Is It Fall Yet?

The idea of experiencing Fall for the first time is intriguing to me. I love fall colors, the nostalgic look of it, the changing color of the leaves, the cooler weather, the crisp crunch sound of leaves under my steps - well basically everything that I've seen or heard on the idiot box. Not that it's not cold here, it is - just that I couldn't tell the difference yet between summer and fall. Everything looks so green, and wet, or wetter or wettest between the days. I'm not complaining, seriously I love it, mainly due to my plants which are still adjusting to their new home. It's just that I'm hoping to see some splash of orange, brown, peach and golden colorings here and there. Just like some icing on a cupcake, that would be nice. 

They're all soaked

Sunday at Pike Place Market

Going to Pike Place Market today was an impromptu idea. But it's the best! I love the market, despite the price of most things would probably leave a dent in your wallet if you're planning on shopping, you know a tourist trap kinda place. There are a lot of pretty nifty little things to see apart from their famous fish market with their fish tossing to the fresh produce, the flowers, the food, the buskers etc etc etc. We got to sample some Alderwood smoked wild king salmon and man, it's good! The price - $29.99/piece. Each piece is at least a pound. We didn't go beyond sampling :-(.

The boys on the ferry. We took the one from Bainbridge Island, which I think is the closest to our place, probably around 15 minutes drive. It can get really chilly there especially when we chose to go up to the sun deck.

View of Seattle from the ferry. It's not as gloomy as it looked in the picture. It was actually a nice cloudy windy day. It takes approximately 30 minutes to get to Seattle from Bainbridge Island.

 Street view on the way to the market.

We passed the Seattle art museum, and there's no way to miss it with the towering Hammering Man at sight, hammering diligently 4 times a minute from 7am to 10 pm daily.

We're here at the market! But this is not where the fun starts, at least not to me :-).

At Crepe de France to get some coffee. Here Ezzat played with his Legos while waiting.

The fun starts here!

With everything and anything that involves food :-)

See the greenish building that looks like a warehouse on the left side? That's Seattle Aquarium.

Supposedly one of the best restaurants  in Seattle.

Has been here since 1930s

 The other side of the market

Some of the buskers or street performers. The banjo guy is pretty awesome and the boys love the guy on the right. They thought he's a real robot.

And they're going to save their money and come back for this.

And they got pretty stoked with the whimsical magic shop. Farhan ended up using his money to buy one of the magic trick kits.

What is it: A display of some of world's monstrous shoes. Not exactly a real museum, but more of a storefront pedial peep show

How it works: To view the giant shoes, put two quarters into a slot and the curtain will open, and you'll get a glimpse of some biggest footwear

Tried the pressed penny machines. The penny came out super flat with elongated shape with Space Needle picture embossed on it. 

 Cool street light.

I heart this place! The smells - intoxicating :-). The price is pretty reasonable, between $1.00 - $2.50 an oz, better than some major chain stores. For tea aficionados, this place also carries a great selection of teas. How it works here: You go around the store, sniffing all the wonderful aroma from the display jars of spices. For each of the jars, there is a written information  about the specific spice with suggestions on how to use them. While you do this, make sure you have a pencil and pad to write down your order. Both are provided by the store. You then give the order slip to the person at the counter and he or she will fill your order for you. You can choose to either have the spices freshly grounded by the store or you can ground them on your own. During busy days, this could take a while, so you can either leave the store and come back later to pick up the order or you can just wait, which could take somewhere around 10-20 minutes or even more. We chose to stay and that was pretty taxing on the boys. Oh btw, they only take cash or check.

See what I mean?

Ezzat lost his tooth the other night.

More from the market

Where we had our lunch

Luckily we passed this place after we've had our lunch. Otherwise who knows what we would get from here

One last shot before going home

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all of my family and friends! This is the second year we celebrated Eid away from home and it's not the same as when we're in Malaysia. In fact it's pretty really low key  for us since the boys went to school and Daniel went to work as usual. I spent most of the day cooking dinner. My parents, my brother Najib and my sister Nabila are in Mecca celebrating their Eid ul-fitr there and my brother, Nasfi and my sis-in  law, Shahnaz went back to Shahnaz's hometown in Johor and my brother, Najmi is somewhere in KL. So we're pretty scattered all over. Being a close-knit family, this is not normal for us. It's kind of sad in a way to have Eid differently from what we used to have. But changes are sometimes inevitable. My wish is to have our families, from both sides nearby. That would be great  because we love to have all of you here or we could visit you guys :-)

Mushroom and onion quiche for breakfast, back to normal breakfast time. During Ramadhan, we have to get up super early in the morning to have our Sahur before fasting time starts at dawn. In summer, it could be as early as 3.30am. But towards the end of the fasting month, it is more forgiving, the last morning of Ramadhan we got up at 4.30am.

Dinner was the highlight of the day. We decided to wear our traditional outfit to put us in a more festive mood. Ezzat lost his front tooth later that night. Poor boy already had a hard time eating during dinner.

Our dinner - beriyani rice, tandoori chicken, cucumber raita, cucumber and onion chutney, dhal curry and fruit salad.

Cheesecake as dessert. I accidentally baked this 30 minutes longer than I should. But it turned pretty good fortunately.

Have a great weekend everyone!

First Day of School

First day of school was great. The boys love their school and their teachers. We went to the 'Back to School Night' the day before to drop off their school supplies and to meet their teachers and to get them familiarize with the school and that helped a lot. We decided to put them back in their previous grades as they only attended 6 months of school in Hawaii and they still have a lot of catching up to do especially with their English. I think it's better that way since I believe having a strong firm foundation is way more important. And they get to ride the bus to school! I was pretty nervous about it since it's their first time but it turned out to be just fine. The bus stops right in front of our place so the boys do not have to cross the road. And I don't have to rush every school morning :-). To a great school year!

Washington, finally...

We've been pretty busy. School has started 5 days ago, our household goods have finally arrived , lots of unpacking to do and the house is still in a wreck. We decided to just chill out at home today since it's been raining since morning. I'm loving it actually. And right now, I'm going to do a bit of blogging since I've been lagging with it. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend everyone!

July 11, 2010 

Pretty flowers greeted us in the morning at the motel we stayed. We arrived in Tacoma really late at night and everybody was super exhausted by the time we hit the  bed. But came morning, we're all up and pumped to get on with our summer adventure.

We've arrived at the base! It' so green here. There are a couple of parks and trails and a little lake nearby to fish. The commissary is so so, it doesn't really carry a lot Asian stuff like the one in Hawaii, and we thought the price of groceries would be cheaper here but not so much. 

This was taken from the car so it doesn't really do justice to the place. It's a quaint little town called Poulsbo nearby our place. It's known as 'Little Norway' due to it's Norwegian heritage. We've only stopped here twice, once to get some doughnuts (the maple glazed is great by the way) and the other time was to have lunch. I need to explore this place more. By exploring, for me it means to go to every single place and store to check them out and this is one of  the items in my to do list that have not been checked yet. It would be great to have friends to go with but I haven't found any. Judging by experience, DH and the boys are really not up to it, but I could be wrong.