Seattle

My week of vacation from school was truly a vacation.  We had an awesome trip to Seattle.  We flew up on Friday the 8th and came home the 14th.  It is the first time our family has ever flown somewhere together. (all but Trevor and co.  He had school and work all week.)  We have flown separately to various locations, but never as a family.  It was fun and kinda strange.  We usually drive on our vactions, but it was nice to get there in the time it would have taken to drive to Thatcher. 

Seattle was so great.  The leaves were in the beginning stages of changing and just beautiful. I have begun renting houses when we go places.  It is usually less money then renting 2 hotel rooms, and you have so much more room.  Plus, we bought stuff for breakfast and ate in almost every morning as well as packing a lunch and having food for Sunday so we didn't have to eat out. 
Here are a few places we visited:

 Mt. Rainer.  Here we are on a hike at one of the sites.  There are several around it you can enter.  It is huge.  From a distance, as we drove, you could see the top, but once on it, it was cloud covered.  It was really beautiful.

Yes, that is snow that had just fallen.  If we look cold, we are, it was near freezing.

 This was taken on the road on the way back.  It was a clear day, so you could really see it.

 This was at the fish hatchery in Issaquah, where we stayed.  We had just missed the major salmon run and were just before the next one, but there were a few still trying to make it up stream. 

 This is Snoqualmie Falls, we saw lots of falls at Mt Rainier too, so much water, it has to go somewhere.

 The public market is where they 'throw the fish' and sell beautiful flowers and handmade craft items.  It was raining that day.  We only had rain 3 of the 7 days.

 Space needle and Jordon looking up at the space needle.  We did not go up.  It was too cloudy to see anything so we decided not to spend the money.

 Washington/ASU football game. (Kevra came too) Yes, we won. Yes, it rained the WHOLE game. Yes, we STAYED the whole game.  Yes, we were soaked.  Yes, we will never forget it.

 Seattle Underground Tour, everyone told us we needed to go and it was worth it, really interesting and entertaining.

 Seattle Temple, we went one morning with Brendon and did a session then took the kids the next day to see it and take some pictures.  I have many pictures of all the beautiful flowers and trees around the temple and all over Seattle.

We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island.  We wish we had taken the car so we could have driven around, the downtown on the island was okay.  We actually just wanted to ride out into the Sound and see the city.  It was really fun and cheaper then a harbor tour.

Waiting to catch the ferry back.  We ate at a seafood place just down from the ferry.  I had to have a good salmon dinner in Seattle, and this was delicious.  We ate clam chowder at several places during the trip, trying to decide which was best.  It was this little walk up place in Post Alley we went to on the first day.

 I thought this was a funny picture of us sharing chowder.  We had regular white clam chowder and a salmon chowder.

 Me and my RM in the Seattle rain.  We took umbrellas, even though Brendon said only sissy's use them in Seattle.  We forgot them in our suitcase on the rainiest day, so I broke down and bought one.

 The house we rented.  It was super nice.  Had a huge TV, so we watched movies several nights when we got back before 8pm.  Brendon had not seen any for 2 years, so we took Up and Harry Potter 6 and Star Trek.

This was a place in Tacoma, the last day, that Jordon loved. We happened to stop for lunch in this little mall and this shop was in the mall. The guy is a 'professional' lego designer.  There was nothing to buy, only play yourself and watch him create.  He was working on the Haunted Mansion for a Disney display at Disneyland.  We had a hard time getting him to leave.

One last parting shot. Hope you are still with me, almost done.  We met several missionaries we would run into that Brendon knew and would visit with.  We went to the mission home and met the president and his wife, we went to a ward Brendon served in and ate dinner with a couple he had worked with and visited a couple bishops he liked. We took pictures of all the places he had lived and churches he had attended.  He said he had a good time and it was fun to go to some of the places he had served and meet the people he worked with. Great vacation!