of other interesting insect eaters. The first night, there was a gecko chirping away. The second night, I turned on the foot hose to wash off the deet and sand on my legs before bed, and a bright yellow frog used my knee and arm as a launch pad before clinging to the wall. Luckily I saw him before the shock of the motion had fully registered. When I was a teenager, I’d papered the walls of my room with photos from National Geographic, including many tropical frogs. This guy looked exactly the part – bright golden yellow, and he stuck around long enough to be admired before crawling up the wall into a leafy hiding spot.

Our welcome packet warned that crabs find their way into the rooms, especially the showers, but we weren’t entirely disappointed that the only ones we saw were on the beach.

Me (18½ weeks) and Kevin at the wedding:

We were saved from feeling like this trip was the last pre-baby hurrah by the sheer number of months still left – plenty of time for interesting weekend trips and travel. I enjoyed my first maternity clothes on the trip. We joked that we could practically see the baby growing, since it felt like every time I looked down I’d gotten bigger. We’re both amazed by the changes. I’ve been feeling a lot of movement, especially a few minutes after sitting down and any time I got in the pool (it’s the oddest feeling). And it was fun for both of us that our friends were so enthusiastic and interested.

Our trip was wonderful. Our bed and breakfast was right on the beach. There were eight rooms arrayed around a courtyard, a covered but open dining area and kitchen next to the pool, a line of trees and plants that provided some very welcome shade, and then the ocean.

The rooms had screened windows and ceiling fans (which kept the temps exceptionally pleasant for the brief moments we spent there), but at sunset we’d close the shutters and turn on the AC to keep the mosquitoes at bay. The first morning I woke up early (7:00) to many bird calls and a horrible groaning sound above our heads – turns out that there’s a howler monkey that frequents that shoreline! I decided to get up – not my normal time of day but the morning was crisp and beautiful. The hot shower felt wonderful, since the air was still cold enough for goosebumps, then I went down to the beach with knitting and a book.

I was all excited to finally find a book on baby brain development before we left, and even happier that our delay meant that I could bring it with me on the trip. Unfortunately(?), the beach was too interesting and pretty for much reading. There were crabs everywhere (from half an inch in size all the way up to about 10″). The tide was going out and they dug holes in the wet sand, and then would venture out (to hunt? to sun?). I tried to get photos but couldn’t get close enough – they were way more scared of me than I was of them which seemed ideal since they were lightning fast. Out on the water, there were many pelicans fishing. They have the funniest technique of diving straight down into the ocean, and just when you’re convinced they must have broken their necks from the impact you realize the bird is now just sitting on the water looking blasé. There was also a steady stream of people and dogs walking by before it got too hot. Here’s the view looking north up the beach:

By 8:30 I was too hungry so I went back, woke up Kevin, and we went to breakfast. Each day there were two to three courses. Always a fruit course, sometimes a freshly baked fruit or spice bread, and then a main course. I had trouble finishing. We saw several great butterflies as we ate, birds, and enjoyed watching the hotel cat stalk leaves in the garden.

Each day after breakfast, we’d head back to the room, get all of our things for the day (sunscreen, books, water, towels or sarongs) and head out to meet up with the rest of the crowd.

(You can see the courtyard off to the right. I loved the flowers outside each of the doors. They changed daily.)

The wedding was 106 people, and a full quarter of the crowd was Kevin’s fraternity brothers and assorted wives and girlfriends. Most of them were staying in two huge, fancy houses about 30 yards down the beach from us. Marrakech had a particularly lovely infinity pool, so we’d head there to find people.

(You can see the tables being set up for the wedding reception in the background. The reception was held on the beach along the shoreline, with lanterns strung up everywhere and dramatic lighting on the trees once the sun set over the water. It was exquisitely beautiful.) The pool is uncharacteristically empty in this photo – generally there was a crowd enjoying the cool water (the days got hot – pushing 90), reading on the edges, racing the floats, and sunbathing.

We tended to have an afternoon or evening group activity – sailing along the coast on a catamaran, heading to a beach 25 minutes away to surf or body surf, manicures and pedicures, a welcome reception, the rehearsal dinner, or the wedding itself. The surfing beach we went to was impressive. Big waves (a little bit too big to bodysurf, in my opinion, though I got thoroughly tumbled by them a few times and had a good time floating out past the break point), a stretch of sand too long to walk in the heat, and a beach bar with lots of shady tables.

