[8.0 or '08] New Year's Resolution

We're back, baby! Happy New Year! After a busy end to the last year and whirlwind beginning to this one, we're finally settling back into the routine and that can only mean one thing...more blogging. I can't promise too much in the way of rapid-fire posting, but since it's been more than a month, we figured that we owe a post for the one or two people who actually read this thing. So we'll update you first on the New Year's activities and then work backwards to clean up a few loose ends to close out 2007 as far as the blog is concerned.

We returned from our Christmas trip out east prepared to celebrate our first turn of a new year in Seattle. But before that, we squeezed in our first snowboarding in Washington and our first mountain appearance of this season. We met up with Michele, a co-worker of Lisa, and Michelle's husband, Carl, and headed up to Crystal Mountain. The resort is about 2 hours from Downtown Seattle. While Michele and Carl took lessons, Lisa and I hit the mountain. However after one run and a trip to the top of the mountain, the binding on my snowboard broke. I tried to fix it at the top of the mountain, but could not so we had to head down to the repair shop. We took this run a bit slowly since I was not quite stable with my faulty binding. After waiting for a repair, it was actually almost time for lunch so we took a quick run and then headed for a bite. We had more luck in the afternoon and got in a bunch of rides. The weather, however, had created white-out conditions on one face of the mountain, so we were a bit limited in where we could go. Fun times, nonetheless. Fun, that is, until we almost found ourselves with enough venison to keep us in meat for a year. On the drive back home, we just barely avoided a large buck that had bolted across the road. Luckily, with my evasive driving and only a very minimal deer-in-the-headlights moment from the buck, we avoided disaster.

For New Year's Eve we met some friends for cocktails and then headed to dinner at Brasa, a restaurant downtown. We had and excellent meal, complete with acrobats performing overhead. Our meal ended right before midnight and we passed on our complementary glass of champagne from the restaurant to head out to the street to see the Seattle New Year's tradition of fireworks set off from the space needle that you can see in the first photo above. And what is New Year's without getting into a bit of trouble? Not much fun, so Lisa decided to break a few laws as you can see below. I hope that she wasn't soliciting.










Lisa has started a bit of a tradition in our home, making sukiyaki for New Year's Day dinner. We actually had a full-on Japanese menu with gyoza and shishamo (broiled sardines) for breakfast that day as well. And for the sake of Lisa's mom, yes, everything was delicious and we ate our sukiyaki the traditional way. I keep asking if this is part of a new year's resolution to start cooking more for me, but she just laughs, so I don't think that's the case. So, a Happy New Year to all once again and hopefully it won't be too long before we get to post about items of note from November and December including Lisa's mom's visit, our Thanksgiving in Oregon, our Christmas back east, and our trip to Vancouver.

And we promise to keep you updated on all things Seattle in 2008.