Wednesday 17 July Saline, MI to Seattle, WA
The fun and joys of moving into a new house often mean that things get accomplished much more slowly than you would like, this is especially true of doing home improvement projects that you have no previous experience with. Sometimes it’s frustrating and other times it ends up secretly working out for the best. Our experience with staining the concrete floor of the basement ended up being one of those where taking longer to finish it up was a good thing. We did a water based stain so the actual staining wasn’t bad, it just took us a long time to get the look right. The sealing ended up being the big issue. For those of you who haven’t worked with concrete sealant believe me when I say this stuff is noxious and awful. I had to turn off all the pilot lights in the basement in order to not risk the fumes from the sealant exploding from the pilot light flame. I waited until later that night so we could make sure the kids had hot water for their baths and that we had hot water for the dishes. So around ten p.m. the night before I have to get up at 4 a.m. to make a 6:40 a.m. flight to Seattle, I start to seal the concrete floor of the basement. I’m a genius. I opened the windows in the basement and apparently the smell and the fumes are so bad, Megan has to open every window in the house and honestly it doesn’t seem to help that much. The whole house stinks and just walking around in it hurts my eyes a little bit. I have no idea how the kids slept through it, but they did and they don’t seem to be damaged by it either(thank God). All in all, it ended up being the perfect thing to do before we left our house for a week as we can let the house air out and not suffer through the process.
Both Megan and I “sleep” a little bit before the alarm goes off way too early and then get the bags in the car and start preparing all the little things one needs to get ready in order to have a successful flying experience with small children. We finally get piled in the car and Logan stares at his hands the whole drive while I wonder why my eyelids taste purple. The airport part goes fairly smoothly except for an incident in which Southwest decided they needed proof that Elizabeth was under two years old, so she could legally sit in our laps and apparently her inability to stand, walk, or talk just didn’t pass the common sense test. We get on the plane and Logan settles in pretty well, he’s not a stranger to air travel and we’ve conditioned him over the past few years to think that while on long trips being motionless and watching a DVD to pass the time is the way to go. Don’t judge, you’re all either going to do it too, or you’re jealous that this didn’t exist when you were raising kids. Elizabeth however has not been DVD trained and so begins playing a rousing game of “drop things and make Dada pick them up” that she plays for the next hour. We finally get her to sleep and I crash out as well until we land in Denver and lo and behold our flight to Seattle is boarding. Megan somehow interprets that to mean that now is the perfect time to get coffee despite the fact that her ticket is the one Elizabeth’s information is attached to, luckily I’m able to do the harried parent begging thing and the gate agent lets me on board. The next flight goes well and luckily we’re able to get Elizabeth to sleep for the last hour of the flight. Megan and I do as well, which means that Logan is stuck watching his DVD between two sleeping parents until the descent is called and we have to shut down his DVD player and he doesn’t understand why and decides it’s because we’re torturing him and throws a fit. So now for a minor segue’, the having electronic devices off regulation is ridiculously outdated and ineffective to boot. For the outdated part, airplanes have had to have their electronics shielded for years and the interference from personal electronic devices is just not going to have an effect on, y’know, a damn thing. As far as ineffective, you all know that you keep some devices on, don’t pretend you don’t, or if it’s really not you(yeah, right) then think of the rest of the plane and remember that people as an overall organism suck. As always though government regulations are hard to kill and even harder if they’re related to the dreaded “S” word……safety, I remember when I was in the military that the fight against stupid new rules was instantly over the moment safety was brought up. Witness the creeping expansion of reflective belts into everything the military does, despite the fact that their impact is beyond debatable and people HATE them. You can see that in the next two photos.
We get into Seattle and get the car, which instantly becomes a hybrid the moment I say I will prepay for a tank of gas(By the way I was overcharged this time around to enough of an extent that I am now going to go through the hassle of filling up myself every time thus no longer paying for a high-margin convenience, rental car companies you did this to yourselves). I dislike the idea of hybrids because of the whole “I’m a smug environmentalist out to save the world, but not really because I won’t give up any conveniences” marketing angle that was taken with the Prius, not because I have any problem with making cars more fuel efficient. I have to admit that being able to drive around for almost a week and drive a lot of long distances and only draw down about ¾ of a tank makes me even more of a convert. Anyway we get down to near Tacoma to see a friend of ours from Okinawa who lives near Fort Lewis, WA. We get to the house and enjoy getting reacquainted and Logan decides to start bullying our friends young son, Megan finally gets sick of it(I’m too tired to care about much of anything by this point) and sends me back to the hotel with Logan so he can have some time and space to himself. I head back, get checked in, and then turn on a movie for Logan and play with him for a little bit before we fall asleep. Two to three hours later Megan calls us back to the friends’ house and we have a nice dinner out on their porch. The funniest part is when a couple of bees come down and check out Logan’s chicken, and then tear off a piece of it and fly away(this is not hyperbole, this actually happened). We hang out for a couple more hours and then head home and go to bed.
