pnw roadtrip | seattle, and north.

the gift of washington: coffee on every corner, bundling baby for strolls on dark mornings, buttermilk old fashioned doughnuts, friends-in-the-next-room sounds, in-the-forest sounds, a bagful of paperbacks to carry home to new york, four years together toasted with a shared slice of candied raspberry cake, mostly grey days just what we needed, looking-listening-feeling, listening for long bits of time, a gathered bouquet of inspiration for our own daily rhythms, sight of a papa's fingers buttoning his boy's sweater on a ferry boat ride, baby's first. 

favorites of seattle:

+ top pot doughnuts

+ baked eggs and muhammara toast at the london plane (a restaurant-bakery-flowershop-dream)

+ eggs, biscuits, and thick coffees at oddfellows cafe

+ elliott bay book co. (just how i have always imagined a bookshop to be)

+ ferry boat ride to bainbridge island 

and of course, hours and hours, spread over days and days, poking around pike place market, watching tosses of fish and sharing cream-filled pastries from piroshky piroshky and lemon curd greek yogurt from ellenos. there was no line, so we ducked into the very first starbucks. bucketfuls of dahlias made my heart beat fast; they are one of millions of things that bring me joy, and there they cost one dollar a stem. what a dream.

pnw roadtrip | cannon beach + arcadia beach.

again and again these ten months, and even before he was earthside, sweet francis has revealed to us his spirit of adventure. he travels the very way he meets his days: jolly, curious, content, free. wherever he is, he is happy to be there. funnily, he adjusted to west coast time with no struggle; it was the close of daylight savings that very same weekend that turned him topsy-turvy. i thank him for being the reason we saw that much more: in the hour before dawn, he'd stir, we'd rise, and off we'd go, falling in love with someplace new.

like when we bundled into the car when it was still dark, made a stop by voodoo doughnuts (the lone spot open at that hour), wended through forests of olive and ochre and rust, and zoomed toward the sea. the heartbeat of my wish to drive oregon was a photograph i once saw of cannon beach. haystack rising from the sea looked like magic to me, and, oh, how it was. it really was. she stood sentinel in low tide as we filled our hands with seafoam shells and filled our lungs with cedar and spruce and fog. it was just us, belonging to the quiet world around us. we took so many deep breaths that day.