Thesis Cakes

After nearly 12 years away from the Pacific Northwest, Aaron, Ansel, Sadie, and I are packing up and moving to Tacoma, Washington!

We are saying, “Hello City of Destiny! We are your people now!” Cradle us in your Dale Chihuly and your pho restaurants and your grittiness and your Almond Roca!

Smother us with the aroma of Tacoma! Let us bask in the glory of the Tacoma Dome!

We are moving to the city where Bing Crosby was born! To the city where I was born! The city where Ted Bundy grew up!

We decided to move back for a bunch of reasons, but the primary one was to be closer to our family and friends. We have been moving around the Midwest and the South since leaving Oregon in 2005. It’s been incredible to live in and learn from such diverse places and people in the U.S. – and particularly in places that I NEVER thought I would live in (cough, Greencastle, Indiana).

And we’ve accumulated three graduate degrees and a bunch of job experiences. As well as a dog from North Carolina and a baby from Ohio.

But we haven’t been able to resist the pull from the upper left-hand corner of this country. Maybe Ramtha is right and we are being cosmically pulled toward Mt. Rainier?

Maybe we can attend Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment!

Whatever the reason, we are coming. We are on our way NEXT WEEK.

And I am procrastinating all of the packing we need to do by making Tacoma Dome cupcakes! (And some experimental Almond Roca cupcakes which are only featured at the end because they were a bit of a disaster).

And we also bought a house in Tacoma. It’s cute and it has a massive laundry list of work that needs to be done. Apparently it will also be in walking distance of a Top Pot Doughnut place and Ansel’s new daycare, so I feel pretty much set.

While going back to the northwest feels really right and exciting, it also feels like a crazy leap off a cliff. I will continue as a telecommuter in my job, but Aaron will be exploring job opportunities in the area. That part feels anxious-making.

But if some dude can free hand up El Capitan, I figure that we should just ditch fear and go for it.

Aaron was offered another year teaching history here at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He really loved his job and the university and all of the faculty, but we’ve been talking about moving back to the PNW for *years* and felt that we just had to make it happen. Life is too short to be so far away from our loved ones for far too long.

Life is also too short to be so far away from mountains, beaches, cedars, fresh salmon, oysters, weirdos of the NW, and kitschy coffee stands. And rain. Oh man do I love me some rain.

So even though there is likely going to be a major earthquake in the near-ish future, we are coming. I’m sorry, Ohio, I love you, I really do! I just couldn’t bear Ansel to gain enough consciousness while in Ohio to begin to consider himself a buckeye.

Please hold us in our hearts as we make this big move. We’re going to need all of the positive energy we can get!

Extra: Below are the experimental Almond Roca cupcakes I made. (Almond Roca is from Tacoma, WA). I just stuck one piece of Almond Roca in a couple cupcakes before I baked them in the oven. And then I frosted them as normal and used crushed Almond Roca for a garnish. I thought that potentially the Almond Roca inside the cupcakes would have some kind of melty or chewy texture, but instead they were just further hardened. The cupcakes looked good though!