Homemaking, the Apocolypse and Discovery Park

So for the next little while, I'll be posting about some old stuff I didn't post about at the time it happened. Why? Well, 1) because this blog is my only current feeble attempt at recording family history and I want to document these missed events and 2) my present life is rather...um...uneventful?

I'm not complaining though. I'm finding a surprising amount of fulfillment in my quiet life as Homemaker-in-training. It's actually quite lovely. I sleep in. I take walks. I read books. I plan weekly menus and cook meals. I keep up on the housework. I talk to friends and family who have time to talk during the day. I imagine all these activities will take a nose dive once Little Whoosh comes out of her little womb.

Speaking of little things, Kelly and I took a little day trip to Discovery Park on Saturday. It was a sunny day, and I told Kelly we had to go outside and enjoy it because it might be our last one. Kelly makes fun of me because I've used that argument since early September, and the sunny days still keep a-comin'. I just can't help but be rather apocolyptic about the impending doom--I mean, winter. Utah winters were dark enough for me, and I've heard they're nothing compared to the sunlessness here.

Anyways, Discovery Park is a bluff/forest/beach/meadow/pretty-much-gorgeous expanse that spreads over 500 acres here in Seattle. I suppose it is aptly named because every time Kelly and I go there we find new trails. This time we found the best one yet. Since we didn't have a camera on us (my fault, long story) I will do my best to describe it instead:

Our walk led us up a hill dense with evergreens and dotted with deciduous trees that have traded their greens for a more splashy fall palette. When we reached the top of the bluff, we hiked across a long-grassed meadow, down through the forest to a small beach with big charcoal-colored boulders and crashing waves--well, certainly crashing for Seattle beaches. We relaxed on the rocks for a while before we made our way along the lower part of the bluff between the forest and the Puget Sound, admiring the deep blue-green water and Olympic Mountains across the way. Of course, Kelly stopped to point out the birds along the path. Our favorites were the little bushtits. (I know. I wish they had a different name too.) As we reached the end of a little peninsula complete with a quaint and picturesque lighthouse, we rounded the bend to the larger, sandier, driftwood-ier beach. From there we could tell just how clear a day it was: Mt. Rainier was visible in the distance.

And what else was waiting for us at our final beach destination? A little seal pup. It looked like this. Yes, I am a sucker for baby seals. It was all grey and spotted and small and adorable and about 10 feet away from the driftwood log we perched on to spy on it. It was also well-camouflaged. We wouldn't have seen it except for the woman who was respectfully taking pictures of it at a distance. A couple of joggers trotted right past it--like a foot away--without noticing. We had a good 15 minutes of us and the beach and the seal before a leashless puppy tried to clobber it, and a flock of people gathered round to admire it. Poor thing got scared and couldn't flipper away fast enough.

It was a perfect walk to tuck into our stockpile of memories to pull out on rainy days. I'm sure there will be plenty of them in the coming months, both rainy days and new memories. I'll just try to focus more on the making the latter.