Labor Day in Seattle

As you might have noticed with last year's Labor Day Camping post, we have spent almost every Labor Day weekend in recent years with our good friends Brian and Alexa (also known as Alexa and Bee!). This year we decided to forfeit the camping, since it's usually rainy up here by that time of year, and just spent the long weekend hanging out in Seattle. We drove up there late Friday night, which left Saturday morning for Alton to play with Lego trains.

Woohoo!

Saturday night Brian and Alexa insisted on taking Andy out for a birthday dinner, for which pizza was a natural choice. Pizza and beer, walking distance from Alexa and B's house. What could be better?

When you sit down, they give children a little wad of dough to play with at the table. Alton has his doughball and his monster truck in his two hands.

Fun dinner with friends.

The pizza came, and the little dude wasted no time in chowing down!

His "cheeeeeeese" face.

On the walk home, we passed by a bicycle store and Alton was captivated.

Our group walking home; Alton of course holding his best friend B's hand.

The whole way.

The next day, Andy and Brian spent some time on handyman projects...

while Alexa and I took Alton on a long walk down to a West Seattle crossroads where the Farmer's Market is held. We perused produce of all kinds, bought some strawberries (guess who ate those?)...

and some super-sharp gouda, then headed home by way of Bakery Nouveau, the delicious new French bakery in their neighborhood. Mmm, pastries. We prepped for a delectable dinner, with our fun new challenge being potato gnocchi from scratch.
Brian and Alexa also joined a CSA this summer, and so with our combined abundance of farm fresh veggies, we had all the ingredients for a top-rate dinner. We had both ended up with a plethora of potatoes, so in addition to the gnocchi on the menu, we also grilled veggies like zucchini, onions and corn. And a beautiful setting in which to eat it!

We gave Alton some mac 'n cheese ahead of time because we thought dinner would be too late for him to eat, but in retrospect I'm sorry we did: I made the gnocchi at home again a week later, and Alton was wolfing it down and asking for more, more, more.

A great weekend with fun friends! One of the smaller tokens I gave to Andy for his birthday was an app for his iPhone, which lets you give a retro, aged look to the photos you take. He was still playing with it and figuring it out over Labor Day weekend, and here are a few of the photos he snapped.
Alton at the breakfast table.

KT, likewise.

The Mini, with roof box on top for the first time!