cousin time, dinner out, pumpkin carving

*edited to add: i forgot to mention grandpa durant was not able to fly out last wednesday but he will be coming at the end of november with grandma cheryl instead :) 

on friday thatcher worked a short day, which was nice. his cousin sage was in town from san diego with his wife kristen and their 2 year old daughter, stella for a conference and they wanted to get together with us. i've only met sage and kristen a couple of times and we had not met their daughter yet. she was such a cutie. she instantly became my "bff" and kept saying she wanted "the other mom" to hold her :) we hung out at our house for a bit and then walked to the locks. there was a huge working boat coming through, so that was cool to see. 

then we came back to our house and ordered thai food for dinner. it was a fun night! 

saturday morning thatcher took the kids to carkeek park/beach to meet sage and stella while kristen was at her conference. they had fun and i got to relax at home. win-win!

 we all relaxed at home in the afternoon. in the evening, i had plans to meet my friend chrissy for dinner at "bramling cross" in ballard. i walked down there in the pouring rain and got soaked despite using an umbrella. we had a delicious dinner and a great time catching up. it was still pouring when it was time to leave, so i decided to get a lyft home. $6 to stay dry was totally worth it. and the driver had a huge bucket of halloween candy in the back, so that was fun. 

sunday morning we hung out at home. in the afternoon, azalea had a play date at her friend audrey's and the rest of us went to rei. thatcher did some shopping and i watched ashford play in the tree house. when we got home, it was pumpkin carving time!

 the kids were more into it this year than they have been in the past. you know how it usually goes: they act super excited and then leave the table after 5 minutes for the parents to do the rest ;) but ashford insisted on cleaning out his for a good 20 minutes. they both drew the faces they wanted on for their jack-o-lantern and thatcher cut them out. here are the finished products: 

unfortunately it was super rainy on sunday as well, so we weren't able to go outside and light them. but we will this week for sure! we made dinner and the kids watched the smurfs movie to end the night. 

i'll be back later this week with a halloween recap. we're going trick or treating on market street and ballard ave. and then out for dinner with our friends vanessa, matt, ewan, and vanessa's mom who is in town. should be fun! fingers crossed that it doesn't rain.