Yep, We Celebrated!

 SUMMER!

The kids got out of school on May 22nd.  I decided to decorate the door to welcome them to summer break. I also had new sleeping bags for them because we hope to do some camping this summer.

 

 

 Our 12 year anniversary was on May 26.  We decided to take a little trip to celebrate.  My best friend from Jr High had twins so I really wanted to go and see them. They live in Washington state so I pitched the idea to Spencer to take our anniversary trip there. My parents were gracious enough to take the kids so that we could vacation alone.  We have celebrated most of our anniversaries with our kids, eating Chinese take-out at our kitchen table so this was quite different!

 First, we headed north of Seattle to the Boeing Airplane Factory.  It is the largest building on the planet!  In the building where they assemble the airplanes, you can fit 80 Empire State Buildings!  It is so huge that we had to take a bus to get from one end to the other.  It was neat to see airplanes in different stages of assembly.

 Next, we headed to downtown Seattle.  We were hoping to do some shopping on Pike Street but, all of the stands were closing down by the time we got there.  We still enjoyed walking around and hanging out near the Puget Sound.

 

We had dinner reservations at the Space Needle.  We called make the reservations as soon as we picked up our rental car and could get to McDonalds to use their Wifi. Spencer had the great idea to try and schedule our reservations for a time around sunset.  I called and asked the reservation desk if they knew when sunset would be that evening and the lady said that it would be at 8:52.  I skeptically asked if there was a reservation available for that night around 8:52 and she told me that the only reservation for that night was at 9:45PM.  I told her that we would take it!  She then told me that we could go up to the lookout one hour prior to our reservation time, so we were excited!

 

We got to the Space Needle a little earlier then we had planned but we decided to try and check in for our reservation anyway.  They let us!  They gave us our pager for dinner and told us that we might be able to be seated earlier then our reservation time.

 We went to the top and enjoyed seeing Seattle from a bird's eye view. Then the sun started to set and we were thrilled to be up there!  We were busy taking pictures along with everyone else up there when our pager went off.  We were able to sit at our table and watch the rest of the sunset and then all of the city lights go on while we ate!  It was wonderful!

 The next day, we headed to my friends house!  We got to see her beautiful tiny twin babies!  They were so precious!  So precious in fact that I guess that we didn't put them down long enough to take a picture!  It was so good to see our friends again, it had been quite awhile!

 When we headed out again, we went for a drive to see some waterfalls.  We stopped and took this picture of the Columbia river that divides Washington from Oregon. 

 On our quest to find a waterfall we saw some interesting creatures!

 On the last day, before heading back to pick up the kids, we went to the museum where the Spruce Goose is on display.  We took their 1 hour tour that turned into 2 hours but, it was very interesting!

                           

The kids had a blast at Gramy and Papa's house!  They love it there!  We heard stories for days after about all of the fun stuff that they got to do!

 One of the kids favorite things to do is fish in the backyard!

Eli was lucky enough to go on his first hunting trip with Papa.  Saying that he was thrilled would be an understatement!