Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Washington: the Adventure!

Currently I am sitting in a big hotel room bed, downtown Vancouver at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center. Oh! The joy. Paul is chaperoning some students for a Model United Nations Downtown and as such gets a hotel room downtown - so here we are - downtowning it up! He's got responsibilities with the students, but I don't! We get a nice mix of him working (alone time for me!) and him not working (together time!). It's perfect.


Anyways, one of my goals is to catch up on some blogging -  I have photos to edit and stories to share. So here is the first one! 

Paul was on Spring Break with his job so he had two weeks off recently. He spent the first week doing stuff around the house, and the following week, we headed off after I finished work Tuesday to enjoy some Spring Breaking. We headed on the road with a bag full of snacks and our car loaded up - off to the border!

Our first stop was Lake Stevens to visit some of Paul's family, the Swansons. I hadn't been to Lake Stevens since I was like 17 visiting friends. It's beautiful. And classically American. Perfect American High School, great houses with American Flags hanging outside and rows of cute little houses.



The Swansons have the cutest little woodsy house - comfy, homey and so comfortable. The Swansons are related to Paul through his Dad's side. Great Aunt Jenny (last name Jealouse) is Paul's Nanna's Uncle's Wife (phew), and Connie is her daughter. Connie is married to Barry, and they have three kids: Amanda, Steven and Christopher. Amanda is in Japan, but Steven and Christopher were around to see us. We had dinner all together (with Aunt Jenny too!) and hung out for the evening. We stayed with Aunt Jenny in the sweetest little cape cod, decked out like a Museum. She collects the coolest things!





In the morning we had a lovely breakfast and conversation over breakfast. We chatted and made future plans to hang out, it was lovely. We took a group photo, and then Paul and I headed off towards Puyallup, via World Market in Lynnwood.






After a great World Market trip (even Paul was happy!) we headed off to Puyallup to visit our friends Mark and Heather (and their kids Jonah and Maddie, and new cat Sam) and see their new house! We loved it - sweet new house on the border of Sumner - I am so so so very happy for them. They have been in apartments all over the area and finally have a home to settle in. We spent a lovely day with them - pizza lunch, school runs for Jonah, Fajita dinner, play time with the kids and a relaxing movie time watching "What to expect when you're expecting". Paul and I have seen it many times but it was a first for Heather and Mark and they loved it. It was a good choice.


Maddie and Jonah trying to pet the cat which was trying to hide under a sleeping Paul

Madeline, Heather and I

Thursday we left around noon (after a great breakfast and morning with the Fosters) to head to downtown  Seattle for a bike ride and some sightseeing. We had a LOVELY time. We swung through Pike Place - grabbing some beautiful apples and fruit rolls, then left the market area to follow a bike route - we ended up on Elliot Bay Bike Route - cycling past the Space Needle and through some great neighbourhoods.
























Eventually we made our way back by bike to where our car was parked - we'd left it at Rancho Bravo Taco's - one of our favorite Mexican joints. We popped in to have a tasty lunch and man we were happy - the Toquitoes there never disappoint.




After that we were off towards Renton, we swung by American Ikea (so good!) then continued further into Renton - we were staying with our friends Rebekah and Tony, which is always a real treat. This was my first time staying with them as couples - when Rebekah was single I'd go down and stay with her regularly, so it was fun to do so with the boys around. And even more fun to see her now that she's Pregnant! I'm so happy for them. They will make wonderful parents. We had a great time with the Rivisto's; lots of conversation and debate and great time together. We laughed a lot and had some really great discussions.

We headed out mid day Friday to head towards home - we did our shopping along the way (picked up tons of groceries and more) and managed to get home with everything we needed to pick up by midnight! Not bad with border waits and all - we stayed up until 2am unpacking and tidying so that the next morning we could just sleep in. Lovely.

All in all it was a wonderful trip - we had time just together, time with friends, time to be productive and time to sightsee. It was lovely.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...