Last Friday we decided to celebrate being done with apartment searching and went out to eat at Daniel's Broiler, a very nice steak restaurant right on the south end of Lake Union. It's just a 10 minute walk from where we live, though we've never been there. It was a really nice place and still seemed fairly casual. The view of the lake and Queen Anne hill was amazing at night.

We started with the bacon wrapped scallops as an appetizer and they gave us fresh warm bread with butter. I had the 8 oz petite filet mignon with a baked potato and Troy had the prime rib with a baked potato. The steak was cooked perfectly and had a good flavor. It was a lot of food, but somehow we still had room for dessert. We got the creme brulee with fresh berries and drizzled caramel.

All the food was excellent. The service was a little slow, but I suppose nice steak places tend to be a relaxed experience. Since we're moving out of the area, going out to dinner on the lake was kind of our way of saying goodbye to our neighborhood.

After weeks of searching and visiting 14 different buildings, we finally applied for a new apartment. We thought we found "the one" last week in a building on First Hill, but it was gone before we could apply. Then Thursday night, we thought we'd found "the one" in a building on 8th Ave. But yesterday, we ended up applying for another unit in that first building on First Hill. While this unit isn't as big as we had hoped for, it's still bigger than what we have now and costs less than what we're paying now.

This wasn't in the plan - as of Thursday night we expected to apply to a building on 8th Avenue that we saw that day. It had the best floor plan of any that we'd seen, including plenty of storage space, and the building had a super amazing rooftop deck with a view of downtown, Mount Rainier, and the Cascades to the east. However, we found out later that the unit we'd be getting would be smaller than the unit we'd seen on Thursday. We also found out that the first apartment building on First Hill we had tried to apply to last week still had a unit available, though it was smaller than the one we'd tried to apply to, it was about the same size of the unit we'd be getting on 8th Ave and much cheaper.

After some analysis and discussion throughout the day on Friday, we decided to take a look at the less expensive unit on First Hill. It's not the ideal floor plan, as there is not as much bathroom counter space and storage as we wanted, but the living room is much bigger than what we have now. We also have a better view from this unit than we would have had at any other place we'd looked at (though not nearly as good as what we have now). I also like the location better, as we're close to downtown, close to the grocery store, and in a rather quiet residential area.

We applied for that unit and then returned home to find a note under our door that our current rent would increase 7% if we wanted to sign a new lease where we are now. So, that helped to reaffirm our decision. We're excited to be done with the searching and looking forward to moving into our new home.

Our lease ends next month and we are looking for a larger apartment. We really like our current apartment building, but we have decided that we want more room in the bedroom and living room. Ideally, we'd like a little more space but without paying a lot more.

There's not a lot available in our current building and what is available seems to cost a lot more. We've spent the last few weeks looking up available apartments on HotPads and PadMapper. Things are a little difficult because we have very strict criteria. We'd like to stay within reasonable walking distance to downtown and Lesley's work. That rules out a few neighborhoods we like, like Ballard and the U District, but I think we would quickly tire of a longer commute. Specifically, we're looking at apartments in upper Belltown, Capitol Hill, and First Hill. We want a one bedroom apartment in good condition without being too pricey.

We had found a place that we liked and almost applied for it, but it was leased right before we got there to submit the application. So, we are still looking for a place we would like. We have to give notice by early February to our current apartments if we are planning to move out by the end of the month. If we can't find anything, we may sign another 6 month lease here or go month-to-month until we find something.

Note: This post comes from Walking in Seattle.

This exploration of Pioneer Square takes you through one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the city, full of character and history.

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With our lease ending in February, we're going to be deciding soon whether to renew our lease or to move elsewhere. In the years since we've moved here, this location has grown on me and overall I'm pretty satisfied with the neighborhood and the apartment building itself.

Things I like about our apartment

The positive impressions we had when we moved in were pretty spot-on and there is still a lot to like.

1. There are no major complaints - the neighbors are fine, it's pretty quiet overall, and there are no regular inconveniences or other issues.


2. Our unit was designed well and makes good use of the space. For being only 555 square feet, the kitchen and bathrooms are adequately sized.


3. The apartment building is pretty nice. People respect the public spaces and the apartment keeps things in good condition.


4. Even though we lost the best part of our view, we can still see some mountains, Queen Anne Hill, and quite a bit of sky.


5. I love the afternoon sun that comes in and brightens up the place


6. We almost never have to use our heater (which is good because we have furniture blocking it right now). It's nice that we usually get enough heat from surrounding units during the winter and can use our windows to cool things off most of the rest of the year.


7. We can compost our food scraps. Maybe this is available in all apartments, I don't know, but it's nice to be able to do it.


