Meet Abraham

I've probably written this somewhere on the blog previously, but Adam Zimel is about the closest thing I have to a brother. We've been friends now for close to 10 years, and it is always a highlight of my day/week/month/year whenever we talk or get to hang out (much less frequently than I would like since the Zimels now live in Austin and we live in Seattle). Even better, our families mesh almost seamlessly. I say "almost" because one difference between our families is that the Zimels now have 5 kids while we enjoy just Drew and Samantha. Missi and I consider ourselves to be an "aunt" and "uncle" to the Zimel kids and love them like our own - and I know the feeling is mutual as both Adam and Amber-Rose love Drew and Sam.

So it was with complete joy that we got to meet the newest member of the Zimel family, Abraham, when he and Amber-Rose came to Seattle to meet up with their adoption group. Abraham was adopted from Ethiopia and is about 8 months old. He is absolutely beautiful and we were so grateful for the opportunity to meet him.

A few recent pics

Been quite awhile since I've blogged - been super busy with work and life in general. Here is a big 'ol batch of pics to update what we've been up to the past few months:


My little lady is growing up. As she often reminds us, she goes to "full day school" now.


Drew is 100% all boy. Fishing, exploring, shooting BB guns, anything related to the military, sports, forts, and sneak attacks. The boy loves them all.


But Sam isn't too grown up to stop putting on performances for us. Definitely a favorite past-time of mine.


It was great to see my niece and nephews this summer. Here is "the little sweetie" as she is known by my sister.


And here is "the little sweetie's" older brother - "Mr. T"


Unfortunately it's pretty rare when my sisters and I are ever in the same place at once, so it was fun this summer to spend a few days together. Here is Missi and my two sisters at Silver Lake in Washington.


The "siblings photo" on our camping trip this summer.


Missi and I had our first on-water SeaFair experience this summer. We were with some awesome people but the weather wasn't great!


Getting ready to head into the forest to have an airsoft war!


Missi with two of her great friends, Nina and Monica.


Missi and the kids took a trip to Bend this summer with our friends John and Kiki. Unfortunately I had to stay in Seattle to work. It was a great trip with sunshine, pool time, floating the river, and other adventures.

First day of first grade!


First day of fifth grade!


Date night. Heading to Staple & Fancy.


Sam and one of her best friends Kylie.


At a friend's wedding this summer.


With my two pretty ladies.

An awesome guy's weekend in the Olympic Mountains

As I've blogged about in the past, each year I try to organize a "guy's weekend" (sometimes also known as "dude's weekend" or "bro-fest" or "guy-a-palooza") where a group of my closest friends all meet up for a long weekend to hang out. This was much easier to accomplish when we all lived in the general Portland vicinity and were younger (i.e., not as many family and work obligations). Now we are spread out over a much broader geographic area and we have more wives, kids, and demanding jobs among us. So, it takes a lot more effort to find a weekend that actually works for everyone. But, all of recognize how important it is to connect at least once a year, so we try to do whatever we can to make it. Among other things, in the past this "guy's weekend" has included a climb of Mt. Adams and a weekend at the Oregon Coast playing poker, fishing, and racing down sand dunes. Without even the slightest hint of exaggeration, the "guy's weekend" is always one of the highlights of my year.

This year we decided to try to go backpacking in Olympic National Park. I had heard so many good things about this area, and I looked out at the Olympics from my office window every day, so I knew I needed to get over there sooner rather than later. We were fortunate that we were able to find a weekend that worked for everyone, and we lucked out with some great weather. We ended up hiking the High Divide Loop, which wound up being about 23 miles of hiking over about 3 days. If I provided a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of everything that we experienced, it would probably run about 5,000 words and would take me the next several hours to type up. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing weekend of beautiful scenery (including several bear sightings), lots of laughter, and great conversations to catch up with each other. Here are some photos from the weekend:






















This last photo was taken at about 10:30PM so the flash was blinding everyone. It was our last group shot together as Adam and I had to wake up at 1:30AM and start hiking out to make it to Sea-Tac airport by 10:00AM. That's a crazy story for another time.

A gem of the Internet

The Internet has quite a bit of good, useful information, quite a bit of trash, and tons of just meaningless, irrelevant information (no comment on where this blog fits among those categories). But every now and then you manage to come across an Internet site that is absolutely amazing. And thanks to a link posted on Facebook by my friend Harvey, I am now able to share such a site with my loyal blog readers (both of you). Prepare yourself to be blown away, and then go check out Awkward Family Pet Photos. If you cruise to that site, you will be able to see awesomeness like:

Summer Book Report

I'm not sure that I have ever blogged about how John Steinbeck is one of my favorite America authors. Like many Steinbeck fans, my interest began after reading "Of Mice and Men." After that, I read "Cannery Row," "Tortilla Flat," and several others. On a trip to the world's best bookstore, I ended up buying quite a few Steinbeck books that I had never read. Since then, most of those books have just sat around and gathered dust on my bookshelf.

On a whim, I decided to rescue one of these books from their dust-capturing mission. "Travels with Charley: In Search of America" is Steinbeck's account of his 1960 cross-country road trip with his dog Charley. Not surprisingly, the book was excellent. Steinbeck had a very introspective eye and an unparalleled ability to describe his observations in a colorful and easy-to-read style. One of the things that was so interesting to me was how many of the themes that Steinbeck confronts during his 1960 roadtrip are still unfortunately present in America today, fifty years later (consumerism, fast-paced life, racism). For me, the book was the perfect blend of light summertime reading fare while still being very thought-provoking.

[Sidenote: Steinbeck came through Seattle on his roadtrip. I found a webpage that described part of what Steinbeck wrote about Seattle. As a current resident of the Emerald City, I found it especially interesting.]

Another Pet Peeve Sighting

This one might take the cake in terms of ridiculous misspelled words in public places.



It occurred on a road near a high school in North Carolina.