Progress!!!

Yesterday we had both of our families over to help with the garden and they were SUCH an amazingly huge help. We planted all new plants along the driveway, stained the fence AND got all of the posts in for the retaining wall. There's a lot more to do, but we can actually see the framework of our future margarita-drinking-friendly backyard! Here are some pics:

















































The driveway...

































View of the fence from the driveway...

The Great Garden Project of '09

We've started our very big Spring project of re-doing our yard and here are some pics of the progress... Right now it's looking like a crazy big dirt pile but hopefully over the next few weeks it'll transform into a great place to hang out all summer... I think Kaia would be happiest if we just left it a big dirt pile!

Before...

Removing the old patio...














Movin' dirt...

Taking out the retaining wall...










































This is a preliminary design, shape of the patio has changed, but the spirit is the same.















Final structural plans, fully-rendered in 3D, board by board. Building begins in about 2 hours! This is just eh infrastructure... plants, pots, steps and all kinds of goodness to be added...

Mountain bike racing is back!

Warming up, a couple practice laps before the start...

Winter Wonderland in Seattle

We were really lucky to enjoy a white Christmas in Seattle this year! For those of you who didn't hear - we got a record snowfall in the city and at one point we had 9 inches of wonderful powdery snow. While most people tend get sick of it, Dave, Kaia and I couldn't get enough of it! Here are some pics of us playing...

Dave's experimenting again.

Made this little plant table out of scrap wood (pine) from the mess heap in the garage. Painted it flat black with house paint, then rubbed on an oil/beeswax blend. Carved/painted a little design in the top, whittled and banged it around a bit to make it look fancy. Too bad you can't see it when there's a plant on top. Oh well. Thanks mom and dad for the Christmas drill jig!

Gate - Found the missing piece!

Done and done. We found a great piece of ornamental ironwork on Saturday, which was exactly what we needed to complete the gate once and for all.... Here's the process, start to finish. Finally done!

Before...

Pouring cement foundations...

Kaia was a big help...

Funky old-fashioned latch...

Done!

Summer 2008 Recap

Since this little blog is new, you may have missed some of the action from this past summer, so we'd better catch you up on just a few of the highlights.

We caught some crabs and put them in our bellies.






Nikki got a new mountain bike and became a singletrack ninja. We went to Whistler for our fourth anniversary and rode some of the best, sickest, bad-assesest mountain biking terrain you have ever seen.



We also made and promptly ate some pickles, with Kaia's help.



I began what promises to be an illustrious albeit painful career mountain bike racing (this could also be seen as a form of self-inflicted torture).

And I created a large illustrated map (fixture and all), for my favorite mountain bike park.


Nikki and I rode together on the 45-mile course at this summer's Flying Wheels group ride.


And I completed my second Seattle-to-Portland, 200-mile ride in 2 days, fueled mostly by the knowledge that Nikki was waiting at the finish line with cold beer and a hamburger.



Hmmm... a lot of bike stuff. Let's finish with a shot of the kids.