It's a Blur

REWIND: As I look back on the last couple of days, I can understand why I'm a tad tired as I type this. It feels like it has been a marathon at a sprinter's pace. I'll try to hit a few highlights. ...

Monday, we took a break from working on the house and in the yard to go play a few holes of disc golf at a new-to-us course, Lakewood King County Disc Golf Club. It's in the White Center neighborhood, which is south of Seattle proper and east of West Seattle.

Frankly we hadn't gone to that course before because of the word 'club' in its name. We thought it was for members only or we'd have to pay to play. But Kennedy went and scouted it out a couple of weeks ago and said it's a public park open to all. 

Unfortunately, the course has no map posted on site, the tees are not well marked (and in some instances they're not marked at all), so we wandered around a bit. (Eventually I found a map on the ground at one tee, so that helped us.)

One thing that makes this particular course unique is it features some water hazards. 

We were pretty happy we didn't lose any discs that day.

We pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. As we were leaving, I noticed a gentleman with a disc golf bag wandering around the park's entrance. It's what we'd been doing an hour or so prior. I told Christian to go give the guy the map we found. Boy, was he grateful!

Tuesday was all about cake. Horrible, terrible, troublesome cake.

Last week, Annabelle had perused the Birthday Dreams website and signed up to make a cake for a local child. The kid had chosen a galaxy themed party from the list, but there was a note that they really loved narwhals. 

Annabelle remembered that we had seen a cosmic-themed narwhal plushie at a video game convention awhile back. It was called a starwhal - how clever!  So we decided to make a starwhal cake.

There were two big problems, however. One was that somehow Annabelle got the due date wrong, and it was due more than 24 hours sooner that I thought it was kind of a big deal, because making these custom things is a process and takes time. 

The second super big problem was that on the day we *had* to make the figurines and decorate the cake, it was over 90 degrees. Icing and modeling chocolate do NOT like heat. Things literally kept falling apart. And when they fell apart, they'd land somewhere and ruin something else. Bad words were spewed and tears were spilled. It was really unpleasant, unfortunately - and uncharacteristically. Honestly, normally making these donation cakes is a fun experience. 

Anyway, we eventually got the cake to a 'stable' point and were happy to drop it off and put it behind us. Let's hope the birthday kid enjoyed it at least a little. In the photo below, I've blurred the name on purpose, for confidentiality.

Just minutes after dropping off the cake, we had to head north, to the stadium district. We had signed the kids up for the Bills, Budgets & Baseball event sponsored by our credit union, BECU. It's about a 90-minute event where teens participate in a simulation where they make real-life budgeting decisions people face every day. They are randomly assigned a persona, complete with a career, and, sometimes a spouse and/or kids. The challenge is to choose which housing, transportation, clothing, and other important purchases that make sense for you and your family. 

It was held in the 'basement' of T-Mobile Park, home to the Seattle Mariners. 

And by attending the event, our family 'earned' four free tickets to that night's game, as well as four $10 gift cards to use on stadium concessions. Pretty good deal!

After an orientation, the kids used an app called Bite of Reality 2 as they worked their way around stations for different expenses. In the end, CJ wound up in fairly deep debt. He didn't seem too worried about it, though. ... 

On the other hand, Annabelle seemed super proud she'd managed to stay on budget, and even save some.

After the exercise was over, we headed into the stadium. Rather than go to our assigned seats, we decided to see if there was seating available in the Hit It Here Cafe, above right field. Turned out there were plenty of open spots, so we parked there for a few innings.

Actually, we were there longer than we'd planned on being there, because there were multiple issues with our meals. Annabelle's wasn't served with the rest of ours, and then didn't come and still didn't come despite our repeated inquiries. (It was just a burger and fries, nothing that complex.) Meanwhile, the nachos Christian and I were served were like STONE COLD. They were gross, and we sent them back.

Fortunately, I complained to the right people, and our meals ended up being comped, which was appreciated. So that meant we had free game tickets and free food that night. So that wasn't bad - but the Mariners were terrible. They were shutout big time by the Yankees.

Fast forward to Thursday, we were heading out the door at 6:45 to Queen Anne Hill in the heart of Seattle. There, we helped set up for a back-to-school breakfast for staff at the kids' former learning center. The event had a 'rap' theme. Breakfast wraps were on the menu, and rap-inspired decor adorned the tables (think gold chains, boom boxes and such). CJ put together an hour's worth of 'clean' rap music (honestly, that was quite a challenge). I made four pounds of bacon, brought six different hot sauces, a dozen tomatoes from our garden, some cilantro, cotija, sliced mini bell peppers, tortilla strips, and more to contribute to the table (which also included scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes, black beans, etc.).  

After the breakfast was served, I took the kids to the International Fountain at Seattle Center for a little splash time. 

We all realized just a couple of days ago that summer is almost over and we hadn't been to the fountain once yet this year. We had to fix that, as it's a tradition.

Parking was a little tricky, because there were hundreds of workers everywhere, getting the grounds ready for the big Bumbershoot concert this weekend.

Lots of vendors were already on site. The kids and I were intrigued by this Keen trailer. Apparently they make and sell shoes right on site. Interesting.

It wasn't as warm as we were expecting it to be today, but that didn't stop CJ from getting full on soaked.

He's the biggest kid in the fountain. :)