Thursday 18 August Seattle area
We wake up and take a little while to get going before heading into downtown Seattle. Somehow we end up in rockstar parking right outside of Ye Olde Curiousity Shoppe which is perfect for us as we get to take Logan inside one of the coolest stores in the U.S. Logan is fascinated by the bug displays which at the time I think is great, but which comes back to bite us a few days later. After killing an appropriate amount of time in the Shoppe we head over to Ivar’s for lunch. We get outdoor seating so Logan can feed the Seagulls and we can enjoy a rare sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. I get in line at Ivar’s to order food and am treated to a lovely overheard conversation between the two people behind me, I won’t bore you with the whole thing but this line was priceless, “I won’t eat meat, but I could see eating insects because they have a hive mind and therefore I wouldn’t take anything out of the collective conscious.” I cup my hand and prepare to render an epic “This is for your own good hippy!” slap of judgment, but as I turn around the slap dies in my hand, unrendered. This dude is about my height, but maybe 100 lb.’s soaking wet, his chest looks like it might actually be concave, he’s got coke bottle glasses, and he’s wearing raggedy old hipster clothes that don’t look good on anyone, but especially not him. In other words no matter which way he swings his only hope of getting some lovin’ is to go super-sensitive pseudo-intellectual and pray someone’s dumb enough to fall for it. So the hippy slap was unused and needs to be deployed soon, before it turns inward and attacks me. Luckily I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan and it’s only a matter of time. I pick up our meals and head down to where my family is sitting and we enjoy the sunny day and Logan LOVES feeding the seagulls. I don’t think he had more than one or two of his fries, the rest ended up getting pitched to the seagulls that flock near Ivar’s. He doesn’t quite have the underarm toss thing down and there’s a few times I’m afraid the seagulls are going to get his fingers rather than the fries, but it never happens and we leave Ivar’s with a very happy little boy in tow. We then head up to the Pike’s place market and wander around, Megan heads into the original Starbucks to get a city mug and we wind down our little bit of being touristy in Seattle and head out to my high school buddy’s place in Duvall, WA. It’s great to get out to his place and see him again, he and his fiancée are unbelievably amazing hosts and we have a fun night with them.
Friday 19 August Seattle area
We wake up early and hang out downstairs trying to not wake up my buddy and his fiancée which is difficult, but possible with the aid of nature documentaries on Netflix. We drink too much of his coffee and then we eat too much of his food when he wakes up and makes breakfast for everyone. My buddy is a great cook and breakfast is delicious. I can’t remember which morning was pancakes and which one was breakfast burrito’s but both were amazing and I’m trying to figure out how to get him out to Michigan and cooking for us when he’s out here even as a guest, maybe begging will work…….. The rest of the day is pretty easy going before we get together with a small group of high school buddies and have a nice picnic together. We head about fifteen minutes south of Duvall to a pretty little city park in which you have to cross a bridge in order to get to the picnic area that’s right down by the river, the woods are right there and there’s apparently some great hiking trails around as well. My buddy’s fiancée(lovely girl, far too good for him) thinks this might be a great site for their wedding next year, I agree until I see the dreaded Alcoholic beverages not allowed sign. I have to fight to breathe thinking about a wedding without alcohol and then calm down considerably when I remember two solid points, 1. I just spent the last two years of my life getting plastered in Michigan stadium, if anyone knows how to smuggle booze into somewhere, it’s me(hey, I learned at the feet of great booze sneakers like the Dougli, the Andersons, and many, many others, this great debt may be why I love y’all so much). And 2. It’s a wedding and the No Alcohol rule is going to be the most violated rule ever. The picnic is a lot of fun and then we retreat back to my buddies place and have a nice conversation over beers. My buddy bought a 12 pack of Alaskan Amber for which I am more than a little grateful. For those who haven’t tried it, think a smoother Fat Tire, for those who can’t relate to that think Bell’s Amber with a slightly sweeter taste. If you still can’t relate then I despair of your taste in beer. The overall picnic and drinks afterwards was great and I'm distinctly honored that my friends took the time to come and see us. Seattle is an interesting city for me now because it has become a big magnet for both a lot of high school buddies and a lot of people I know from B-school. I must say If I ever decide to move it’s going to be hard not to pick the Seattle area because of how many great people are living out there now and hopefully will continue to do so.
Saturday 20 August Seattle, WA to Leavenworth, WA the wedding day.
We again wake up early and try not to disturb my friends, and again are treated to a wonderful breakfast, before we head up to Leavenworth for the wedding. It’s sad to leave them, but at the same time there’s only so long you can spend at someone’s house before you wear out your welcome, hopefully we left before then. The drive up to Leavenworth is gorgeous, all through the Washington Mountains, for extra fun I even notice the put-in spot from a rafting trip I took years before. After a couple of hours drive we make it into Leavenworth and the town is interesting, on the one hand it looks like the exact kind of tourist hell that so many unique places in the U.S. have turned into. The town’s German heritage has been fully exploited and while the architecture is neat it’s also ever present and somewhat cartoony, like the village near the Matterhorn at Disneyland(if you’ve never been to Disneyland and thus can’t relate to that all I can say is I’m sorry your parents didn’t love you). Balancing that is that the scenery is incredible, the town is RIGHT up against some very tall and steep mountains and so you feel isolated, but not in a bad way. I’ll never be sure if I liked the town or not, but the area is beautiful and my friend’s wedding was fun, so I’ll always have some fond memories of it.
