Sunday, December 5, 2010

Vacation

Yes, I was on a “vacation” to Tacoma, so I have been negligent of the blog. And I have to say, when I am on Ravelry, for example, and there is a link to someone’s blog, and then they haven’t posted for a while-really ticks me off.

Anyway, on Nov 22nd, Dave and I took off for Seattle. There was talk of a snowstorm in Seattle, and I tried to tell Dave that in Seattle, if the going gets tough, the tough abandon their cars and run away. What a doubter he was.

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We got to the airport at oh dark thirty and this is what it looked like.

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Seriously. I love an empty airport. I got the whole body scan too, but alas, no pat down. Dave was really looking forward to the pat down but he just got the regular metal detector. Hmmm.

We flew out without a hitch-

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At the very end of the flight I discovered that the little TV in the seatback in front of me also had a moving map-dang if I wouldn’t have watched that thing throughout the whole flight.

DSC00148 Can you see the little airplane? We are almost there! (This might be a picture you want to click on to make bigger-it is really quite cool)

And when we arrived and started driving-this is what happened

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People-are we in Minnesota or what? It actually wasn’t like this the whole way, only about the last 10 or so miles. But we arrived unscathed physically. Mentally I was a little on edge. It stopped snowing long enough to get to Safeway. Yep. Thank God for the Safeway. I spend so much time there on vacation, yet I have no pictures of the place. Next year.

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Here’s the back yard. There was quite a bit of snow. The Seattle/Tacoma area does not do well with snow.

This sort of says it all-except I really like this one too-

-especially at the end when the car smashes into the cars at the bottom of the hill. Truly awe inspiring. Why people were going up and down this hill in an ice/snow storm is really beyond me. Another reason to live where it’s flat.

This little tidbit, from KOMO news (yes, we watched a lot of KOMO news, and it tickled Dave to no end that it was KOMO news) about the car issues-

“Cars, trucks and buses still litter many roads throughout the area after drivers abandoned them during Monday's nightmare evening commute, and a bitter cold setting in has turned many areas into sheets of ice”

This from KING 5

“The Washington State Patrol reported that in King County alone on Monday, troopers responded to 305 collisions and 405 disabled vehicles, mostly on Interstate 5, I-90, and I-405.”

Disabled-read abandoned. Like-it’s taking 6 hours to go 20 miles-I’m walking. I pointed this out to Dave several times-he is now a believer.

So that was interesting. We stayed home Monday night and Tuesday.

Happy, the cat, was a fun diversion.

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See the shoe-that’s in there for scale-the cat is seriously giant.

Kate and Cody arrived on Wednesday, but sadly, Blane missed his connection Thursday AM so he wasn’t there for Thanksgiving dinner.

The whole Thanksgiving party started out with this giant bottle of wine.

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Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. I personally drank out of the normal sized bottle because I am not a fan of the red. The whole family partook of some sort of grape while huddling around the fire. (Did I mention my parents like to keep most of the house at a toasty 52 degrees?)

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Dinner was at the country club-very nice. We missed Blane and sent him this by phone.

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We were in pain from eating so much-and notice we brought the giant bottle of wine with us.

The next day Dave, Cody, Kate and I went to Seattle to see the Macy’s parade and do a little tourist thing.

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Look-giant cakes.

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This one made Kate laugh so hard she couldn’t speak. It’s not the dragon, it’s the guy in front of the dragon. Kate thought he was just an old guy who happened to wander in the parade. After a while we realized that he was actually a part of the festivities, but we got a good chuckle out of it.

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There were also pipers and dogs. It was a fun parade.

We took off from here and went to the Market (after a stop at Starbucks, of course)

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That was fun. Kate got to see a few fish getting thrown. I picked up a couple of things for Mary and Laura, left behind to watch the animals (they deserved much more-I mean, I don’t even like to watch my own animals-know what I’m sayin?)

Saturday night was out to dinner at the Mexican place, about a mile away. Dave drove. Shocker.

Here’s Cody and his look alike cousin Katie.

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Really, they look more like brother and sister, and I always think of that theme song-

And of course, Cody and the lovely Kate, the best looking part of our group.

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I took them to the airport on Sunday, early, and it was packed. PACKED! I think 90,000 people were through Sea-Tac that day-70,000 of them dropping people off the same time I was.

We stayed home and got ready to go-I untangled yarn by the fire while Dave watched the Alamo

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And on Monday, we went back to the airport, and flew the other way, back to MN

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I had the briefest glimpse of Mt Rainier.

And by the time we left, all the snow was gone.

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We got home to rain. What is wrong with that picture? Flew to Seattle in a blizzard, came home to St. Charles in a rain storm.

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Welcome home.

1 comment:

caillie said...

My goodness you have been super busy!!! I love the new grand baby photo! The kitties are soo cute!!! I hope you are safe and at home today with all the snow!