A One Nation Sunday

Posted on October 3, 2010 by petra


A One Nation demonstration is happening on 2nd Ave. The girls are watching folks congregate in the street and tell me that there are a buses driving up 1st Ave bringing more people to the rally. Then as quickly as it appeared, it vanishes. Not a sole on 2nd Ave…no people and no cars.

Time for us to go. We’re heading over to the first gymnastics meet of the season. Simone is uncertain about it. She says she can’t remember her routine and doesn’t want to go. I pack everyone into the van and say we might as well drive over there and root for the rest of her team.

Turned out just fine. In fact, as we were walking out, Simone said, “I want to do that again. It was awesome.”

It was Naomi’s turn to pick whether we head to a playground or to a fashion show some friends are involved in. Naomi chose the Harbor Steps fountain and a trip to the Seattle Art Museum.

The feet of SAM’s Hammering Man

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Instead of Driver’s Education, Children attend Biker’s Education

Posted on October 1, 2010 by petra

Just read on Truth-out that in both Utrecht and Copenhagen Driver’s Education has been replaced with Biker’s Education. In the 3rd and 9th grade, kids learn cyclist traffic laws, bike etiquette, agility on two wheels and safe ways to commute.

In the picture above Simone might be doing a bit more singing then pedaling? This is the new riding equipment we picked up on the search for an interesting reptile. Somehow the reptile search did not result in a reptile pet but we did stumble upon horses and acquire this handy trail along at a garage sale. Inside the yellow sidecar, Naomi is out cold. The nap is warranted as we are at the Magnolia Seafair parade and took full advantage of the pony rides, little train and inflatables.

If you like to ride with your kids as much as David and I do, then jump onto the kidical mass website created by Dr. Julian Davies. Julian is dad to Drew and Luc, wife to Kimberly Hartley, pediatrician to Naomi. AND he has a sideline. He orchestrates wildly fun family rides throughout the year and delivers a comprehensive overview on family biking on his totycle website. Often these kidical mass rides start at Ballard Commons and head South along the canal to Gas Works park where a gelato bike, pizza bike and other goodies await. Below are images from some of those rides.

The yummy gelato bike is a Julian creation. Cute as a button with its zig zag trimmed shade.

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Hot Lava

Posted on September 27, 2010 by petra

Naomi at a play ground. ”There is red lava everywhere mom.”

“Big mountain here.”

“Stepped over the monster mom.”

“Made it!”

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Naomi at work

Posted on September 19, 2010 by petra

Naomi painting after-school. She is at her table next to my desk at Mad Cap. It is nice to be working together.

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Venture Capital Panel at Bell Harbor or "Due Diligence Live"

Posted on September 16, 2010 by petra

David Allen, Troy Hartzell, John Otter, Petra Franklin, Alan Smith, John Cook


This morning was a fun Venture Capital Panel at Bell Harbor Conference Center for ZINO. Six of us reviewed twenty companies competing for two $50,000 checks and about $400,000 more in follow-on investments. The twenty presenting companies ranged from sports equipment to software to real estate to an hydrokinetic turbine application for rivers.

Banshee Bungee
BedRock Hotels
BuiltBurger
Cloudpak
Daddy-O Productions, Inc.
Emergent Detection
Enroute Systems Corporation
FiatLux Imaging, Inc.
Flux Drive, Inc.
Harbor Wing Technologies
Hydrovolts
IMOS
Indie Vinos, Inc.
Mobile On Services
Moprise, Inc.
NanoICE, Inc.
Open Mobile Solutions, Inc.
Orbiter LLC
Vioguard LLC
Wine Valet, Inc.

And the winners were… Banshee Bungee and NanoIce. Exciting!

David Allen, Troy Hartzell, John Otter, Petra Franklin, Alan Smith

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Naomi & Annabel on their First Day at Evergreen School

Posted on September 8, 2010 by petra


Naomi is sitting on teacher Judith Hart’s left in a red shirt and ponytails. Next to her is Annabel in fuscia. This is the Pre-School class at Evergreen with Judith Hart and assistant teacher Melissa Norby. Simone had Judith back in 2008. Here is an older post where Simone’s PS class went fishing at Twin Ponds on crazy hair day. Judith often takes the class into the woods and on this first day of school they went to search for a fairy house in the woods and found one at the base of an old growth tree. They each left a present there. They’ll return in a few days and find pencils that the fairies left for them.


Simone and Naomi have been pals for a couple years. In 2009, they went to Global Gardens PreSchool every Thursday and Friday morning. Above is a picture of their last day there. It was June 17th, 2010.

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Claudette & Susan do Seattle

Posted on September 3, 2010 by petra

Claudette and Susan arrived in Seattle with a purpose.They wanted to visit the Sea Otters.

The Scuba diver has arrived to feed the fish in the giant window on Washington tank.

Each tank in the Seattle Aquarium has an upper viewing spot as well as a lower viewing window.

Skates and Sturgeon prowling the underwater dome.


Simone and Claudette watching the Skates and Sturgeons in the underwater dome.

In the Tuffed Puffins and Auklet house.

The divers talk via speakers to the kids and answer questions. We learned that the glass is about 12 inches thick.

The girls started to droop. David can still carry both of them!

Back to the tower for dinner and to hear about the Victoria trip.

Great catching up.

The girls were thrilled to give Susan a tour.

Susan and Claudette do the Experience Music Museum. What a space!

Shall we tape a music video? Lets call ourselves “Otter Wild.”


One of the fun things you can do at EMP is create a rock band and karaoke style, tape a song in front of a faux screen of an eager audience. Claudette on the keys, Simone on drums, Susan on guitar, David as lead singer and Naomi with me on back-up. It is set up so that you can’t actually hit the wrong notes.

Decided to “Ride the Duck” around town and into Lake Union.


After the ducky tour, Susan, Naomi and I went to see the Freemont Troll. He lives under the Aurora Bridge and holds a real Volkswagen bug in his hand.


At one point during our visit, we started talking about gardens and growing pumpkins. I shared that we had tried for three years to grow pumpkins on our office decks with no luck. Lots of flowers but no fruit. It dawned on her that our decks are 7 and 22 stories up and perhaps not frequented by pollinators. She suggested that Naomi and Simone try using a paint brush to pollenate.
Success. We have pumpkins and squash aplenty!

The Troll is great for climbers and geocachers.

Hurrah!.

Naomi – “I’m really big. Can you see?”

Dan Lahaie and family joined us for dinner at the tower on the second night.

Naomi, Billy, Brooke, Justin and Kristin chill on the couch while David, Claudette, Susan and Dan share family stories.

Simone sitting in the window with her bear watching the ferries come and go on the Sound.

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Boogie All Day Long

Posted on August 26, 2010 by petra

We’re in Santa Cruz visiting our good friends Kristin, Eric and Zoe.

Naomi and Simone headed down to the beach with a boogie board.

Learning the game.

Dolphins swam right behind Naomi and Simone and I caught one of their playful leaps.

As the Dolphins made their way up and down the shoreline, they stopped by again to visit.

Simone is on a sand crab search! Success!

Naomi getting the hang of it!

Uh oh! Buried by a wave.


A mouthful of sand too! This was the second time on this vacation that Naomi found herself chopping on grit. About a week before, when leaping off the monstrous dunes on the Oregon Coast and rolling down the giant shifting hills, she bit the dust.


Simone deep into the work of creating a sand castle city. Each day we dressed the tops of our castles with sand crabs and then added seaweed to protect them from the hot sun.

Telling the ocean where to go with a tunnel system.

End of the day…

Back to the car.

Looking down at the sand castle city!

Another day lunching at Kelly’s French Bakery, one of our favorite spots, with Eric, Kristen and Zoe.

Stopping by the great whale skeleton!

What a great vacation!

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Monica, David, Sophie & Annabel come over.

Posted on August 15, 2010 by petra

Naomi is thrilled to see Annabel and Sophie!

Monica and David arrive!

Check out how we redid our room. -Simone to Sophie

Monica and I decide to take in the sunset from the globe.

Even after twelve years, I experience a tummy flip when I look down the dizzy slope of the pyramid. Are we spinning?


As we share our ambitions for Mad Cap, we enjoy the Puget Sound.
Mad Cap is the name we’ve given the new house Monica has rented and sublet to Debbie, Catherine and I. We are all Evergreen moms working on Internet projects and the house is a block from the school enabling us to work nearby, walk over at pick-up and then let the kids hang-out at the house while we cram in another hour or so of computer time. The name Mad Cap came from our initials.

The city is inspiring.

Sweet Annabel


The salad was particularly good. It was a mix of argula, mash and baby greens. Threw in some raspberries, spicy-sweet pecans, goat cheese and a splash of raspberry wasabi dressing. Even the kids liked it.

