Invasion from the East Coast!

So we had the pleasure of hosting my sister (Lisa), brother-in-law (Jarrett), nephew (Jeffrey) and cousin (Andrea) over the past week. Our nephew, Jeffrey, is 15 months old and is very mobile. Thus, we had to do some serious childproofing of the house. This required getting safety gates, cabinet locks, protecting the breakables and the electronics and generally moving anything that is within reach of Jeffrey out of sight. Fortunately we have a bunch of friends with kids who loaned us a ton of stuff that made life easier for everyone so thanks to GinaMarie, Kam/Doug, Robyn/Chris, Jill/Dave and Gure/Jim. Our house was overrun with toys and bottles, which was amusing for our friends to see.

The only downside of the visit was the trip we had to make to Children's Hospital because Jeffrey was having some issues, which ended up being the croup. Poor little dude. He was such a trooper and fortunately recovered to check out sites like the Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium, Safeco Field (unfortunately the Mariners lost in 15 innings when they had to use a catcher to pitch), Kerry Park, Lake Union, Green Lake and Thursday Night Regatta (off of the pier by the Waterfront Seafood Grill). Jeffrey also has some new friends on the West Coast – Xavier, Eneko and Nolan, so hopefully that'll entice the Behar clan to come back and visit soon. You can see pictures here, but I've also included one of my favorites in the post itself.

We cooked some great food, including my seared salmon with roasted corn and shitakes recipe, and of course, had some excellent wine and cheese (the Sottocenere al Tartufo was a huge hit).

On a more comical note, I sometimes refer to Jarrett as "JB", so I've started referring to Jeffrey as "lil'JB". As we were getting closer to the visit, I would update my status in relation to "lil' JB" arriving on my Instant Messenger status or my Facebook status. Well this led to some interesting questions from folks asking me if there was some news that I was holding back on being that my initials are now "JB". Hmmm…. Should have foreseen that happening. Nice one, Jill.

Good times for all though and that's what counts.