8. Our trash and recycling room is just down the hall.

Things I don't like about our apartment

1. The grill on the balcony below us puts smoke in our apartment if we have our window open. This is very annoying on a nice day when we want to feel the cooler outside air.


2. The balcony below us can get kind of loud if there's a party, or people at nearby clubs and bars. Also, the recording studio across the alley is really annoying.


3. It would be nice if some rooms were bigger, particularly the bedroom.


4. We face the west and it does get warm in here for about a week or two every summer.


5. We've had to add some lights to get it to be bright enough in here, as there are not enough light fixtures built into the unit.

Things I like about our neighborhood

The neighborhood has changed and improved since we moved in. Now that some workers in Amazon's headquarters have moved in this year, more restaurants have opened and there is more to walk to in the area. Check out this color-coded view of the area from the Space Needle.

1. It's nice to have some restaurants and retail within walking distance. We try to take advantage of it when we can. Also, Whole Foods is nearby.


2. We're about a 15 minute walk from downtown, which is convenient for Lesley's work and if we want to go downtown to shop or eat or run errands. This is a lot more convenient than having to drive downtown or take a bus like most people do.


3. Lake Union Park opened late this summer and is one of Seattle's great urban parks. Even though the weather got cooler and wetter right after it opened, we've been there several times already.


4. We are close to several bus routes that can take us to many parts of the city, at least in the northern part of Seattle. For going to any neighborhood north of here, we can get to a bus pretty easily and I enjoy doing that on the weekends.


5. The farmers market outside our building is a fun place to buy fruit and flowers, among many other things, though it may not continue next year.

Things I don't like about our neighborhood

1. It's a 10 minute walk to Whole Foods, which isn't that far, but the walk is across a busy street and up a hill. It would be nice to live closer to somewhere where we could regularly shop for more affordable groceries.


2. The streets that surround this area are a deterrent to walking.


3. While there is a lot to walk to in this area, there aren't as many places to walk to as I would like. Few other Seattle neighborhoods are more walkable, though.


4. Being a neglected mostly-industrial part of town for decades means that it will take some time for this area to feel have a cozy neighborhood feel that other areas have.

It will be hard to find a new place with as many positives as where we live now, but we're planning to look into our options and will see what we can find.

Note: This post comes from Walking in Seattle.

Stroll by the eclectic retail and historic buildings in one of Seattle’s most walkable family-friendly neighborhoods.



Click here to continue reading.

I've been on the personnel committee at church for over a year now (called the Committee on Staff-Parish Relations). There are about ten of us who meet monthly to review how things are going with the church staff, hire new staff as needed, and organize staff appreciation events and whatever else comes up.

It's been a good experience to see how a church operates, to gain experience with the hiring process, and to be able to provide input. Since July I've been the co-chair of this committee, so I've had more things to do in addition to the monthly meeting. There actually seems to be quite a bit going on, such as the budget process that we've been working through for the past couple months. I also have to represent the committee at the church's monthly administrative council meetings. It will be nice when things slow down soon, but overall I've enjoyed the experience.

As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, the Seattle Seahawks upset the defending Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints 41-36 this past weekend in the Wild Card game. One play in particular was pretty awesome - Marshawn Lynch ran 67 yards and broke at least 8 tackles to score a touchdown late in the 4th quarter. Qwest Field erupted so loudly that the ground shook enough to register on a seismic monitor about 100 yards away.

I had briefly considered actually going to the game since tickets were still available as late as Friday and were only about $60 each. Neither of us has ever been to an NFL playoff game, but I figured the Saints would win though and I didn't feel like sitting in 35º weather for 4 hours. As it turns out, it was one of the best, most exciting NFL games I've seen in a long time. And finally, Seattle can be proud of something sports related! Now if only we could beat the Bears this coming weekend...

Note: This post comes from Walking in Seattle.

This trail through grassland takes you near wetlands that are popular with bird-watchers.



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With Lesley's foot hopefully on the mend, I'd like to fit two year's worth of hikes into this summer, since we weren't able to hike much last year. Here are the top trails I want to hit:

• Rattlesnake Ledge - A moderately difficult hike that's not too far away and offers beautiful views. Probably my favorite trail in the nearby area.


• Iron Goat Trail - Not sure if we'll do this one again, as it's kind of far away, but it's one of my favorite hikes we've done in the past few years.


• Cascade Pass - We've gone twice before and it's been one of our favorite hikes. We'd like to go earlier in the season so that we can see all the wildflowers.


• Lime Kiln Trail - One of my favorite hikes we did our first year here, it's a little far away but I'd like to go again.


• Twin Falls - Another enjoyable trail that can get rather busy


• Cougar Mountain - We've been here many times as it's closer than all these other options. There are many different trails of easy to moderate difficulty. I hope we can go here several times.


