The baby turns three...sniff.

Soon, all of these kids will demand I no longer blog about their birthdays.  So far there are three in this category.  I still have 8 more that I can chronicle, though. So I shall.

So...here we have the baby princess big girl, turning three years old.

This child is the youngest of four, so her language, bravado and devil may care attitude is naturally more advanced that your average three year old.

Likes: Anything Dora, anything about Princesses, putting her own clothes on, waking up mommy and daddy in the middle of the night to let them know that her 4 year old sister is asleep, and playing dress up.

Dislikes: food in general, blind obedience to anything other than her own will, having to go to bed and being told no.

She's so cute though, so she gets away with it...sometimes.

Here she is with her older, wiser, more jaded sister:

 Party games!!  Nothing like a hotly contested game of Dora Candyland to get the fun going:

 Baby Princess could wait no longer for her gifts:

 Some spontaneous showing of affection.  My camera was there:

 testing out the new prezzies:

 Brief interlude to randomly water the front bushes:

 Then it's time for some cupcakes!

 After the presents, lunch and cupcakes...the fun really began:

Here are the younger two of the four watching Cinderella (cough, yes I bought that, cough) and chillaxin with Daddy:

And a final parting shot of the party girl, who could not wait to change into the awesome jammies one of her aunties, I WON'T SAY WHO, gave her:

Chicago! A helluva town!

Last month, upon invitation to a wedding, I ventured all the way to the windy city of Chicago...but since I chose to let Killer Diller do the photo editing this time, it's taken a bit longer to get the resulting blog published.  Never again!

 The wedding was in downtown Chicago, so I headed out on a Friday night, on a half full flight, with a row of seats to myself and THIS AWESOMENESS as well:

SouthWest serves Dr Pepper!  I savored the essence as I coasted over the fly over states.  Once in Chicago, I was pleased to see that my hotel had prepared by bed in style:

Yes, that is DP - who insisted on sneaking past security and coming along.  The following photos of the hotel will not excite anyone but me, who appreciates history. Original Brass doorknobs and plates:

 Golden elevators with original clock style floor dials!  I loved getting into these elevators!

 But I digress, here is Chicago in all it's glory the following morning:

 Before heading to the wedding, I had time to explore the area a bit.  Here you see the famous "Married with Children" fountain.  I am almost positive it is actually called something else, since it dates about 100 plus years prior to Kelly Bundy.

 DP, ever the tourist, can not resist getting a shot with such a cultural icon:

 Naturally, MY PHOTO is never quite as good:

 But wither, I had to prepare for the wedding - here I am pulling one of those annoying "camera phone in the mirror" shots - how low can I go...

And finally here you see the actual reason I was in Chicago:

A gorgeous ceremony and party!  Here is the daughter of my friend and boss, who also traveled to the wedding:

 Someone, I WON'T SAY WHO, could not resist slipping in for a photo as well:

 I had 12 hours the next day to further explore the city - so I thought I'd take in the Chicago Art Institute - DP enjoyed it as well:

I pulled a "Cameron" and stared at the "Sunday in the Park" painting for awhile (look up the reference, movie heathens!):

 Here's me, proof I was actually in the museum:

Then I had to pull DP away from the "Sunday in the Park" painting, as DP was intent on finding out why the hell Cameron was obsessed with the painting:

 Time for a few more shots of downtown before heading back to the airport:

 I see statues in Chicago are just as disrespected as ones in San Francisco:

 Here's me, excited to be back on the plane, heading home, after a TWO HOUR DELAY at Midway.

A Wedding Celebration - Seattle Style!

Recently, DP and I were invited to celebrate the wedding of my friends (well, ok, just me, but the whining got to me so I took DP along) and since they live in Seattle...we joined 3 friends at SFO and headed up north:

 The magic of air travel when there is no disruptive fog...a mere 1:45 min later - wa la!

Upon landing, I  had what can only be described as a religious experience eating a sandwich containing the gift known as "mole salami" (think mole sauce, not varmint) at this trendy spot in downtown Seattle:

That night, the 4 of us took a tour of the "Seattle Underworld", where we learned that at one point, Seattle had another level of buildings entirely.  They just built on top of them:

 DP was too busy hanging at the hotel hot tub to join us:

The underground buildings we toured are housed in the "red light" district:

 I got some pretty good shots of the underground ruins:

Where bars, gambling houses, whores, booze, diseases and thieves once partied hard (wait, I thought that was SF?) anywho...

This is a bridge we must have crossed at least 6 times during the weekend.

You could see the famous Mt Rainier from this bridge:

 But we had bigger and better things to do than stare at a mountain all day!

Yes, DP insisted on being the first to get in the elevator up to the top of the Space Needle. Here's the rest of us.  Not a bad photo by DP, I must say:

 DP seemed a little nervous about the ledge height, but I got the shot:

Here's me, trying to look all "not a tourist" - FAIL.

 SOME PEOPLE, I WON'T SAY WHO, got a little carried away in the gift shop:

Here's a shot I am sure NO ONE HAS EVER TAKEN BEFORE of the Space Needle:

 I expected the Needle (is that was the locals call it?) to be a lot bigger. The architecture of the SP NEED (maybe this is what locals call it?) was impressive, though.  I'm spoiled by my SF skyline. But I digress.  We also made our way to the Public Market/Pikes Market/Embarcadero Ferry Building/Fish Market:

It was some kind of underground flea market filled with people!  We couldn't move and we couldn't really take any photos.  Couldn't be our Saturday afternoon timing, could it?

THEN I SAW THIS....OH HELL NO:

Drunk, free-range bees all flying around us while under the influence of large amounts of honey!  Sick and Wrong!!  Who let those insects in there??  No decorum at all.  AND they expected us to taste honey from those jars.  I moved on out of there!!

After that we made our way to the famous "throwing the fish around" place.  I carefully maneuvered to get a good position, waited....waited...then just as the guy threw the fish, THIS HAPPENED:

OH HELL NO!!

We left after that, passing some kind of Coffee Mecca where followers were lined up and staring in awe at a...well...Starbucks.  We ate at Kells, an Irish pub highly recommended by one in our traveling party (no, not DP):

 MMMM, great pub food and apparently this place is haunted and has been visited by some "Ghost Adventures" show.  We didn't see any ghosts, other than the ghostly remains of our lunch!

Then the time came to honor the reason we flew up here...the wedding party for Matt and Danny.  Good Friends, Good Grub and Good Times! Here we are, hanging in the sunshine of Seattle!

 Congrats to Matt and Danny!

Our last morning in Seattle was spent at Ivar's Salmon House for a hosted brunch. Everything looked and tasted great.  I ate too much.  So did DP.  

We tried to get a last photo of the Seattle Skyline and all, but of course:

And this marks the END of the trip: