Foto Phriday - 9/25/15

This is my one hundred and seventh Foto Phriday post. I'm sorry for letting my blogging slip a lot. My excuse, as always, is that we have been plagued with a common disease called "busy." The biggest news since the last time I posted was that we have moved to a new house. I'd like to give the story of that its own blog post, so we'll see if that actually happens. Summer this year in the Seattle area has been one of the warmest and sunniest that I can ever remember. Here are only some of the things we've been up to. The pictures today are from Bainbridge Island, CouchCon, Lake Wilderness Park, blueberry picking, and PAX. Full set with all 137 photos can be viewed here.

Took these munchkins out to Bainbridge Island on the ferry back in May.

The ferry ride is still one of my top recommendations for visitors in Seattle because it gives you an affordable, great view from the Puget Sound, and Bainbridge is a fun little area to walk around.

We had lunch at Soup'r Burger, which is a fun place with average burgers. Dessert was at Mora Iced Creamery because no trip to the B.I. is complete without having the best ice cream in the world. Then we hit the beach while waiting for the next ferry.

The ferry coming into Bainbridge Island.

Seaweed hanging on a wood post.

The kiddos had a good time on the beach.

Both families too home lots of rocks and seashells. Coral was camera shy.

I don't think I've ever talked about CouchCon on here, so now is a good time. I am part of a group of guys who hold a new bi-annual event called The Great Couch Con. It's a convention that focuses mainly on local multiplayer video games. Basically the way things used to be before online and LANs existed.

We play a healthy mix of competitive and co-op multiplayer games, which range from 2 to 8 players. We hold the event at AFK Elixirs & Eatery, which is a fun nerdy restaurant with good food and great drinks. It's a really fun atmosphere. Anyone is welcome to come check it out. Our next event is November 6th!

We went to the Kid's Festival in Maple Valley at Lake Wilderness Park, which was a lot of fun.

There was a lot to do including building wood airplanes, playing on inflatable water slides, and a big candy cannon, as seen in this picture.

We made it out to the blueberry fields in Bellevue again at Larsen Lake. Always a lot of fun to pick blueberries here.

The blueberries came in pretty early this year due to the warm weather. By the way, we also have a couple blueberry bushes at our new house. =)

Coral has been doing well, but had a little phase of going to bed poorly. She seems to be back on track now and is a pretty happy child.

Bethany and I are doing great. We celebrated our 10-year anniversary on July 30th. Our gift to ourselves was the new house.

Juliana started second grade at her new elementary school in Maple Valley and she is loving it. We like it, too. She's currently into Pokemon and Minecraft.

Work has been going good for me. I've been involved with a lot of the upgrades to our facility and I'm learning new things all the time.

PAX is always one of my favorite events of the year and this year's was great. Microsoft holds a Pre-PAX open house party before the con actually starts, which is convenient because it's practically right across the street.

Basically, Microsoft invites a bunch of the indie developers making games for Xbox to come demo their games. They bus people out from the Convention Center in Seattle to the Redmond campus for this. It's a great opportunity to try out stuff that's around the corner for Xbox.

Cuphead was there taking pictures with folks. His game comes out sometime in 2016 and it looks really unique. They mixed side-scrolling platform boss fights with the look of old technicolor cartoons from the 1930s.

One of my top three favorite games that I demoed at all of PAX was Knight Squad. It's stupidly simplistic, but very tense for an 8-player competitive game. I'm hoping to get it into CouchCon.

I attended PAX for two out of the four days they put on the con. On Saturday, my main goal was to see popular YouTube gamer PewDiePie. If you don't know, PewDiePie has the most subscribed channel on YouTube and has over 10 billion views. He's funny, he plays games... I like him.

Well, not only did I get to see him, but I actually got to have a small chat and get my picture with him. Super nice guy and really appreciative of all the fans. I also got a video of getting a brofist from him and had him record a video for Bethany since she likes the Pewds, too.

I also saw Felicia Day.

Ran into a couple of the guys who work at /Film, Dave Chen and founder Peter Sciretta. Told Peter that I've been a loyal reader since he used to create those clickbait Photoshop images.

Dark Souls III had one of the coolest displays I've ever seen at PAX. There was black blood shooting up from the sword wound.

Still get a kick at all the folks who watch these tournaments.

Twitch had a good booth again. The game being played there is Gang Beasts, which was super popular at the whole con. May see that at CouchCon.

Minecraft: Story Mode was super popular. Not sure how good an episodic version of Minecraft can be, but I'll look at the reviews.

This is the most elaborate display I've ever seen them do at PAX. So cool how they incorporated parts of the street and building.

Juliana on her first day of school.

These two crack me up with their forced smiles. To see more pictures from all of these events, view the full set.