• Olympic Peninsula - We went here with Lesley's parents a couple years ago, but the weather was rather hot. I'd like to go back and do some longer hikes in different parts of the park.

We just returned from our 9-day-long visit to Fort Worth for the holidays. This was the longest trip back to Texas since we moved to Seattle almost three years ago, so we had more time to see our families than we have since before we moved away.

This trip has seemed different from others. The first few trips back we were very excited to be back and see people and we noticed the many differences between Seattle and Texas. However, this trip, things have felt more like what I remember when we used to live here. This trip was maybe a little too long, but we did many different things to make the most of our time there.

We spent a lot of quality time with our parents, other relatives, and our friends in the area. We went to several of our old favorite restaurants and enjoyed good Tex-Mex and barbeque. We ate at pretty much every place that we wanted to eat at, though it did get expensive eating out so much. There were a few fun family activities, such as the normal Christmas gatherings and going to church with Lesley's grandmother for the first time. I got to see an uncle and a cousin that I don't normally see and spent some time with my brother and saw the apartment he'd moved into. We also had a good time with my parents playing their Wii and other games, going to the mall, and walking at the park with my dad. We also played games and walked in the neighborhood with Lesley's mom and went to a Dallas Stars hockey game and the zoo with Lesley's parents.

I was happy to be able to tour Cowboys Stadium to see the giant high-def screen and walk on the field - it's an awesome stadium. We also celebrated the new year with some of my friends in the area and had a lot of fun playing games and hanging out with some of our best friends that we hardly ever get to see. We saw several movies when we were there, including True Grit and Despicable Me, as well as seeing Tangled while eating lunch at a Movie Tavern.

I also got to explore a lot of the interesting parts of the Metroplex. My parents drove us around new development in Fort Worth along West 7th, and we spent time in the Fort Worth Stockyards with my mom. Lesley and I had a mini-vacation in Dallas, staying in a hotel downtown and spending time in the city on our own. Taking Dallas' trolley to go out to dinner and a movie in Uptown was a highlight of the trip. We also went to breakfast the next day on Oak Lawn and went to NorthPark Center. The day we spent in Dallas also provided us with some welcome privacy and a break from being driven around all the time.

Taking trips back to Texas can be stressful, as we often can't spend as much time with people as they would like, and dealing with people's moods can be challenging. The stress of dealing with expectations may be why Lesley didn't feel very good on the trip.

Overall, this was one of the better trips I've had back to visit family. I really enjoyed the time we spent with people and the varied things we did. We're not yet sure when our next trip will be, but we will be going back this year for Thanksgiving or Christmas again.

Here are our favorite pictures that we took last year. Vote on your favorite below.

Go here to see our favorite pictures from 2008.
Go here to see our favorite pictures from 2009.

We've been eating a lot more vegetables over the past few months. I used to think that a meal had to have meat for it to be a meal, but as we've become better at cooking, it's become easier to make good recipes with mostly vegetables.

The vegetable box we receive also gives us plenty of things to cook that don't have to be accompanied by meat, and I'm trying new fruits and vegetables with each box we receive.

I've made a conscious decision to try to minimize the amount of meat I eat and there are some benefits of that. For example, I may live longer by eating less meat.

A minor benefit of eating less meat is that cooking less raw meat means that there are fewer times when animal blood gets on our counter top and fewer bacteria in the kitchen.

The animal food industry has a huge impact on the environment due to all the resources it takes to feed animals so we can eat them, and also treats many animals inhumanely.

We have a couple pretty good cookbooks that we use that have many meat-free recipes. Stir-fry with vegetables and sometimes tofu is a favorite of ours. We've also found some recipes online for chili, veggie sandwich, and mushroom and potato soup.

Eating some meals without meat does take some effort to find new recipes that don't include meat, but for me it has been worthwhile and for many other people who have reasons for eating less meat.

We'd mentioned before that Seattle has 45% more dogs than children, and another study confirms that Seattle has relatively few children. In fact, of all US cities, Seattle has the second lowest rate of children living in the city limits, behind San Francisco:

Less than 20 percent of all Seattle households included children younger than 18, compared with 34 percent nationally and 33 in Washington state.

While the low rate of children here is striking, it's not especially surprising, considering the high cost of living, especially for home ownership, which prices many families out of the city and into the suburbs. And, with Seattle's city limits being smaller than sprawling cities elsewhere in the country, suburban expansion long ago filled Seattle to its edges, pushing families looking for new developments into suburbs outside of Seattle. Seattle also attracts singles and young married couples like us without children who create demand for small condos and apartments.

We've always liked looking at Christmas lights, so we went to Candy Cane Lane earlier this week. Candy Cane Lane is a short street in the Ravenna neighborhood, north of the U-District, where all the home owners put up lights and displays for everyone to enjoy during the Christmas season. It's one of the best light displays in the area with every house on the street participating. We decided to park a few streets over and walk through it as opposed to driving through like we have in past years.

