My Sabbatical Project - Family

So last week ended up being a bit of a wash - on Tuesday I was about 3/4 way through organizing my closet and after enjoying an afternoon mocha came down with food poisoning! I don't think I fully recovered until Saturday night.

Sunday, I got up early and flew down to California to spend time with my brother, sister-n-law and super cute nephew Maxwell. Here's some photos from play time.

On Monday, we drove south of Lake Tahoe to Grover State Park and enjoyed a hike out to a waterfall. Max really liked his new carrier and I had fun scrambling around the boulders. It was so nice not being able to hear I-90 from the trail and it smelled amazing!

Today, we're off to a winery picnic followed by an afternoon at the spa - this is the good life :)

My Sabbatical Project - Gnocchi, Volunteering and Hiking

I've been on sabbatical for over an entire week now - still feels like I'm vacation and feels like it will all fly by and I'll be working again before I know it.

Biggest challenge I've run into is doing most things by myself - last week I was pretty antsy and out of sorts about it but it's getting better.

So a few things I've been up to - I had my birthday last week and Reilly made gnocchi from scratch - it was amazing - perfect texture and everything!

Thursday I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity down in Federal Way and helped lay sub floor, tape off windows and putty nail holes. I got to work with a wonderful group of other volunteers and will be heading back this week.

(Insert expletive here because the below pictures are the wrong orientation and I've wasted over 30 minutes trying to fix it - obviously blogger and picasa are completely unusable if I can't even figure it out - and yes I rotated and saved the actual files and tried uploading them multiple times as well - all to no avail - so you all get to get neck crooks now if I want to look at them - ending rant with expletive!!!)

So anyways - In preparation for my week long hike in the Alps at the end of August I've been trying to hike at least once a week. Sunday I hiked Little Si and then Monday I hiked Mount Si all by myself - I did the 4 miles and 3500 feet elevation gain in 1 hour and 48 minutes which I thought was a pretty darn good pace considering I thought it would take me 2 to 2.5 hours. Here are some pics from the Mount Si hike.

You can just make out Mount Rainier peaking above the darker mountains.

About to book a ticket down to visit my brother, sister-n-law and nephew's for next week and then off to start organizing my closets :)

My Sabbatical Project - Sewing

I just started a 5 month sabbatical from work and jumped right into a hobby I wanted to try out - sewing - while overall successful it definitely has had it's challenges!

Added a functional though not very well sewn pocket into my Sound Wave Band pants - I'll be testing this out on May 2nd's soccer game. I also sewed a pocket into another band members pants so we'll see how his does as well (and the sewing was prettier on his since I'm getting better!)

I also hemmed two pairs of pants and they turned out really well - I'm quite impressed with myself actually.

And finally I got some snuggle time with Gabby though she doesn't look as impressed...

Next sewing project is to hem some drapes after I get some different color thread.