Washintonian

So a few weeks ago Colin and I went to Washington to visit my family. Because of his job we wont be able to switch off holidays with the families anymore so we will be switching off leave blocks. He gets 2 weeeks in June/July (May/June this year) and Two weeks in Dec/Jan. We spent Christmas with my familiy this past christmas so we will be going to Omaha this year. Any way, We went to Washington the weekend of memorial day and as soon as we got off the plane my mom wisked us away to the property they own in North eastern washington. Its far away from civilization, I think its one mountain over from a popular ski resort. So sometimes in the summer you can hear concerts and things that the resort puts on in the off season. Pretty much my whole family was out there, Mom, Dad, Neices (Kassandra, Victoria, Ashley and Steffanie), Bro-in-Law Mike and some family friends also came up. It was good times. Bella even got to make a new friend, my sisters dog Sammy. He is a big white Samoyed. Beautiful Dog! Well the bugs out there were horrendous you practically had to bathe in bug spray but that comes with the territory. So we had some fun up there taking adventure hikes and wrestling with bears. Well not really but there are a couple of bears that have been hangin around our camp, my dad lovingly named them Yogi and Boo Boo. Go figure they are trying to seal food that my dad had up there for bateing turkey traps. We didn't have too many problems with them while we were out there but it gets a little unnerving at times. Colin was stoked because my dad let him cut down a tree... for the first time. Well he kinda had to cut it more than once and then they had to do some crap to get it to actually fall.. but hey it was his first time. But all and all the camping was good times.

Most of the trip was pretty chilled out we sat around watched movies that we have never seen good stuff like that. One morning we went to school with Ariyanna and made a poem with her that was fun. The poem was about the sun and how it makes the ground hiss. Yes, very poetic. The point was to use verbs to describe a season that you wouldn't necessarily think of as typical. It was nice to get to do something for her. She doesn't always get to go do things special like that. After the poem writing I made Colin walk with me downtown on the Centenial Trail. Its a big long trail that goes from Spokane to Idaho. We only walked from the school downtown so it wasn't that big of a deal. Only about 5 or 6 miles something like that. The trail going downtown cuts through the middle of Gonzaga University. Go Bulldogs!! So I had some conversation with Colin about how the basketball program at GU has really beefed up the campus. They have all new buildings and new sports complexes. Its amazing what can happen in just 6 short years. So we hungout downtown for a little went shopping at this crazy little shop called Boo Radleys that have all sorts of off the wall stuff. Colin got a suction goat t-shirt. (the suction goat is down town across from the Carossel, you push a button and it eats your trash, pretty funny) and I got a wonder woman save the planet bag for like 5 bucks. Good place. We also went to see Angels and Demons. I thought it was pretty good, but i have never read the book. People have told me that the movie is crap compared to the book. Well guess what people.... most movies based off of stories from books are! After the movie we decided that walking back didn't sound that fun and I was starting not to feel good because it was unseasonably hot outside. So we took the good ol' STA (Spokane Transit Athority) aka the bus, back to my parents house. Its weird how doing stuff like that brings up so many memories. Like when i was younger and taking the bus was SOOOO cool and now you look at it as you get older and its not as cool. And also how the bus route by my parents house use to be on our street and it was totally awesome when you took the bus because when you got off all you had to do was walk across the street and you were home. LOL now you have to walk 3 blocks. But still it was cool to have front door service. As the week went on we did some other things like hang out with my mom and go shopping and went and checked out some yard sales fun things like that. One saturday, Colin, my sister, her husband and I all got to go to the temple and do some work for our family. It was great. We spent all morning in the temple doing the different ordinances. Its also interesting that when I was preparing the names I found a common link on new.familysearch.org for the mother of the family I worked on in school. And her work has been done and her family has been tracked back on one line all the way to the 1600s. Its crazy how we are all connected. I didn't know about any members linked on my mom's side. But we went to the temple and did some of the work for my Grandfathers on both sides and great grand mother on my moms side. Then on Wednesday we went back and finished some with the endowment. It was great to see my sisters enthusiasm for temple work. Im so glad I got to share that experience with them. I hope they will continue to go to the temple regularly and partake of those blessings.

We also drove over to Seattle so Colin could meet his nephews Christopher (13) and Shaun (8). He has never met them because they live with there father and we are never in Spokane when they are. So before they got too big we decided to go ahead and make the trip over to Seattle to spend some time with them. We didn't really get much time, but it was still good. We took the boys to a Mariners game and saw them lose 1-0!! AWESOME!! Oh well. At least now I can say that i have been to a MLB game. Whatever, I think they had a good time, eating crap food and watching crap baseball! The next day we decided before we left to get in some site seeing. We headed down to the Seattle Aquarium in the morning and hung out with the fish, then went to the public market at Pikes place... sorry to say we didn't see a fish get thrown. It really doesn't happen as often as people might think. But we did get to see THE ORIGINAL starbucks. We walked right by it. I didn't even pay any nevermind too it because they are literally on every corner in Seattle, but Colin saw a sign that said "this is the original starbucks" or something like that. The market was fun but we had to skadoodle over to the Space Needle for our lunch reservations. The resturant in the space needle has some good food and good seanery. As you sit the floor rotates around and you get to see a 360 degree view of Seattle. It was nice. I had an Ahi Tuna salad and Colin had a Burger with the best french fries he has ever had. (he is a french fry conesour) They didn't taste all that great to me but whatever! So we at lunch, took some photos and went back to Spokane.

All in all we did alot of things and had some fun visiting my family. Good times!