Washington

We spent last week visiting Troy's parents in Yakima, WA. Troy led a personality conference called Living on Purpose and then he preached at his dad's church on Sunday. On Tuesday, we spent the day in Seattle. When we flew into Seattle last week, the colors were so spectacular out the airplane window that it looked fake. We get an authentic autumn here in Utah and the colors are beautiful, but Seattle looked like something out of a fantasy film.

This was actually taken in Yakima, where the colors were equally as stunning.

Troy has two sisters in Oregon and they both drove up with their families to visit us. The boys had a blast playing with their cousins.

When we got to Seattle, we stopped at the Space Needle first.

I don't remember it costing an arm and a leg to go up either of the two previous times I've been in Seattle but, apparently, it does. We decided that since Troy had been up in the needle countless times, I would take the boys up and save us almost twenty bucks. I'm glad we decided to take the boys up though because they really enjoyed it.

We rode the monorail and went to Pike's Place Market. Matthew, who was actually the size of this fish, refused to get anywhere near it. So, apparently, we can add "dead fish" to his list of things to be terrified of.

We watched them throw fish. If you look closely, in the center of this shot, you'll see one flying.

We had clam chowder at Ivar's down on the water and it was delicious. Troy also bought a tray of shrimp and fries for all of us to split. We should have known better because Garrett, the seafood lover, probably ate three quarters of the shrimp by himself. And that was after he'd consumed a large portion of chowder. Even Matthew will eat his body weight in chowder and shrimp. Maybe we should move to some fishing village in Alaska. We'd all be very happy with the cuisine.

After we had lunch, we caught the ferry to Bainbridge Island.

And I decided that I want to live somewhere that involves taking a ferry to get home.

Except it would probably get old really fast.

And also, I would prefer this place to be somewhere tropical so that I don't have to borrow my mother-in-law's thick winter jacket during the first week of November. Does a place like that exist?

The boys loved taking the ferry. The guy in the shot with my mother-in-law and Matthew was wearing a Chargers sweatshirt. We didn't talk about it but I assume he is feeling my misery this season. You can tell by the look on his face, no? He's thinking, "Fire Norv. Fire Norv. Fire Norv."

Bainbridge Island is beautiful. We didn't have a car so we pretty much rode the ferry and then turned around and rode it again but the homes as we approached the island were stunning.

Troy does this thing. He aims the camera at me and snaps my picture for no good reason. There's no cute kid in the shot. There's not even a particularly great background. But he takes the shot anyway. Typically I look at him like, "Why the heck are you taking my picture for no good reason, Pal?" And this is what he gets.  Nineteen times out of twenty I delete them immediately. I'm putting this one here because I wonder if there is rehab for people who take ridiculous pictures of their wives. If so, can someone recommend a good program for him? I mean, look at it. It's terrible. He needs help. Also, those forehead wrinkles are going to be a serious problem in approximately ten years.

Bainbridge looks like a New England beach city. It looks sleepy and beautiful and wonderful. It could be horrible, I don't really know but I kind of want to move there. Minus the freezing.

My boys are cute. Enough said.

When we got back to Seattle, we took the monorail back up to our hotel by the Space Needle and we drove up to Seattle Pacific University to look around.

That night, Troy took me out to dinner and my in-laws kept the boys. We proved that we are total party animals by eating and then dashing back to the hotel to watch the election results. We fell asleep ridiculously early.

The next day we headed to the airport where we discovered that we would be sharing a flight with the Seattle Sounders. Garrett said, "Should I tell them I like Real Salt Lake?" We informed him that that might not be the best thing he could say. The boys and I approached two of them and Garrett asked if he could get a picture with them. Being that we're not actually Sounders fans, we had no idea if we were asking good players, less good players, or water boys. Although, I was pretty sure they didn't look like water boys. Turns out, both of these guys are pretty good. 

We let Garrett stay up last night and watch the game and he was really conflicted. He kept saying that he wanted Real Salt Lake to win but when the Sounders scored he cheered. Then he was happy when they won. So, I think he's completely confused. He's pretty proud of the fact that he has a picture with professional soccer players, in any case.

Finally, Troy took this picture of Mt. Rainier when we were headed home.

We had a great trip and enjoyed our time in Washington.