Pike Place, Paintball, and Picnicking

Porter is happily curled up on his bed and feeling much better now that he has all of that nasty bone out of his system. Lesson learned!

Mr. Fox is sleeping under Porter's back legs. It's rare for Porter to nap without his beloved stuffed animal.

This past Saturday the weather was quite miserable. Cold and rainy. But after being stuck inside cleaning up after Porter the day before I just wanted to get out, regardless of the weather. We took the bus into Seattle and enjoyed some hot, fresh mini doughnuts at Pike Place and then wandered around a bit.

Before we got to the window, Andy told me he'd only eat one or two doughnuts so I should go with the half dozen instead of the dozen. I reasoned that since we came all the way into the city for doughnuts we should go for the dozen and take the leftovers home with us. We ended up getting a dozen of the cinnamon sugar doughnuts, but there were no leftovers! (I had a sneaking suspicion that Andy would end up eating more than one or two!)

I didn't bring my camera with me and my phone's camera didn't do it justice so I grabbed this photo from  Wesleyrosenblum's flickr photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesbran/4972218189/

On Sunday Andy and I went paintballing with a group of his friends from work. I didn't last long. Between the gun being surprisingly heavy and being hot but not wanting to take my jacket off because getting hit hurts, I only played 3 rounds. Well, actually I walked off before the 3rd round ended because I was feeling a bit faint. The sad part is that my legs are still sore from all the crouching and squatting I did in those 3 2.5 games. In my defense, Andy and I played a little tennis Sunday night so that probably didn't help. 

Going back to the topic of food...I've been getting a bit tired of our limited dinner menu here at home so Tuesday I decided to try a new recipe that caught my eye on Pinterest. The recipe was for slow cooker pulled pork and was extremely easy with only 4 ingredients total (my kind of cooking!). The only difficult part was removing all the fat from the pork after it was done cooking. I was pretty meticulous about it because there's nothing more disgusting than biting down on a chunk of fat except maybe spitting it out at the dinner table. Anyway, Andy came home and took one bite and was in love with this new recipe... and maybe even a bit more in love with me too - you know what they say about the way to a man's heart.

Do you like our fancy door desk/dining table? I'd like to blame our lack of real furniture on the move, but we didn't have a dining table before the move either. I snapped this photo before Andy wolfed down the last of the pulled pork. It tastes better than it looks here (I really need to stop being so lazy and take some real photos)! 

I used a bit over 2 lbs of pork shoulder and Jack Daniel's Original No. 7 Recipe BBQ sauce, which comes in a 28 oz. bottle. I used enough BBQ sauce to lightly coat all of the pork, which was maybe about 2/3 of the bottle, and let Andy add more sauce directly to his sandwich since he prefers more sauce than I do. I figured this would last us a few days, but it ended up only lasting us dinner and lunch the next day. Andy is already asking me to make it again next week so I guess I'd call it a success.

Last night Andy and I enjoyed a picnic at a park on Mercer Island which overlooks Lake Washington and downtown Seattle. I couldn't have asked for better weather, scenery, or company! After we finished eating we played a little frisbee with Porter and then drove by a house I had found for sale. At only 930 sq ft, this 2 bed, 1 bath house is a bit small, but has lots of potential and is only 1 block from the water. The downside? It's $450,000 asking price is a bit much for us, especially considering all of the work it needs. After sadly saying goodbye, we drove around and enjoyed looking at all the other homes on Mercer Island. It's difficult to find a house you wouldn't want to live in there, which isn't all that surprising considering the average house value was over $900,000 and median household income was around $120,000 in 2009.

I love the location and character of this 1918 house! Maybe someday we will call Mercer Island home.

Enough of my dreaming! I need to get ready. This afternoon I will be meeting the other two incoming residents and having a picnic with the outgoing residents as well as the staff and doctors at the VA.