Me, Them, and The Fishes

Ahhhh hisashiburi!

Please enjoy a picture of the delicious soba I made for myself one chilly December evening:


Yummmm.

December is an entire month dedicated to the festive feeling and is a good time to spend with family…even if you go crazy when with them. My immediate family all descended upon BC this year for Christmas and thus we could all be together whether we liked it or not.




Someone needs a new sock.





For our first fun-filled family adventure, we all crammed into my parents’ RAV and headed southbound on I-5 for Seattle.







After some arguing and complaining about GPS inaccuracies, we arrived in Bellevue to dine at one my favie US eateries, the Cheesecake Factory.


The like to serve portions the size of a turkey, so we were all sufficiently stuffed.

Since my sister, Sis, was visiting Seattle for the first time, she requested that we visit some little park next to Kurt Cobain’s old house where people wrote stuff on benches. Since we are all terrified of her insatiable wrath, we complied. After 10 minutes of her taking pictures of park benches, we traveled onwards towards downtown and the iconic Seattle Pike Market.







Arriving at the market, we cursed the coldness that has been plaguing the west coast for some time now (and still continues on relentlessly), and kind of felt sorry for the shopkeepers hawking their wares for many hours each day, seven days a week. Boo hoo. Okay, moving on.










Beauteous Puget Sound.







Sis kept on yapping about how she wanted to visit this place since some grade eight video she watched about fishes, so I’m happy she could finally achieve this life goal. It was a neat little place to visit after dark, but I could have done without the numb fingers.

Also in the area was another one of Sis’s desired destinations, the first Starbucks ever. Again, to avoid the reign of terror (I kiiiiiid), we jostled our bodies into the insanely crammed-full store and waited while the gawkers and aficionados waited excessively long wait times for their coffees.



After we’d had enough of Seattle’s downtown excitement, we joined the group of parked cars on the interstate and inched slowly northward to our last destination of the day, Northgate Mall (so Sis could get her ‘Bath and Body Works’ fix, naturally).

It was at Northgate Mall that I experienced my most “Christmas-y” experience of the season to date – I was enveloped into the world of Santa.



Uwaaaa! Perfection. I had to wait a while for all the parents and photographers and whatnot to move out of my way…I feel like I’m reading a storybook, ne?

Only one more big occasion to get out of the way until Christmas hits me like a ton of bricks…