I have been looking forward to our next trip, as we will be returning to Texas to spend time with family. This will be one of our longer trips back to Texas - we'll be there for 9 days - but it also feels like it's been a very long time since we've been there. Last year, we weren't able to be with family during the holidays, so I'm very excited to be able to see my parents and other relatives and friends, including our baby niece.

We traveled during the holidays our first year here, which was quite an hectic experience thanks to the snow storm that moved in before we left.

While this winter is expected to be wet and cold, right now the forecast doesn't show any snow that would impact our flight out.

I'm looking forward to satisfying my currently insatiable cravings for barbecue and Tex-Mex. Lesley and I will also be spending an evening in Dallas by ourselves and going to a hockey game with her parents.

While we'll have spent more than half of our vacation time this year to go back to Texas rather than traveling somewhere new and exciting, it's good to spend holidays with family.

So, I had another birthday recently. Seems like it comes around more and more often. I do like to take advantage of my birthday when it happens, and I was glad to be able to do all these things that I wouldn't normally do.

Lesley took good care of me for my birthday. She bought me several doughnuts from Top Pot, including my favorite: old-fashioned glazed. I love classic country music, so she got me a Patsy Cline greatest hits. She also took me out to dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant that we'd never been to before. I pass by this place sometimes on my way home and have always been intrigued, but have never stopped in. I thought the place had good ambiance and despite being in an out of the way location, it got pretty busy when we were there. We shared a vegetable platter, which was a lot of food for pretty cheap. I'm not sure when we'll go back, as neither of us are huge fans of Ethiopian food, but it was nice to try this place out and go somewhere different for my birthday.

We also went out to brunch at a cafe that had opened recently just a couple blocks from our apartment and watched a film noir (The Third Man) on our Netflix queue. We also went out to a piano bar nearby and listened to a variety of songs, including work from 70s progressive artists like Kansas and the Moody Blues, ragtime tunes, and classical pieces by Beethoven.

It was fun going to several places we hadn't been to before. And it's cool that new places are opening nearby, as we didn't have to go any farther than half a mile from where we live for me to have a good birthday.

Troy and I went to my work Christmas party last night. It was held at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle instead of the Hotel Andra where it was the past two years. We just barely made the bus near our apartment and arrived shortly after it started at 6 for cocktails and appetizers. They had several kinds of cheese, including Gouda, goat cheese, and aged Parmesan. They also had nuts and dried cranberries to munch on.

After about an hour we all sat down at our assigned tables and had salad, dinner, and dessert. I really liked the salad, which had thin pear slices, cheese, walnuts, and bibb lettuce with a nice vinaigrette dressing. I had a steak with mashed potatoes and green beans while Troy had a cheese ravioli pasta dish with asparagus. My steak was cooked just right, but it didn't have a very good flavor. For dessert we had a chocolate Swiss roll with cream filling and raspberries. We also had some red and white wine throughout the night.

The Fairmont is a really nice hotel and the ceilings were really high compared to the low ceilings at the Hotel Andra, which made it easier to hear people talk. We also had a live group of carolers, which is always a nice touch.

This party was a little different from the last two, not just because it was in a different hotel, but because my former boss is retiring at the end of this year. A few people said a few words and gave short speeches. She really likes Elvis, so we had an Elvis impersonator put on a show. It was a big surprise for her and pretty unexpected. He sang to several ladies, but thankfully I managed to avoid him. It probably helped that we were at a table in the very back corner of the room, although I didn't like feeling so far away from everyone else.

Overall, it was an interesting night. I liked the nice hotel, but didn't care much for the steak or where our table was located. I got tired of standing on my feet, which hurt my heel. We also had to wait in the bus terminal for quite a while to get home, which was slightly inconvenient. I'll take free food and drinks though any day.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a housewarming party for some friends of ours that moved to Kirkland. We were driving around and exploring the area a little bit when we came across a gigantic bonfire, probably 10 feet wide! It was on a beach close to Lake Washington. We decided to stop and check it out. There were lots of other people standing around it, keeping warm. It was cold outside, but the fire was pretty hot, even standing about 10 feet from it! Unfortunately we didn't have our cameras with us, so Troy just took a picture with his cell phone camera, which doesn't really do it justice. I'd never seen anything like it, pretty cool.

Seattle City Light sends out a newsletter bimonthly with news and tips for saving energy and recycling electronics among other things. This issue detailed where our electricity comes from:

• Hydro - 91.2%


• Nuclear - 4.4%


• Wind - 2.3%


• Coal - 1.4%


• Other - 0.7%