Positive energy

Positive energy and happy thoughts going out to my sister! Te quiero mucho!

Update: All is well and thank you all for the positive thoughts.

Home found

We finally found a house that will suit our needs and we got there early enough to rent! Hurrah! It's a nice 3 bedroom/2 bath house near Haller Lake/Shoreline. It's a bit far from all the cool Seattle things, but very convenient for our work commute. We'll be moving in sometime in early August. Plenty of time to have a few BBQs before fall descends on Seattle.

Sun dog

Just saw my first sun dog in the sky just outside of my office building. Pretty neat, it's like a rainbow-colored cloud. Check out Wikipedia for more on sun dogs.

Raising a multilingual child

We are starting to think about this question "How to raise a multilingual child?" It turns out people have very strong (i.e., negative) opinions about this. We'll just have to come up with a strategy that works in our family and just ignore the negativity. I have some ideas of where I went wrong in becoming fully bilingual with Spanish and English. And now that I'm learning French and living in the Pacific NW away from "mi familia", my Spanish has sadly deteriorated. It's actually painful to me to not be better at Spanish as an adult. But, I grew up with Spanish and you never lose the ear for it. That makes it much easier to bring my skills up to scratch. B doesn't really speak Spanish, but he grew up hearing it from his grandmother and other family members so he has a pretty good ear too. Maybe the whole family will become trilingual. :)

Househunting continues

Well, the more houses we see the better idea we get of what we are looking for and what we don't want. Unfortunately, we don't see everything we want in the same place. We visited two townhomes today. One in a not-so-great neighborhood, one just a block off of Greenlake (right near the wading pool). The former was too expensive, the latter well-priced. The first very cute with new appliances, the second was "quirky/vintage" with older appliances. The first didn't have storage space, the second did have storage space. So it continues... I think we are narrowing in on what we want and lots of nice things are coming onto the market in the Greenlake/Ravenna area. Hopefully we'll find the right place for us in the next two months. I'd like to be moved in well before "la niña" arrives (and by "la niña" I don't mean an excess of cold water upwelling in the tropical Pacific).

Update: We saw a place today. Again great neighbourhood, great backyard, plenty of space... but not so nice inside. The kind of place you would buy, paint, strip carpets, put in new appliances and immediately increase the value of the house. For a rental, though, that kind of effort just isn't worth it. We are seeing another place tomorrow... stay tuned.

Up-update: Saw another place. Loved it. Put our names down, but so did alot of other couples. I'm thinking happy thoughts and hoping it'll go our way. Either way, though, we have a fun more houses lined up to see this week that look very promising. For putting up with me griping about the house-hunt, you get to come over for a BBQ once we find a place!

Where have I been?

I haven't posted much lately. We've been running around looking for a house to rent. So far, we've seen a few places we've really liked (couldn't really afford, but that's another story) but were not picked because we got their too late or we couldn't move in a.s.a.p. The rental market here is tricky. You can find beautiful homes but if the rent is remotely decent (decent = obscenely expensive anywhere else but Seattle, New York, California), 30+ other people want to rent it too. So you just keep looking and hopefully you see a place that you love and happen to be the first person in line. A bit time consuming and emotionally draining, but c'est la vie.

Other than that, we've been enjoying movies at the Seattle International Film Festival. We saw "Day Watch" and "Tekkonkinkreet" last weekend. So far my favorite movie at SIFF was "Paprika" followed by "Day Watch". I am ambivalent about "Tekkonkinkreet". I thought it moved to slow for an anime movie. You meet/chat with interesting people while waiting in line for your movie or sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start. I swear some folks have seen 20+ films this year. Any movie you ask them about, they've seen and have strong opinions about. The good news is that the movies we wanted to see but missed will probably hit Seattle theaters this summer... like "La Vie en Rose" and "Moliere" and many others.

Summer is rapidly approaching and that means it's festival time in Seattle. We are hoping to go to a few of them and get out alot this summer. Once our little gamine arrives, we'll have less time for that sort of thing. Speaking of the gamine, she's kicking me like crazy. B can feel her kicking and my belly moves like a tremor when she kicks. B thinks she might enjoy playing soccer or like martial arts when she grows up.

Good day

Yesterday was a good day.

Walked around Greenlake and took advantage of the sunshine - check.
Put on sunscreen - oops... forgot that. Got sunburned - check.

Watched Pirates of the Carribean 2 with our French friend and his two young sons - check.
Missed Johnny Depp's quirky interpretation of Jack Sparrow due to French dubbing - check.

Ate fresh cherries and strawberries on the lawn after movie - check.

Visited local Thai restaurant, Royal Palm, for buffet to benefit breast cancer - check.
Felt guilty for number of times we revisited the buffet - check.

Spent evening with two friends who are moving to Brazil - check.
Very sad that they are leaving but glad we got to see them before they leave - check.