Thanksgiving weekend in the Seattle suburbs

Must say I need to be posting more than once a month! We had a lovely Thanksgiving at the home of my niece Lindsay and her husband Jason, who live about seven miles south of us. Lindsay is an amazing cook and her table settings were so elegant. Veeka had a great time playing with their 1-year-old son Wyatt, a real cutie. And Wyatt has a huge playroom all to himself, which Veeka very much envied. She had similar space back in Tennessee but the days of living in a 2,400-square-foot home are passed, I am afraid. Earlier that day – it was sunny out – we had a lovely ride along the shores of Lake Sammamish in what I hope will be a yearly tradition. The bike path, lined with bushes of snowberries and rosehips (we had rosehips in our back yard in Fairbanks so they’re quite a hardy plant) were so pretty and all sorts of people were out walking.Otherwise, there has been so much rain this past month. It poured buckets on Halloween, so I had to take Veeka to a party at the church, as it was no fun walking about. She had on the perfect Elsa get-up. Fairbanks was sunny and dry. Traffic and rain here are not a good combo, even with a populace who I thought were practiced in driving in wet conditions. There’s not been a lot of news this past month although it looks like we’ve settled on a church about nine miles away from our place. My days have been taken up with getting physical therapy and acupuncture for my frozen shoulder plus lots of issues in getting the right medication and counseling for Veeka. I am beginning to set out some Advent decorations and start working on Christmas cards.Today (Black Friday), I took Veeka on a 2-3-mile hike around Anti-Aircraft Peak, a popular Cougar Mountain trail not far from our home. The views of the mountains were spectacular and she really enjoyed exploring an abandoned clay pit and walking through a forest filled with frosted brown leaves. I did a holiday bazaar last week but the attendance was low and I lost money by going there. That is, the table fee was more than I made! I have another one in Snohomish (which is east of Everett) next weekend and I hope to do better there.Veeka is still without friends, which is heartbreaking, but it doesn’t help that her classroom at school is all boys, many of whom are quite kind to her, but it’s not the same as having little girl friends. So, I’ve enrolled her in an Awana classs at a nearby church on Wednesdays which is helping a bit. Last week, she memorized enough Bible verses to win a green and white T-shirt and backpack, which pleased her to no end. But our apartment complex is mainly older people and although there’s a family across the way with two girls her age, they’ve not reached out at all to us. We’ve dropped by there twice to say hi but when there’s no response, one has to move on. That kind of attitude is more typical than you’d think. We were amazingly fortunate last year at UAF to have a family in the next duplex who were friendly and had an open door policy in terms of kids. Then again, Alaska is in a time warp (of a nice sort) whereas here, it’s very 21st century in how all kids are kept inside and no one plays outdoors.So Veeka and I tend to do things together, like visit sushi places and coffee shops. An article in a local magazine rated all 104 Seattle Starbucks stores, which I thought was pretty funny. Wish they’d do that for the Eastside!