Oh, We Had So Much Fun!

Caution: This is not proof read. I'm up way past my bedtime, but I want to remember our great trip. Pictures coming soon.

So we headed to Seattle for the weekend for Brian's cousin's wedding, and we had a blast! Brian negotiated home loans and homeowners insurance with USAA on the way up, while I drove and Alyssa became carsick and threw up - eight minutes away from our destination! She was a trooper, though. She started feeling sick halfway through the trip, with a couple of hours to go, and she was able to keep things under control until then.

We met up with the Sumsions (Will, Nelsa, Marley, Evie, Sydney, and Grant) at the Red Robin in Silverdale, then after a lovely dinner with surprisingly well-behaved kids, we went to Will and Nelsa's house, where the kids watched a movie until bedtime and the parents played Cranium's Playoff and watched funny video clips online.

On Friday we walked the shops in Poulsbo and had the best doughnuts in the entire world. I'm not exaggerating - they were that good! Nelsa had a fabulous day planned, and I was so impressed with all the places we went. When they said, "You have to try the best doughnuts," they really turned out to be the best doughnuts." When they said, "...the best pizza," it really was the best pizza. (Plus, the pizza restaurant had basement that we ate in, so it was like having our own private restaurant.) We went to a free aquarium, where the kids were able to touch things in the wave pool, and we saw a baby whale skeleton, and Grant threw a sea shell at one of the tanks because he was trying to feed the fish. (It scared the living daylights out of everyone that heard the crash, but it was so funny.) We went to a free underwater museum that had torpedoes and information about submarines and such, and Will explained a lot of the concepts and gadgets to us, which was so cool. And then we went to Chuck E Cheese's to let the kids run around for a while.

It was a great day! The kids were pretty well-behaved and they got along really well. Evie and Marley are just a few months older than Alyssa and Sydney is about a year younger, so Alyssa just ate up all the attention she got for being the novelty friend. Everyone wanted to sit by her or be her buddy while we were walking around, just like Alyssa likes it to be. She loves those girls, and she was so excited to see them and was so sad when we had to leave.

After Chuck E Cheese's we took a ferry down to Seattle. Ethan loved it and stayed up top with Brian almost the whole time. I wanted to stay up top, but Alyssa was whiny from leaving her friends, and Marcus was cold, so after a while we headed inside and then to the car.

We then checked into our hotel, and even though it was late, we knew the kids needed to eat dinner, otherwise we'd be hearing, "But we didn't even eat dinner!" when it came time to put them to bed. So we went to Azteca, one of the closest restaurants to the hotel, around 8:30. Alyssa kept falling asleep in her chair, Ethan was too tired to eat anything, and Marcus ate everything he could get his hands on. The minute we got back to our hotel room, we all crashed and immediately fell asleep.

We met Brian's parents, Linda and Ron, and Scott and Alexia for the continental breakfast the next morning, and then took off to Pike Place Market. It was so fun to wander around the shops and end up at the place where they throw the fish all about. There was a huge row of flower booths that all had huge bouquets of flowers for just five or ten dollars. They even had beautiful dried arrangements for way cheap, but Brian and I decided that we wouldn't be able to get one home without it being destroyed. If I lived in the area, I would definitely go there once a week or so and get fresh flowers - the tulips were gorgeous! Oh, Alyssa made friends with the "pot lady" (a lady who made and sold pots) and then she found a daffodil on the ground, which the flower shop owner said she could keep, and from that point on she was determined to make it back to the pot lady, "to talk to her," and when she found her, Alyssa gave her the daffodil to put in one of her pots.

After Pike Place Market we went to the Space Needle and actually got to go up to the top. I've never done that before! I was hoping to at least walk around the bottom and check things out, but we went up the elevator, and the kids loved it. Ethan loved it the most. It was his favorite part of the trip, he said. While we were driving around Seattle, Brian and I kept saying, "Look, there's the Space Needle!" and the kids would be, "Oh, nice, big deal," but after they visited it, every five minutes while we were driving around we would hear Alyssa or Ethan say, "Look it's the Space Needle," or "Look! It's uh Hace Yeedle," respectively.

We wore ourselves out again, so after a quick stop at McDonalds for lunch (and some Greek gyros for the adults from a neighboring place) we went back to the hotel where I fell asleep while Brian watched the Olympics and the kids ran around the room. Brian even cleaned up a diaper emergency while I was sleeping - yea!

So after watching the ending to "Independence Day" we got ready and headed to the wedding. Marcus made machine gun noises during the ceremony, and when I stood up with him in the back, he really wanted to eat the cupcake wedding cake, which I wouldn't let him, of course, so he wasn't too pleased with me. The wedding was beautiful. Becky looked gorgeous, and she pumped her arm when they kissed and kept doing little happy dances throughout the evening. She seemed like a very happy person, or maybe she was just happy she was getting married. Probably both.

We were all exhausted. Alyssa kept drifting off during dinner, and Ethan fell asleep during the toasts, so we took off just after Mark and Becky had their first dance. Even though the kids were tired, Alyssa and Ethan really wanted to swim. Marcus fell asleep on the way to the hotel, so Brian stayed with him while I took the other two down to the pool. We swam for about twenty minutes, then fell asleep the second our heads hit our pillows.

We left for home the next morning after breakfast and enjoyed a quiet Sunday afternoon together. Then Brian's parents came over after the kids went to bed so we could try all the fancy cheeses Brian and his dad splurged on at Pike Place Market. It was a fabulous weekend!