Happy Mother's Day

Hello friends and greetings from the Northwest!

First and foremost, Happy Mothers Day to all the amazing women in our lives, especially Patti Serafin and Mary Bailey (although between Erin and I, Patti definitely had a more difficult task). We love you and wouldn't be where we are today without you.

Erin and I have had an exciting and eventful month since our last update, so let the good news begin...

Starting June 14th Erin will leave the infant room at Hutch Kids and move upstairs as a co-teacher for Moons and Stars, a preschool classroom with children between 3-5 years old. She's looking forward to a diaper free room, shared nap time, and writing curriculum around interests of the children. In mid April Erin took the WEST-E, an endorsement test for Washington state elementary education (the WA version of the CSET), and as expected, passed with flying colors. Now if the schools were just smart enough to interview her...

Towards the end of April I was hired as the Chair for the Graduate Student Council, Seattle University's graduate student government. I'm really looking forward to the experience and President Father Sundborg already knows how to spell my last name. In other exciting news, I had an article published in Volume 4 of Magis: A Student Development Journal. The journal publishes pieces by current students in the Student Development Administration (SDA) program, practitioners in Jesuit education, alumni, and friends of the SDA program. My article is titled, "Spiritual Development for the Non-Spiritual: Supporting Atheist Students’ Exploration for Meaning and Purpose."

A few weeks ago, we took a day trip to Portland to visit some Cal Poly friends (Corrigan Speicher, Michelle Fox, Katie Gluck, and Heather Demosthenes).
 

 

 
After an unsuccessful attempt at Voodoo Doughnuts (40 minute line), we bounced around town, visited Powell's Books, and grabbed a bite to eat at Ringler's Pub, a McMenamins restaurant/brewery.

Finally, I'm excited to be able to get my hands dirty again in my community garden plot. Come summer we should have fresh spinach, kale, lettuce, basil, carrots, red onions, and chives.

We miss you all and hopefully now that we're consistently in the mid 60's those of you that have been contemplating a Seattle trip will finally book your tickets. Erin, myself, and the city of Seattle will be waiting for you.

 
Talk to you soon!

All the best,
Adam & Erin

The Latest from Seattle...

We hope you're well and welcoming spring! It is finally warming up in Seattle, though cross your fingers that we don't experience the saying "April showers bring May flowers." Our upcoming forecast looks rainy, but we are ready for some sun.

It has been a fun, busy couple of months for us! Adam recently finished up his second quarter with another perfect report card and plenty of incredible feedback from professors. We recently added another infant to the mix in my classroom, and have one more starting in April. It makes for some pretty busy days, but we have fun. I am currently trying to decide what to do next year, whether it be follow my infants up or move to the preschool age.

We celebrated Trixie's birthday in February with a night of good friends, fun, and dancing!
 

 
Not long after her birthday, we were so happy to welcome back our favorite San Luis Obispo based band, Stilltime, for the Seattle-stop on their national tour. We had a great visit with our friend Nick and his bandmates, and as usual, they put on a great show!

Adam went to Chicago for the annual NASPA conference in March and had a great time networking with other professionals, spending time with some Seattle U colleagues, and reconnecting with some Cal Poly friends. He also took the opportunity to explore the city a bit and had a wonderful time!

Like I said, we have been thankful for some days of beautiful weather. One warm day, we jumped at the chance to be outside and headed to Volunteer Park for a stroll and game of bocce ball. As always, Adam was the winner, but I'd like to think that I held my own.

To cap off Adam's recent spring break, we traveled into the mountains of central Washington for a weekend trip with some good friends. Tobey the Toyota (my car) experienced its first drive through the snow to ultimately end up in sunny Leavenworth, a cute Bavarian town at the Riverdance Lodge, where we spent the weekend chatting by the river, relaxing in the hot tub, playing games, and hiking. We snapped many photos with the beautiful views that surrounded us.

 
On the way home, we did stop in the snowy pass to throw some snowballs. It was undoubtedly an adventure!

In the coming weeks, Adam will start spring quarter, I will take a test to finish transferring my teaching credential to Washington, and we hope to head north to experience the annual Tulip Festival. We are anxiously awaiting the warm, sunny spring weather so we can continue to explore more aspects of our new home. We also hope the nice weather will bring us more visitors like you! If you plan any trips to the Northwest, keep us posted!

Feel free to respond and tell us how you are doing! We miss you!

Love,
Erin & Adam

A much-needed Seattle update

Let me start by apologizing for our delay in sending an update from Seattle; we know you may have been anxiously awaiting its arrival in your inbox for much too long.  As it always does, the holiday season made us a little bit busy on top of the everyday adventures of work and school.

Following the Halloween shenanigans of "Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmetic" we celebrated Thanksgiving in Seattle and Erin made her very first turkey.  All parties agreed - it was delicious.  Next up was my birthday full of festivities including a party, trip to the Bodies exhibit, Gameworks, and dinner on Lake Union.  The next day I set off for a California adventure, stopping in San Francisco for a visit with my sister Jessica and her dog Porter, and then to San Luis Obispo, where I was lucky enough to meet up with many of you (Erin is still getting over her jealousy).  We spent the Christmas holiday traveling southern California to see both of our families.

 

 

To cap it all off, we brought in 2010 at Kerry Park with an amazing view overlooking the Space Needle and the incredible midnight fireworks display.

We had some visitors in the past few months including my sister Jessica, Erin's aunt Kate, and some friends from Cal Poly, Jeff, and Karen.  Karen was a lucky recipient of our "Seattle driving tour," which we have essentially perfected for our out of town visitors.  Her tour was at night which gave us a different view of the sights, especially am empty Pike's Place Market.  We took advantage of the empty walkways to snag a picture with the Golden Pig, which stands right out front by the famous fish throwers' stand.  

 

 

She also snapped a picture of us at Kerry Park with a night sky in the background.

 

 

Seattle seriously is beautiful.  Please take this as more incentive to visit us!

Our latest escapade was a trip to Portland to celebrate our two year anniversary. We hopped in the car for the three hour drive to see some of the sights of the city including the waterfront and Pioneer Square.  However, most exciting was the short drive to the suburbs to visit Wilsonville, the town where Erin grew up.  Having not been back in 10 years, this was really exciting for Erin, as we stopped at her old homes, schools, and the hang outs that were cool to a middle school girl at the time (bowling alley, family fun center, and Red Robin).  We documented all the stops with photos, including one at the "Welcome to Wilsonville" sign.  

With all this going on, we have still been working away - Erin with the infants, and me with the college students.  Erin recently completed a humongous piece of documentation to demonstrate high quality practices at her child care center necessary for accreditation.  I had a great first quarter of school and I'm two weeks into another...lots of my free time will be spent reading in the upcoming months.  Sorry Erin.

We hope that you are well and enjoying the new year.  We wish you lots of excitement, adventure, joy, and love in 2010!  And as always, we miss you.

All the best,
Adam & Erin