Welcome to our annual end-of-year post, in which we share photos from the year that weren’t already featured on the blog. These usually include photos from weekend trips, hikes, and general snapshots of life around Seattle.

We’ll start at the beginning of 2024. Winter in Washington is characterized by muted shades of white, gray, and green. The sun is usually obscured by clouds, but when it does come out, everything is bathed in a golden-hour glow from the low sun angle for quite a bit of the day. There’s an almost mandatory sense of relief and happiness when the winter sun is out in Seattle.

In March, we went with friends to eastern Washington for the Sandhill Crane Festival. Every spring, the sandhill cranes stop on their migration north and feed on the grain fields. The festival has lots of lectures about the birds, and also provides guided tours that are jointly hosted by someone involved with farming in the community and a biologist. On our tour, we rode a school bus to different farms to get a glimpse of the tall, awkward birds.

Of course, Jason found lots of other birds to take pictures of throughout the year as well.

Spring and summer in the Pacific Northwest are dramatically beautiful. The gray, rainy skies give way to sun, warmth, and brilliant colors.

Every year, we try to go to the Fremont Solstice Parade, which anyone can enter as long as their float is hand-built and unmotorized (they must be pulled by foot, bike, or similar). There are also no corporate sponsorships allowed, and it’s just generally a great time.

For Labor Day weekend, our friends Ross and Shannon came to visit and we drove up to Vancouver and spent some time on the mainland as well as Vancouver Island.

This is kind of a miscellaneous animals category from our visits to parks, the zoo, the Washington State Fair. and a friend’s animal rescue.

In October, we took a trip to Chicago with Jason’s family, where we had weirdly beautiful weather and had a great time walking, eating, taking the architecture tour, and hanging out.

I’ll close with a northern lights picture taken from our neighborhood - we missed the first big showing in 2024, but we were able to see some of the lights later in the year.

2024 had a mix of both local road trips and international excursions, but we’re always grateful to live in such a beautiful place where we can find peaceful, green nature within a few minutes of our house. 2025 isn’t fully planned yet, but we’re looking forward to seeing where it takes us.