It was juicy.

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Seattle Center …our extended yard…

Posted on August 14, 2010 by petra

We love playing in the fountain! Simone in blue, me in red.


On a hot day, this fountain is our favorite. We yell our hearts out at first trying not to get wet and then once drenched, we squeal with delight as we up the ante and try to tag the dome. Afterwards we enjoy the hot stone benches and summer sun.


More water to play with at the Science Museum.
Every now and then we have waited outside for the Science Museum to open and then found ourselves some of the last folks to be ushered out at the end of the day. We actually find that much to do there. (Of course we also clock hours at the Children’s Museum, EMP and the two fountains.)
There is a proposal for a Chihuly Museum at Seattle Center and we would LOVE that!

Kinesthetic fun.


There are a lot of buttons to push and just like the amazing guides at the Seattle Aquarium, there are these great scientists who hang out at the Science Museum and tell stories to Naomi (and everyone else) about the exhibits.

It is easy to enter but tricky to leave the hay-bale maze outside the fun house.


Naomi, “Mom, I’m a bad guy with a shooter thing charging through the forest on my super big horse.”
Where does she get this stuff? This is at the Bamboo forest near EMP.


If you look closely you will see Naomi and her new friend on the far right hanging out talking and to the left of them is Simone directing an ad hoc performance on the great whale outside of Key Arena.

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Baby Pia

Posted on August 9, 2010 by petra

Baby Pia

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Enjoy KT Niehoff’s “Relatively Real” from 2005

Posted on August 8, 2010 by petra

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rock n roll camp

Posted on August 6, 2010 by petra

Naomi and I logged serious hours at Seattle Center this week as Simone was in rock n roll camp at the Pacific Science Center and Experience Music Project.

Naomi running through the spears of bamboo. (I like how this picture makes me lean right just a bit.)


Naomi laid on the lobby floor and looked up at the ceiling of EMP at one point. She was hitting a boneless kind of tired only 3 years old get, BUT… she also liked the view.
Me too.


The museum is visually bombarding. Massive multi-media screens floating high and low,
tucked unexpectedly in a cornice or filling a massive wall. It is exciting. The Rec
Room (above) had a band practicing in it. Naomi and I watched for a bit and then
stepped outside into the hot blazing sun which suddenly felt very still.

The fuchsia surface rolling into the cerulean blue folds is something!

Earlier today we saw the blue angels and here Naomi is being a plane.

Naomi running and dancing as she waits for Simone to come out of camp.


Simone is here! She looks so grown up to me. Do anything new today?
“Yes! My group made a you tube video! Wait till you see it!”

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Deluged in Seattle

Posted on August 6, 2010 by petra

The fountain delivering its exhilarating deluge on a sweltering day. Look how empty the dome park is today. Right now Naomi nearly has the place to herself!

Just a bunch of lollygaggers at first.  Ho Hum.  I’ll just hang on this ledge and enjoy the Seattle Symphony music.  …but not for long…

The scene ramps up. Naomi is on the left with the big pink ball.

We’ve been coming here nearly every day this week. It starts like this.  We pretend we just need to quickly clean the peanut butter off our fingers and then we get caught up in the game of running back and forth to touch the cold wet metal of the giant dome and this ramps up into a game of backing away from the spray.  Utterly innate.  This is the one place where I get to join my girls and scream my head off.  Really fun!  One never knows when the giant fountain will amp up.  Getting soaked is the real thing.  What else delivers such a thrill!

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A Garage Sale detour enroute to the Reptile Zoo

Posted on August 1, 2010 by petra

Naomi was up quite late and so this morning Simone, Naomi and I (family meeting) decided to take a road trip. Naomi could get some zz’s, Simone could put some time into her workbooks and we could all check out the reptile zoo about an hour north of Seattle. On our way though Monroe, we stopped for gas and noticed this sign.

Simone made a new friend.

…and found some additions to our vast family game collection.

I am thrilled to discover a bike for $30 and a kid’s trail-along one-wheeler for $35.

We heard some whinnies and followed them.

Ah here is the happy gelding. We shared some of our lunch apples and then got back on the road.

Quite the unusual zoo. The 10 deadliest snakes in the world were inside.


The turtle on the right gave birth to the turtles below. They hatched about two weeks ago.

We wanted to take two home but they cost $140 each.


