December 30 - Two Year Anniv.

We celebrated our 2 year anniversary this weekend. This second year has brought some pretty big changes: I finished my master's degree, we moved to Washington without knowing a thing about it, and we both got new jobs. I think that this may have been the hardest trial of our marriage. We came to a new place where we didn't know anyone and we couldn't get jobs for a long time. Money was very tight and we questioned a few times if we should have come here. We spent A LOT of time together, day in and day out. And we didn't kill each other. And we hardly ever fought. That's pretty incredible to me! Unfortunately, we got used to enjoying so much time together and now that we're both working (and kind of opposite shifts) we really miss each other. I guess there's worse things than loving to spend time with your husband.

So this weekend we both made sure to have the weekend off. On Saturday we went to Seattle. We started in Fremont and ate lunch at Costas Opa. It's a Greek restaurant that Robb went to before I got to WA and has been wanting me to try. It was a pretty solid Greek restaurant. Robb had gyros, I had lamb souvlaki. We then walked around Fremont for a little bit and visited our favorite independent stores in the area. Then we headed to the Queen Anne neighborhood. This neighborhood has the cutest houses and when you think of Seattle neighborhoods, this is what you picture. So I've been wanting to check out the main street in Queen Anne, which seemed to have a lot of cute shops. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty hard by the time we got there and the area didn't have as many cute places as I had hoped. Lots of spas/salons though. We did check out the Queen Anne Metropolitan Market. And I have to say Robb's store in Federal Way is much nicer and bigger. And then my shoes (which were made of corduroy) finally soaked through, so we decided to to head back to Federal Way. We ate dinner at our favorite restaurant in Federal Way, La Casa Bella. And as always, our food was superb. We ordered a bottle of Chianti. We started with prawns in a goat cheese sauce. Robb had a rack of lamb which was succulent and I had a seafood pasta which was pretty darn good too. They gave us a free appetizer and dessert again. It's amazing to have such a top notch restaurant in our town.

Today (Sunday, our actual anniversary), I woke up to find Robb gone. Which is pretty incredible. I ALWAYS wake up before Robb and he left the house at 8:30! He came home with Starbucks breakfast and we had breakfast in bed. We had a selection of cheese (from Met Market) for lunch. We're becoming quite the cheese connoisseurs. And then we headed to the movie theater to see Juno (I highly recommend it!) Tonight we're sitting at home and going to watch a movie and drink wine. A low key anniversary, but we are still poor and have work tomorrow. We try to give each other low cost, traditional presents each year. The first year was paper and the second year is cotton. So I got Robb a new blanket for our couch and a cotton smelling candle (b/c the blanket wasn't officially cotton, the good blankets are made of synthetic materials) and Robb got me new hiking socks and made a mixed cd with songs all about cotton!

This statute is in Fremont. People just come out and decorate them for their friends birthdays and special events. It's featured in the opening credits of Say Anything.

Statue of Lenin in Fremont, currently decorated for Christmas.

Driving past the Space Needle, with the Christmas tree on top for the season.