Washington Trip

Aaron met Jack in 7th grade. They were friends through school, both served Mandarin speaking missions, and then they were roommates in college. Aaron and Jack were roommates at Cinnamon Tree when I met Aaron. Natalie, Jack's wife, also lived at CT for a semester or so when she was engaged to Jack. In other words, we all go way back.

Jack and Natalie live in Washington, and we've been wanting to visit them for a while. We finally did it! And had a great time.

Before we left, I asked some mom friends for road trip advice. They suggested audiobooks from this free website called Librivox which has volunteers record books that are in the public domain. I got The Little Princess, and Annie listened to it for three hours on our iPod at the end of the trip. It was awesome. Another suggestion was tin foil sculptures. Those and candy and a Veggie Tales CD got us through 26 hours of driving without even a scratch on our sanity.

We arrived on Thursday evening, put the kids to bed, and played some games. The next day we went to get on the ferry to Seattle. This part of our trip included a small miracle. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 9:45. The next one wouldn't leave for two more hours. Jack and Natalie were in their van ahead of us. They were allowed through to the ferry, but the lady put out a hand to stop us. Then she changed her mind and waved us through. But the car behind us did not get through. Jack and Natalie's car took the last official parking space. They let us park our car outside of any painted lines. We asked Jack and Natalie how we got through. Did they tell the lady we were together? Nope, they hadn't. So it was just a tender mercy.

The ferry was fun. We had a beautiful view of Mt. Rainier. And we could see jellyfish swimming in the water.

My brother Andrew is in the Navy, and this was his old stomping ground.

In Seattle, we went to Pike Place Market. It seemed like the hot item was fresh flowers. I would say 1 out of 3 people were carrying them. The people selling produce were kind of in-your-face. They gave us an amazing sample of mango. I guess when said mango is four bucks, you have to be kind of pushy about it.

 And we saw these rather brilliant kid wagons. I think Utahns could make good use of these.

Next, we went to the Gum Wall. It was cooler and nastier than I expected. And it was really more like Gum Alley. 

Next, we saw the locks and the salmon ladder. When we first came, there were only pleasure boats using the locks, but then some big, commercial boats came through. They had giant tractor tires on the side for bumpers. There were only a handful of fish in the salmon ladder, so the kids ran from window to window to be able to see them. I'm sure the running around made the experience more fun for them. 

Traffic in Seattle was atrocious. We spent an hour going one mile. Got to see this on the way out. 

Jack and Natalie's kids played wonderfully with our kids. On our other days there we picked blackberries and made a pie, played games, ate fish and chips, and played at the local beach. Jack borrowed some kayaks, and we got soaked and frozen and had a great time. This little harbor kind of looked like a lake or reservoir until you saw the barnacles and seaweed. Then you had to say, "We're not in Utah anymore."

Sadly, this crab was dead. Very, very dead. And maybe stinky. I tried not to breathe through my nose.

We also went to church with Jack and Natalie. It's very interesting to go to a normal ward after being in a Utah, BYU professor and student-filled ward for so long. There were fifteen sisters in RS instead of, you know, fifty. Everyone was very friendly, and I got to hold the sleeping baby through two meetings. Delightful. 

On the way home, we got lost and went about 30 miles out of our way. The kids had fallen asleep, and Aaron and I were having a rousing discussion about education or something. This is not the first time we've been distracted enough by our conversation to lose our way. Other than that, the trip home was excellent. 

We had such a good time. The kids saw me writing this post and Annie said, "I want to go back to Washington right now!" Lots of good memories. We're lucky to know folks like Jack and Natalie.

Oh, and we also stopped in Kirkland, WA to see Aaron's lab mate Darrell who is doing an internship for Google. They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner on their campus and apparently have some rule about no employee ever being more than 150 feet from food. So Darrell took us to breakfast and chatted with us about his work. In the bathroom, they had little coding exercises to work through called "Testing on the Toilet." The stall door also had a little blurb/testimonial about menstrual cups, which--FYI/TMI--I am a huge fan of. It was all just so informative. My other favorite thing was this parking spot. 

Someone's been reading Sheryl Sandberg.