{"id":753,"date":"2010-07-27T15:12:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T23:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=753"},"modified":"2010-07-27T15:12:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T23:12:30","slug":"where-have-you-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=753","title":{"rendered":"Where have you BEEN?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh wait, I’m the one who’s been MIA.\u00a0 Sorry about that.\u00a0 I wanted to come by and say hello, I really did, but things kept coming up, arriving, demanding my attention.\u00a0 But never fear, I’ve got photographic evidence to prove it!\u00a0 So here is the bitzcrieg version of the past few weeks, since apparently I don’t have time to expand on the individual topics.\u00a0 (I still may, but we’ll see)<\/p>\n

First there was our anniversary trip to eastern Washington.\u00a0 Summer in Seattle doesn’t show up until July 5th, apparently, but we wanted SUNSHINE for our anniversary.\u00a0 So we headed east of the Cascades to the Dry Falls, Grand Coulee Dam area. We toured the dam, did some hiking, drove through enchantingly green fields,\u00a0watched the fireworks and had the Safeway 4th of July special dinner – 8 piece fried chicken and potatoes, complete with cokes, for under 10.00.\u00a0 We’re just that classy.\u00a0 The trip was really fun, and we did find the elusive day star.<\/p>\n

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The following weekend, we headed north to British Columbia and Vancouver Island\u00a0for our friends Cory and Haiyan’s wedding.\u00a0 They live in China, so getting to be there for their wedding was extra special.\u00a0 They were married in a small ceremony on the beach in Parksville, BC.\u00a0 At low tide, the beach stretches out for what seems like miles.\u00a0 B, E, and little baby S were there too, and it was little S’s first time in the ocean.\u00a0 She liked it until she tried to eat the seaweed.\u00a0 The weather was deliciously warm, and we spent two days in the area soaking up the sun and spending time with good friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A few days after Cory’s wedding, Tom’s parents arrived in Seattle!\u00a0 We’ve had some great times with them, including taking the Theo Chocolate tour.\u00a0 Oh wow, if you like chocolate, and live anywhere near here, you HAVE to go.\u00a0 You learn about chocolate while EATING CHOCOLATE.\u00a0 How can it get any better than this?\u00a0\u00a0 We have also enjoyed making yummy family dinners and taking a long weekend trip to San Juan Island.\u00a0 (I will probably have more to say about this in a later post).\u00a0 While at San Juan, we visited English and American Camps,\u00a0a lavender farm, an alpaca farm, and had some lovely picnics.\u00a0 Oh, and we stayed in an Airstream.\u00a0 It rocked.<\/p>\n

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While the in-laws have been here, they have spent some time with Suz, the sister-in-law.\u00a0 While those three were out gallivanting on the Olympic peninsula, Tom and I used the downtime to catch up on things around the house, and to take a GORGEOUS hike down to Mt. Rainier.\u00a0 I’m totally out of shape due to lack of working out and an overabundance of homework, and was feeling totally intimidated by the hard hike Tom wanted to do.\u00a0 Because he’s awesome, we agreed to go down to Mt. Rainier instead, and hike around the Paradise area.\u00a0 It felt good to get out, as I have felt quite stifled by our busy schedule of late, and have not been coping well.\u00a0 While all the activities we’ve been doing are fun, I feel spread incredibly thin.\u00a0 It feels like I’m doing everything at once, but nothing well, and am not doing a great job of being present in the moment.\u00a0 What can I say,\u00a0I’m working on it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And before this sounds too much like complaining, I\u00a0want you to know, that I know<\/strong> how blessed I am in my life, and\u00a0how lucky I am to have\u00a0all that I do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Oh wait, I’m the one who’s been MIA.\u00a0 Sorry about that.\u00a0 I wanted to come by and say hello, I really did, but things kept…<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhere have you BEEN?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-food","category-friends","category-hiking","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}