Sleepless in Seattle

We had a blast last week in Seattle. It was a whirl wind of events but it was fantastic! We saw old friends, did the tourist things and hung out with family. Stephen celebrated his 4th birthday, Scott grew up, and we survived the hours in the airplane! It was great. Now we are ready to take on the vacation to Hawaii...(hint, hint, Honey!) We started out at 3:15 in the morning heading with tired kids to the airport. Thanks Granddad for dropping us off and picking us up at strange hours of the night! They slept most of the plane rides with our stops in Chicago. Peter and Stephen flew United and Scott and I flew Southwest. When we got to Seattle, we spent the day with Peter's Dad and sister.

On Saturday, we headed up to Sequim and Port Angeles to visit friends from Texas and life long friends of Peter's. First we took a ferry across the water to shorten our drive. We had lunch with Alice and Duane Harper and visited their new home. Then we headed on to our friends from San Antonio who recently moved up to Washington. Dave and Mariam have a lovely home and we just seemed to take up where we left off 3 years ago. God is great in that we can have great friends, not see them and then start where we left off. We look forward to their visit to our place...

Sunday Peter's Dad took us to a train expo. It was fun for the kids and Stephen now has even more interest in trains. Scott loved to watch the trains too and I have to say that I was amazed at the amount of time and effort people put into these scenes. Now we might just have a train track circling the top of the wall in the basement.... (we'll see...)

Monday we decided to go to the Woodland Park Zoo. When we got there we decided to buy the CityPass and go to as many things as we could. The zoo was great. We got to see elk and a few other species of animals that the National Zoo doesn't have like giraffes. Stephen's favorite was the zebra and Scott liked the elephants the best until we got back to the front and there was a peacock strutting around and Scott could get really close to it.

We also went and saw the Fremont Troll while we were in Seattle.

Tuesday we went to the Seattle Aquarium which was neat. It was different than I thought it would be. The boys watched a talk with divers because they were intregued that Daddy does that. The aquarium is home to many northwestern fish so we were able to see the sea life of the area. They also have an otter breading area and the little guys were fun to watch. The biggest section though was given to the salmon. They have a breeding thing for them too and it was neat to see. After the aquarium we went on a harbor cruise. Stephen thought going on the boat was cool and I thought the views of the city were fantastic. In between the cruise and aquarium, we went to Pike Place Market for lunch. They were still able to throw fish even though PITA filed a lawsuit against them for "disgracing the dead fish." I sure am glad that they lost that battle.

Wednesday was Stephen's 4th birthday. We went to the Music and Science Fiction Museum, Space Needle, Pacific Science Center and I MAX, and Rainforest Cafe' for dinner. It was a great day. Stephen loved the science center- there they were able to touch and play with everything. Stephen found a sound room were he could bang on different size metal bowls and loved the racket! He also enjoyed the dinosaurs and the cartoon drawing area. We saw elephants in the IMAX and it was really neat. He also loved going up in the Space Needle so much that he wanted to go back again.

Thursday, also known as Thanksgiving Day, we went and spent the day at Peter's Dad's house with him and his sister and her two boys. The kids all got along well for the most part. Stephen loved being with his cousins and hopefully we will be able to see them a little more often. I was glad that the kids were able to meet some of Daddy's family.

Now that you've read all we did, you can understand why I needed a break before writing this. We needed catch up time and sleep!! Back to normal schedules this week has helped but we will still have more to come. Tis the season!!