More Colorado Visitors

One of Ken's sisters, Carol, and her husband, Russ, came to Washington for a visit. They were at our house for a few days and also got to stay with Kari and her family for a few days. The days they were at our house were pretty busy! Kari and Kyle dropped them off at our church on Sunday at lunch time, so we went out to lunch before heading home. Then, we spent the afternoon showing them the yard and the home improvement projects we had done since the last time they had visited, which had been almost 6 years.

Monday morning we headed out to do a bike ride on the new Centennial Trail that goes parallel to Highway 9 from a small town a mile and a half north of us into Arlington, about 3.3 miles. Ken and Russ rode their bikes to Bryant and met Carol and I in the car. We drove our bikes to Bryant so we wouldn't have to ride them up the hills to get back home at the end of the ride. The new trail is very nice and we rode all the way to Arlington and back on our bikes. They were interested in seeing the food bank that I volunteer some of my time at, so I gave them a tour of it, then we went to a coffee shop and had coffee and Italian sodas before heading home. Carol and I were really glad we didn't have to ride our bikes all the way to our house, but we did add an extra 4 miles to the guys trip by doing that. Thank you Tim and Mary Beth for loaning us your bikes and helmets, we all really appreciated it!

After lunch, Todd, Betsy, and Seth came up to visit. Carol and Russ hadn't met Seth before, so it was fun for them to get to meet him finally. We walked down to the playground in our development, then over to the horse barn. Seth had been interested in seeing the horses, until he saw the tractor at the barn! We let him sit on it for awhile and he pretended to drive it. Unfortunately, when we did go look for horses in the barn, they seemed to all be out in the pastures, so we didn't get to see any close up. Todd's family joined us for dinner, then headed home and we showed Carol and Russ the pictures we took in Israel after they left.
Tuesday, started out kind of misty and foggy, but ended up being a beautiful day, the first sunny day we'd had since they had arrived! We stopped by Ken's office, to see it, then headed over to the Museum of Flight to take the Boeing tour. We got to see them making some 747- , 777's and the new 787. It was a nice tour, better than we remembered from the last time we took it, probably 10 or more years ago. After a lunch of fish and chips, and clam chowder, which we ate while waiting to get on a ferry, we rode the ferry to Whidbey Island and spent the rest of the day on the island. We stopped at Fort Casey and Carol took a close look at one of the guns there...
...she almost took a really close look at the gun!
More of Fort Casey
We stopped in Coupeville and did some souvenir shopping, but Carol couldn't find any smoked salmon to take to a friend in Colorado. A shop owner in Coupeville told us to go to Oak Harbor and gave us the name of a shop that would be a good place to get smoked salmon. We went there and were able to get what she wanted. Our last stop was the bridge at Deception Pass, then home for a dinner of Pad Thai!

Another view of the Deception Pass bridge. A cute thing happened as we pulled into our neighborhood, I asked Ken to slow down so we could see if the baby horse was out in the field. It was, so Carol rolled down her window and started talking to it. It looked at her and whinnied, like it was replying to her. Carol said that it made her day! Later, we went with the baby's owner, to get her and her mother out of the pasture, and got to pet her and walk with her up the road.

Wednesday, they were flying home, but we had some time before they needed to be at the airport, so we packed a lunch and headed to Seattle. We ended up going to Pike Place Market and eating samples of food they were selling, candy, fruits, and a soup. At that point, we decided to just buy our lunch and eat it as we walked along, instead of going back to the car for the one we had made. The guys had gyros, while Carol and I looked in a cheese making factory and discovered they had macaroni and cheese for sale. After all the samples, we weren't very hungry, but I figured Ken would eat some of mine, so I bought a small container of the mac and cheese. Carol didn't want that much and asked if they would sell her, just half a container of it. They said they couldn't do that, but that they would give her that much. She protested and said she would pay for it, but they wouldn't let her. (She ended up just leaving a big tip instead.) It was the BEST!!! macaroni and cheese I had ever eaten! I would definitely buy it again! By then it was time to head to the airport, which we did, with full stomachs and happy hearts! It was a very fun visit!

Fireworks and a "Trip" to Hawaii

One of the holidays that Saben loves the most is the 4th of July. Before the 4th comes along, he talks, for weeks, about the different fireworks they will buy. After the 4th is over, for the last 2 years, he has made pretend fireworks out of miscellaneous cardboard tubes, paper scraps, etc. and he will tell you what kind of firework each thing he made is and what it does. When I go up on Monday, he usually wants to build a "fireworks stand" and sell his fireworks to me. We build the stand out of his "Crazy Fort" pieces, drape a sheet over the top and are ready to go. However, I can't just go to the stand and buy fireworks, we have to start with going to bed, pretending to sleep awhile, then we have breakfast using their pretend food. After that is accomplished, THEN, I can buy some fireworks. Last week he told me that I had $1,000 to buy fireworks with. I told him that if I had $1,000 that I would rather spend it on a trip to Hawaii. So, he decided that after I bought the fireworks that we would take them with us to Hawaii. We packed all the fireworks in one of the kids suitcases and "flew" to Hawaii on the sofa upstairs. On our way to Hawaii, Annika decided that she hadn't brought any toys and needed to go get some toys to bring. Saben and I told her there would be toys for her to play with at the hotel, so she stayed on the "plane" until we got to Hawaii, then jumped down and collected toys to play with at the hotel. It's nice to see that they have a lot of imagination when it comes to playing like that.

