October 25th, 2008

Clearly Fall has arrived in the Pacific Northwest.

One year after moving our family up here from L.A., we're reminded of one of our biggest reasons for relocating: 4 seasons...

Not the hotel, the actual seasons where things are supposed to look and feel different.

Southern California actually has four seasons, but they're all different varieties of Summer. And they're all a little bit brown.

As a kid when I watched holiday specials like The Great Pumpkin

or Charlie Brown Christmas,

I envied people (even cartoon people) who had orange leaves, or snow during the fall and winter. Yeah summer is great but after years it just blends together into blah. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there's always something to bitch about.

Now our neighborhood is filled with brilliant leaves in red, yellow, orange, and green. There's even some deep violets in there...

I never thought I'd care much about trees or leaves, but seriously this "seasons" thing is awesome. It really divides the year into memorable parts, and feelings. We love it up here.

So we decided to enjoy the fall colors even more by taking Elliot, Ross, Chris, and Jacqueline to the Japanese Tea Gardens at the Seattle Arboretum.

-Rob and Nicole

The Japanese tea garden looking south across the koi pond.

Another view of the koi pond.

Elliot takes a break from running around the miniature trees and manicured shrubs to pose with his dad.

Chris and Ross relax under one of the maple trees

The place seems a little magical... with the dappled light and jolts of color..

Elliot wanders the ocean of yellow leaves.

No flash needed here, Chris, Nicole, and Jacqueline are illuminated by the orange leaves.

One of the small Japanese houses in the garden.

I crawled under this small tree (and surely broke the tea garden code) to see these twisty branches. Luckily there were no samurai on patrol.

He stares at the koi fish... captivated. Later he did the sign for "fish" to everyone, and made sure we all took turns looking at them in the water.

Elliot inspects the leaves for insects.

"Can we bring a few bags of these leaves home to spread around the living room floor?"