When we could, Kevin and I would go to the beach chairs out in front of our B&B to watch the sun set over the high tide surf.

We made the mistake of not putting on bug spray early enough the first night and learned quickly. We’d sprayed our clothes with DEET before we left and were pretty religious about getting the DEET lotion on by 5 PM or so. It was such a nice feeling to rinse it off before bed when we were finally home in the evening. Dinners were late (usually between 8 and 11 by the time we ate), and Kevin would walk pregnant me home after them before rejoining the gang for a bit more fun. I’d been worried before we left that the group vacation would be hard, but it was wonderful – great company and fun activities, but plenty of companionable relaxing/reading time and where everything was so close, I didn’t feel like I had to stay out once I got tired. Such a wonderful getaway.

The crocus spikes have budded in the last few days, and I’ve been enjoying the tightly curled petals every time I walk to the car or mailbox.

All of our crocuses were eaten as they appeared last year, by some marauding cat or squirrel, and so each time that they’re still there when I walk by seems like something of a gift. I’m guessing that they’ll open while we’re away, which increases the urge to enjoy them now while I can.

We were supposed to leave on Saturday night for Costa Rica. College friends are getting married on the beach, and there will be a week of hanging out with East Coast friends before the Saturday ceremony. Originally, we’d been thinking of taking a few days at the beginning of the trip to go see volcanoes and tree frogs, but the combination of logistics and pregnancy convinced us to just enjoy our beach time instead. We’ve been looking forward to the friends and sun. Packing beach clothes was delightful. So when we got to the airport and were refused boarding passes, we were disbelieving, then incredibly depressed. Apparently Costa Rica requires 30 days of validity on your passport, and Kevin only had 28. We took a sad cab ride home.

Luckily, there are a handful of passport offices in the country that do same-day passports and Seattle has one of them, so Kevin made an appointment for first thing Monday morning. We weren’t sure until he got there that he would be able to actually renew his passport in time for the rest of the trip to be worth it, and so it was so exciting and such a relief to have the passport in hand by 3 pm. The airlines changed our flights for free and the expedited passport service only cost an additional $35, so in the grand scheme, not too much harm was done.

We spent most of Sunday with the suitcases parked next to the front door, trying to will the passport thing to work out. The weather was dismal, and then on Monday it started to snow.

It should have been a beautiful sight, but we were too much in the mood for hot beaches and so the wintry scene was more frustrating than enjoyable.

We drove into Seattle together to pick up the passport and as we headed back home across the 520 bridge, the weather turned from grey to snow and the headlong rush of frantic commuters outrunning the “storm” appeared. Luckily, they were all going the other direction, and we were grimly amused to see traffic completely stop within minutes. When the first flakes appeared, we were having visions of cancelled flights and airport shutdowns. But seeing the lines of cars all gridlocked on the on-ramps, we started to feel like the traffic jam karma would actually outweigh the trip bad luck. Sure enough, everything had melted and the roads were clear when the airport shuttle arrived at 7:30.

Last night, Kevin looked out the window around midnight and realized that it was snowing. Not only coming down steadily, but actually accruing. We’ve had some real snow this winter, but the pattern has held with three days of rumour and anxiety first, THEN snow. The sort of snow that starts gently falling in the middle of the night without fuss caught me off guard. This morning, we had a few inches. The roads were pretty much clear (though that didn’t keep the garbage from not getting picked up, half of my team from not making it in to work, and the buses from chaining their tires. Nothing like driving to work behind a sparking bus.).

I grabbed the camera before leaving the house, because all of the crocus spikes in our yard were so visible against the white. (I’m guessing that their days are numbered, and whatever nibbled them to the ground last year will do it again, but for the moment they’ve been giving me happiness every time I walk by.)

I should have kept the camera with me for the drive to work – the trees were all lacy and magical, especially as the sun started to come out through the clouds. By the end of the day, the snow was pretty much gone, which suited me. If it was going to be unexpected, then fleeting seemed like the right thing.

So the squirrels won the Great Birdfeeder War of 2008. We’d had it in the tree by our patio, and the squirrels would just climb up, hang upside down, and eat all of the birdseed. They were impervious to thrown rocks and pinecones, not to mention all of the horse radish, hot sauce, etc we slathered on the tree and the feeder.