There was a beautiful Iguana for free as well as a couple chameleons. Alas, I opted to do another family meeting. Simone and Naomi talked about it and agreed that they need think the idea of an adoption and come back another time. I asked what led to that decision and Simone said, “I don’t want to clean up the Iguana poop and Naomi is too little to do it. Maybe when she is bigger we can get one.”




On the way home we stopped for a snack at Novelty Hill. The winery has lovely spaces to play in and good food.


When we got home David and the girls tried out the new trail-along! Awesome! Naomi is in the yellow side-car…and Simone is singing “Hey Sister Wister.” Her own made up song to the tune of Hey Sister.

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Occidental Market

Posted on July 31, 2010 by petra


On Saturdays there is a market in Occidental Square so we biked over with our paints and a few toys and set up camp. I had a delicious bowl of posole from Gran Central. The girls are painting letters. In the background there is a hoola hoop performer, a rock band on the stage and a unicycle rider.

Simone and Naomi play chess with David.


A treasure hunt team stops by. Seafair has a citywide treasure hunt today. I had a great time talking with these two about their adventure through the city. What a rush. Definitely want to do this next year!


Simone wants to have a stand here next week. We’ll have to figure out what she could sell. Lemonade and cookies just would not work as the Parfait and Dessert food vans already have those covered! Simone decides that she could sell plants or colorful kids t-shirt prayer flags.

The girls had enough change to get a marshmallow covered with dark chocolate on a stick.

Then to the wooden boat museum.

Looking out at the dock from upstairs in the little museum.

Simone wants to take this bicycle boat out.

Fun.

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Ballard Commons

Posted on July 29, 2010 by petra

No boarders were in the skate park so Simone used it as a slide and had a great time. Climbing out is not easy. She had to take a running jump to catch the lip of the bowl and then she had to pull her body out.

whoo hooo! Naomi is having a blast exploring what she can do with her bike.

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Mama Mia

Posted on July 20, 2010 by petra

Just in from David Stephenson:
A snap from the Mama Mia Broadway Bound camp that Simone (pink flowers), Claire (blue flowers), Sophie and Evelyn were in this week. It was a TON of fun.

”Here I go again…My My…How can I forget you.”

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Circumnavigating 100 feet from home court

Posted on July 19, 2010 by petra

Pausing to enjoy the adventure of life in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Simone and Naomi love the rush of “urbanity and motormania” that hits you as you step out the giant doors of our building.

Returning from a spin around Occidental Square.


Simone has her bull and treasure chest in the basket as she circles around the Chinese Room deck. She is looking at the Muckleshoot fishing vessels that are pouring into the harbor for the opening of salmon season. The space needle is behind her.


Simone has a play-date with her good friends Lucy (cowhide) and Josie (closest to us). They had a great time climbing the firemen memorial in Occidental Square. I wish our neighborhood had a kids park with a jungle gym and swings. One day it surely will. Simone is hugging Misty (Meseret) who works in the Chinese Room of the Smith Tower. The girls often visit Misty when she is working to share the adventures of their day and show her their latest gymnastic tricks.

Simone and Naomi are making sure they have all their supplies before setting off.


We were so excited to find out that the Recess Monkeys were playing downstairs. Simone and Naomi love to dance to the Monkey’s tunes. The musicians, Jack, Daron and Andrew are wonderful teachers. Jack and Andrew are at UCDS and Daron is at Spruce Street. There new album is about s p a c e.

In the background is our dear friend Avery and her mama, Lauren with baby Pasha in the bjorn, just a few weeks old.

We talked the band and our friends into coming upstairs for lunch.


Resurfacing our street with a fresh batch of concrete. ”Some of our company’s flyash, blast furnace slag or aggregate could be in that batch.” – Petra ”What’s ‘a green ghost’?” – Simone ”Aggregate usually means to gather things together to make a whole of something, but in this case I was talking about another kind of aggregate and that one means little rocks that can be added into the concrete.” -Petra ”I can find you some little rocks for you.” – Simone

Checking out the big equipment in front of our building.

Urban expeditions start here.

David takes the girls on many cycling trips. He has a sidecar and a basket on his bike.

Naomi is coming home from a birthday party in the neighborhood.


Alex helps Naomi get her backpack on. Alex is the security guard in the evenings and the girls love to hang out with him in the lobby doing cartwheels and playing hide and seek. If he happens to catch us on the security monitor heading toward the building, he comes outside to welcome us in and the girls run ahead the minute they see him. ”Alex, Alex, We went… We saw…Would you believe….” – Simone and Naomi.

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