the eelfang chronicles

What is all this? No, not a lot of clothes I’m going to sell on Craigslist. They’re the makings for all three of our Halloween costumes. And I’m particularly pleased because, not only is our idea rad, but we had about half of the stuff already, borrowed a few more, and then purchased the rest for under $16. (And the purchased items can be repurposed or donated back to Value Village.) Want to guess what we’re dressing up as? Two hints: that thing in the upper left is a wig; and our outfits are more spirit-of than to-the-letter… We’ll post pictures on the weekend.

Seth – 9 months from Eel Fang on Vimeo.

Music is the title track from Pass the Peas: The Best of the J.B.’s.

Movie includes the first time eating, first time on the beach, and film from the first week or two of walking. Also look for cameos from Todd’s mom and dad and from Seth’s cousin Annika.

A while ago, I ran across the idea of Soup Swaps. Here’s the deal:

1. Make six quarts of soup (soup without potatoes and non-cream-based works best)
2. Show up at the event, and bring the soup in six containers that you don’t mind giving away
3. Swap the soup! At the end of the night, you’ll have six containers of other peoples’ soup to take home, freeze, and eat!

Last night, we hosted our very first swap, and it was so much fun! We ran the swapping like a fantasy draft (i.e., drawing the picking order at random, round one people pick in order, then every other round people pick in reverse order), and it worked quite well. Though really, all the soups looked and sounded so fantastic, I would have been happy with any method of swapping. A few people got really creative and brought muffins, home-fried tortillas and chile paste to accompany their soups.

If I had to do it over again–and we probably will!–I might try either lessening the quantity of soup to make to, say, 4 quarts. Either that, or leave the quantity up to the individual, and then they get to get back as much soup as they brought. Then again, it was cool to see 54 quarts of soup sitting on our kitchen table all at once. It also ended up being the perfect night for the swap because today is the first really cold day of Fall, and I enjoyed a tasty bowl of homemade (but not by me!) chicken dumpling soup for lunch, and have a freezer full of five more varieties! Yum!

I’ll be posting the recipes here so they’re easy to refer to.

Last Friday marked Todd’s and my five year anniversary! We celebrated on Saturday with a fatty breakfast (donuts, bacon, eggs, fruit, coffee), and a family walk. In the afternoon, Grandma and Papa V came down to take care of Seth so we could go out on a date. This was the first time Todd and I have spent outside the house by ourselves, without Seth, and not working. And oh! it felt so nice. We went to the Locks and watched a few boats get put through, and then window-shopped around downtown Ballard. Then we had a lovely dinner at La Carta de Oaxaca (actually, the food itself was a little hit or miss [their Mole Negro, though: major hit!], but a leisurely meal by ourselves for the first time in 9 1/2 months? Awwwwesome). After dinner, we came back home and the five of us went out for ice cream at Full Tilt. Such a nice day!

Here we are tying the knot:

And here’s our happy family, five years later:

Happy anniversary, Ddot!
I still do.
And I always will.