So we gave up and took down the feeder for a few months. In December, we rehung our two feeders from two corners of the house on hooks that were already there. Our birds are back, fun views from the house, no squirrels in sight, and it’s been continuing to seem like a great plan. However, last weekend we woke up to find the feeder lying chipped on the patio, seed spilled everywhere. We had our suspicions, which were confirmed when Kevin caught this guy on film:

On the ground, picking through the seed debris? Slightly suspicious, but totally acceptable. However, climbing the gutters? Less so.

Not a bird:

Kevin still really likes the BB gun option, though I’ve maintained my veto. Our Plan B is to rig some sort of funnel-shaped attachment for the gutter so that the squirrels can’t climb up. I figure our long-term odds of success are quite low, but it’s worth a shot.

Down to five but still pretty.

We had great sun for most of the weekend, and the temperature actually made it into the fifties! Kevin took advantage of the weather and blew off the roof (third time since the summer, and once again the roof color is barely recognizable without the carpet of pine needles) and pulled/dug the rest of the ivy from the side bed.

We’ve been doing lots of evening walks in the dark after work recently. Work has been especially interesting and hectic recently, and it’s nice to have time to rehash. We’ve been picking a different route through the neighbourhoods each time, which works well because it’s easy to add loops or cut back. We’re getting better at ending up where we expect to instead of facing dead ends and cul de sacs.

Last Sunday, we went for a walk in the daylight, with the express purpose of taking photos of some of the places we’ve found on earlier loops.

There’s a huge park down the street, and while it was already great and constantly in use before, the town has been doing a series of improvement projects for the last year or so. They started by resurfacing some of the playing fields and fixing the utility buildings, then they overhauled one playground and built a second from scratch, and now they’re redoing more playing fields and fixing drainage on the walking trails where it used to get swampy. This photo of the redone playground was taken late afternoon after it started to drizzle, but there were still lots of families out. (Sorry for the tree-filled photo – it’s hard to get far enough away to see the size of it without having trees in the way of the view.)

They have bunch of towers, slides, bridges, climbing nets, and balance beams. I don’t know who designed it, but they seem wonderfully free of the “playgrounds are dangerous” mentality – there are lots of moving parts, things to hang from, and high heights. It swarms with kids. There’s a separate area with a little structure for toddlers (a basic structure with a slide), a set of big swings, and a set of baby swings. The new playground is on the other side of the playing fields, and has tire swings, more climbing webs, a merry go round (one of the ones where kids run to make it spin and then jump on), a water park, and some huge (10’ tall) climbing boulders, plus new basketball courts. I love that the park is used by all ages – young families are well represented, but you also see a LOT of teenagers, adults of all ages, dogs, etc.

If you cut through the park on a diagonal, there’s a new street (used to be one house and lots of empty forest, now it’s been chunked into teeny lots with packed-in houses that list at $800K). The construction is relatively pretty, and the location is great, but it all just seems so new, fake, and somewhat pretentious. Pretty much as sanitized and unmagical as things get. At the end of the street, there’s a cul de sac next to some fenced off “wilderness”. And if you look over the fence, this is what you see:

Pure magic. Pictures aren’t going to do this justice. Someone build a three story tree house (and raised it up a good 12 feet off the ground) out of scrap wood and metal . They surrounded it with a moat, built a tire swing, and built windows and skylights. It looks like something out of a fairy tale (the non-Disney version, where the evil magic is probably more powerful than the good), or out of an imagination-tinged dream/memory from your childhood, and we keep going back to check on it and make sure it’s still there. There’s a gorgeous, huge house tucked behind it, and a guest house with amazing wood and stone detailing. I would love to know what sort of eccentric, wonderful people built it.

If you take the trail back through the woods and cut the fourth corner of the park, you come out in another neighbourhood, right across from this treasure (pun intended).

I can’t imagine what possessed them, but it looks like they were aiming for the look of a tourist trap seafood place. They were VERY thorough: white sandy beaches (plural) in the yard, fishing netting and thick ropes draped artistically over the fake piers, plastic parrots, a marooned rowboat, a stuffed guy snoozing off his daiquiris in the hammock by the front door, fake flamingos strutting under fake palm trees, and tiki fringe everywhere.

Can you even imagine what the neighbours think?