Hey, Bales

October

In which we celebrate Oktoberfest, Elizabeth goes to Baltimore, and oh yeah, we buy a house!

Super Adorable Pumpkin Patch

October was a pretty exciting month! Fall really started to officially take hold in the Northwest and we made our final steps towards moving out of my parents basement! As part of our thank you present for letting us stay with them, we took my parents on an overnight trip to Leavenworth to experience Oktoberfest.

Fall in Leavenworth City Center

My Mom with her "Skinny Dipper"
Gingerbread man, no icing clothes!
how scandalous!

Waiting for our German Sausages and Pretzels to arrive.

It's important to sample all the mustards.

and all the sauerkraut!

Back in Seattle we also got to go to Afternoon Tea with my parents as part of a local Scottish themed fundraiser at a nearby church. I used to do Scottish dance competitions here every year, but now they do a dance showcase instead of a full competition.

I got my Clan's cup! Yay MacGregor tea!

Waiting for the tea treats to arrive.

oh! That's why she had such a mischievous smile.
Looks like the mustache is real after all!

They make a pretty cute couple.

Nathan also took me on a Pumpkin Patch date. We even got to go on a hay BALES ride! Here's some pictures from that since pumpkin patches are super cute.

Surveying Pumpkins

A really happy camper.

My Dad celebrated his birthday in November but we got him an early Birthday present because Bill Cosby was in town. For his present I took him on a father daughter trip to Benaroya Hall to see Bill live. We had a really good time, Mr. Cosby might be 75 be he is as funny and sharp as ever! My family grew up watching the cosby show and listening to his audio cassettes in the car, so it was really special to get to see him with my dad.

Waiting for the show to start!

Nathan's little sister also celebrated her birthday in October and we got to celebrate with his side of the family. I'm glad we're back so we are around to do things like this. It's fun to get to see people throughout the year instead of trying to cram everything in at Christmas.

Nephew and uncle,
proof that sock mismatching is genetic.

Ice Cream Cake!

My cousin and his wife were also able to come over in October for a couple days and we got to spend some time with them and my grandpa. Here we are playing Mahjong. It's kinda like Chinese gin rummy.

We did OK, although my Grandpa had to help us along.

Our biggest October news is that we bought our first house! We are now official home owners in Kirkland Washington! Our friends Tim and Amber, along with my parents helped us move all of our furniture out of our U-haul crates and into the garage. We decided to steam clean the carpets and blow out the vents before we moved stuff inside, so for the first week everything was in the garage.

Mighty Mommy!

Emptying the crate.

Obligatory Threshold Photo

Inside!

I also traveled to Baltimore in October for the Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference. I went to my first Grace Hopper in 2006 when it was in San Diego. I was really inspired and it helped give me the motivation to revitalize the UCSD Women in Computing Group. I'm really proud of this past year's officers who organized scholarship money to enable a record number of UCSD women to attend this years conference!

part of the UCSD WIC delegation

Catching lunch at a Diner-themed
Restaurant in the Baltimore airport

Exploring Baltimore with Sarah before our flight home.

October ended with a work trip back to San Diego. Before I left I hd the opportunity to carve a pumpkin with the UW CSE gang which was really fun. Here are all the finished products on the stairs in the Paul Allen Center.

UW pumpkin carving party!

I flew out on Halloween and got to spend the evening helping LB and her fiance hand out candy to small ninjas and princesses. I think I recognized about half of the costumes, the rest were apparently things I should have recognized but had never heard of. For example we had a good number of "robots" who weren't actually robots, they were characters from some super popular game I had never heard of. Nothing like offending 8 year olds with your lack of elementary school pop-culture references.

Fairy and Alice,
waiting to hand out candy and glow bracelets!

And on the fluffier side of October:

The penguin explored some classic literature he found at my parent's house

enjoying the Old Man and the Sea,
lots of fish references

Little Babar and Bunnykins (LB's San Diego buddy) enjoyed some movies on their flight over to Baltimore (Sarah and I used the headphones though, so they just enjoyed the pictures).

Watching movies on the plane

Squinchy in his Halloween Costume, pretending to be a computer scientist. Maybe he was trying to be Nathan?

Penguin proudly displays my
pumpkin masterpiece

The Penguin stole my dad's hat and added it to his increasingly eclectic ensamble.

Celebrating his Scottish Heritage?
Not really sure, but he looks pleased.

<><Elizabeth

September

in which we celebrate our 5 year anniversary and some other stuff happens!

Celebrating 5 years with some
hay BALES we found

This year Nathan and I celebrated out 5 year anniversary. It was so much fun, especially because last year we spent our anniversary we were on opposite sides of the world on our anniversary. To celebrate we strapped our bikes on the back of the car and took a ferry to the San Juan Islands.

relaxing on the boat

my husband and best friend ever!

We stayed on San Juan Island, the biggest and flattest of the San Juan Islands. I'm really glad it is the flattest, because we did a lot of cycling and it was still pretty hilly (in my opinion, Nathan loves hills).

Taking a rest and enjoying the view.

lighthouse we cycled to

Oh look! Fall is happening!

Or big adventure was going on a whale watching trip to see some Orcas. Despite growing up in the Northwest the only Orca whale I'd ever seen before was at Sea World in San Diego. I was really excited about going out to see them in the wild! We went out on a little boat with a whale expert who could visually identify all of the whales we saw and was able to tell us about each individual's past orca adventures and their orca family members.

Whale blowing water!

More Whales!

We explored the island together and it was really fun to see all the different animals and landscapes. Washington is so different and it's fun to be back around all the trees and mountains and water.

a curious grey fox who came over to investigate us

View from the Duck Soup Inn where we had our
anniversary dinner together.

Madrona Bar and Grill where we enjoyed dinner and
drinks on the deck durring the sunset.

Signature Drink: The Fluffy Duck
(orange creamsicle inspired)

Mountain view on the ferry ride back to the mainland.

Other September happenings:

We hit 100,000 miles in Pilot! I guess driving
back and forth from Seattle to San Diego adds up

I traveled to San Francisco for the MobileHCI conference. I was lucky enough to be selected to be a student volunteer which meant my hotel and conference registration was paid for in return for volunteering at the conference. It was a really good conference with some awesome papers, I think my favorite was a mobile phone application, now in the windows app store, developed at Microsoft for teaching Chinese tone recognition.

San Francisco Skyline from the
reception hall

The Banquet was at the Exploratorium and it was fun to get to go and explore it with a bunch of other scientists.

about to explore with my friend Jessica!

Friends Jofish, Erin, and twins playing at the
GIANT BUBBLE STATION!
Babies + bubbles = win :)

September also had a couple Disney days.

This is my Disneyland face. :D

I was really excited to get to go with our old roommate LB and her fiance. We'd been talking about going all year and it was so much fun!

We met Aladdin!

Dropped 13 stories.

and splashed down a mountain!

I also convinced my friend Margaret to go to the Disneyland Halloween Party with me. It's the only time that people over 12 can wear costumes in the park and IT IS SO MUCH FUN! also there is trick-or-treating for everyone!! I was Alice in Wonderland and Margaret made a Jedi costume. We went with some other UCSD friends too who ranged from Harry Potter to Rikku from Kingdom Hearts.