This is my new necklace, bracelet and ring that Saben made for me a couple of weeks ago.

Chocolate Tour

One of my birthday presents from Todd and Betsy was to go on a tour of a chocolate factory. We met at the Theo chocolate factory in the Fremont area of Seattle, Saturday morning for our tour.
We all had to wear "hats" for the tour. Blue booties last week, blue hats this week, what can we wear that's blue next week?
As soon as we went through the doors into the factory, there was a very strong smell of chocolate. You can see the chocolate powder on this piece of machinery and the hose that goes to it.

The tour was interesting, but I think it would have been even better to visit when they were actually making the chocolate. It looks like the chocolate has just poured out, but it was hardened.

A sculpture made of chocolate.

There were several tables like this one with chocolate samples on them, but we were told that we shouldn't sample any of them before the tour because we would be getting lots of samples on the tour. I think my favorite was the chocolate with orange flavoring, one of my least favorite ones was the basil flavored chocolate.

Seth enjoyed the samples also, but didn't enjoy the tour. They wanted us to stay together in a group and he didn't like being confined.

Seattle Houseboat Tour

Seattle had their semi-annual houseboat tour today. I have wanted to go on the tour for several years and today, we got to go with our good friends, Tim and Mary Beth. Before going on the tour we had a yummy brunch at "Serafina's". We had never been there before and it was a fairly small restaurant, but it had unusual and very good food! Houseboats are moored along docks with canals between the docks, and it seemed like every houseboat had some kind of additional boat to get around the lake on.
We quickly discovered that there is a real variety of houseboats. Small, and large, fancy and eclectic and some on the shabby side, we saw them all. There were 13 houseboats to see in a 5 hour period. After eating our brunch we were down to 4 hours and managed to see 9 of the 13 in that time period. Some of the time was spent standing in line for your turn to go on the houseboat, they would only allow a few on a houseboat or dock at a time and sometimes the line was quite long. The lines did move pretty quickly though, so the wait wasn't to bad. We also had to either take our shoes off or put on the blue booties whenever we went into a houseboat.

I was really amazed at how big some of them were. This picture was taken from the kitchen looking across the dining room to the living room. This was one of the nicest and biggest houseboats that we saw, the outside of this one is in the picture below.

As you can see it had 3 levels to it. It was gorgeous!

There were 6 of these little electric boats to take us from one side of the lake to the other. We found out that you can rent these little boats for a minimum of 2 hours and they cost $89 an hour. They can hold up to 10 people and you get to go where ever you want around the lake. We thought they might be fun to rent some time.

Some of the houseboats had an addition to their house so they could have a garden.

Anyone recognize this houseboat? The most famous houseboat in Seattle!

One Year's Growth

This was a picture of the new backyard garden right after it was planted last year in September. The plant in front of the rock didn't make it, so we replaced it this year with some different plants.
This is a picture taken today of the same area. A lot of the plants have grown a lot, especially the ones right behind the rock

This is another new addition to the garden that we put in place of an old lily that I didn't really like.

In another part of the garden..., a rare view of the 2 fish that have survived for at least a couple of years. I didn't get around to replenishing the pond this year, maybe next year?

Labor Day Weekend

We didn't have any plans to go anywhere over Labor Day weekend and just did some fun things in the area and at home. Friday night, we had Tim and Mary Beth come over for dinner and to play some games. We played a game of "Farkle" and 2 games of "Blokus". Saturday turned out to be a much nicer day, weather-wise than predicted, so we were able to get a few things done in the yard. After lunch, I tried a new recipe for meatballs and they turned out really yummy! It took me most of the afternoon to make them because the recipe made 70 meatballs. (The recipe was supposed to make 100, but they kept getting larger, the longer I made them.) Sunday, after church, we went to the "Vintage Aircraft show" that was being held in Everett. The pictures below were taken at it.

There were a few things besides aircraft at the show and I thought this German motorcycle was one of the more interesting land vehicles that was there. The sign by it said that it could hold 3 people, one to drive, one to man the gun in the back and the other one sat on the other side of the gunman, but I don't know what his purpose would have been, unless it was to take over the gun if something happened to the first gunman.

Bi-planes lining up to take off.
This bi-plane was giving rides for $60 per person. Notice the blimp and dream-lifter in the background, old and new planes at the same airport.

We mainly watched the fly-bys, which took place for about an hour. Here the 4 bi-planes were doing their fly-by, with a bomber sitting on the ground below.

The blimp took off and landed several times while we were there. We wondered if they were giving rides also, but didn't see anything that mentioned blimp rides.

Look how little this plane (Ken says it's a T6 Texan) is compared to the dream-lifter (it carries parts for the 787).

This was an interesting plane, we couldn't believe how narrow the body of the plane was. It is one of 6 remaining Grumman Tigercats from WW2 left in the world. It did some fly-bys also.

A Mustang fighter from WW2. We really enjoyed watching the different planes flying around us, it was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Today we had talked about riding our bikes on the new part of the Centennial bike trail that comes up highway 9 from Arlington toward our house. Unfortunately it has rained most of the day, so we had to change that plan. We're going to head out to a movie instead in just a little while.