Megan and I meet up with our in-laws and get checked into the hotel with about an hour to go before the wedding, we get to the wedding site just in the nick of time and meet up with a group of b-school buddies, it’s really good to see everyone again and we get a quick debrief on the summers activities before we go and sit down. Because we got in a little later than most of the guests we go sit on the side that is in the sun and it is more than a little warm. As Megan, me, and my b-school buddies take our seats and quietly begin to sweat off about twenty pounds each, I look at the wedding program and see that it’s a Catholic ceremony and I begin to make plans for how to get water after the ceremony and see who will probably need to be treated for heat stroke before the end of the wedding. Luckily, I think my friend who is getting married thought about this and the ceremony is short and sweet and very touching(My favorite part was the mixing of the Maize and Blue sand). After the ceremony begins cocktail hour and then we move off to dinner and the dancing parts of the night. I notice the dinner tables where the b-school buddies of the bride and groom are seated are well out of the way in the “Oh, God these are the people who will embarrass us.” Section. This may be justified but Megan and I are married with kids and therefore lame, there’s no way one of us would put someone on their shoulders against their will and dance for a bit(Matt S. if you’re reading this, I am really sorry but it seemed like a good idea at the time). The reception is really fun and in a nice touch, there’s pie for dessert vs. cake. Megan and I head out early and since our bed is in the loft at the hotel, there’s some interesting moments climbing down steep and small stairs while still buzzed at 3 in the morning to take care of Elizabeth’s midnight feeding.
Sunday 21 August Leavenworth, WA
We wake up slightly late and barely manage to get to the breakfast buffet on time. The hotel we’re staying at has a spectacular buffet and I’m really glad that breakfast is included in the room rate, because I have a feeling that the price of paying for the breakfast separately would make me hyperventilate in a miser induced panic. We say goodbye to the bride and groom and the b-school crew and then head into Leavenworth for the day. Sundays in a tourist trap are always questionable, parking is tough and the town is generally crowded. We manage to find a parking spot after lots of driving around and conversations that alternately point out possible spots to park in and then sinking realizations that the spot isn’t available for one reason or another. We spend the day walking around the town and then Megan decides she wants to go to a Christmas shop, which doesn’t exactly thrill me. In a full confession, I’m a well known Grinch and therefore Christmas stuff tends to give me hives. The store gives me the creeps and not just in a this place is full of crap you don’t need and will only display for a month out the year, otherwise taking up valuable storage space in your house way(I told you I’m a Grinch), but it’s full of these artistic Elves that look like they’re going to come to life and axe murder me any second. Don’t believe me just Google Mark Roberts and see how creepy these things are, better yet just check out this website http://www.fairiesbymarkroberts.com/ and see if you don’t have nightmares the next night, I dare you.
We go back to the hotel and then head to the pool as Logan is displaying signs of needing a physical outlet. The pool at this hotel is awesome, it’s set into the rocks and has a large deep end in which the rocks around it are anywhere from 4 to 6 feet above the surface of the water. This is perfect for jumping in and doing the front flips in which you don’t quite make it and spend the next ten minutes in a manly grimace which doesn’t at all conceal that you’re in incredible pain because you’re stupid. The best thing about the pool session is Logan jumps into the pool WITHOUT A LIFEJACKET and then swims short distances. The goal of the summer has been realized and formal swim lessons start next summer, unfortunately Logan’s got my body type of long torso and shorter legs so I doubt he’ll be a good competitive swimmer(for example I’m a good swimmer relative to the population only because I grew up on the swim team and spent my summers in the pool, but I’m not that good relative to other people who’ve spent similar amounts of time in the water), but that’s okay there’re plenty of other sports out there. We finally all head to bed and Logan cries for snuggling at around 1 in the morning so I go down to his bed and get him back to sleep, thinking it’s for the rest of the night. This is not to be, he wakes up at 2:30 SCREAMING bloody murder saying the bugs are eating him. I look at him and see despite the fact that his eyes are open he’s still locked in the dream, I hug him and tell him its okay and he needs to wake up. Everyone else is awake and Megan comes screaming down the stairs and takes Logan out of my arms(I think it’s a mommy thing) and finally gets him calmed down. I grab up Elizabeth and get her back to sleep after a few minutes. While going through this night terror was awful there was one funny moment, after Logan had been screaming for a good four or five minutes Megan finally got him to where he could talk and she asked him what he wanted to do and Logan’s response was “I want to keep screaming.” What can I say the boy is strong willed.
Monday 22 August Leavenworth to Seattle to Detroit to Saline
As you can tell by the title this was a long day, it was made even longer by the fact that our flight out of Denver was delayed by about an hour. We finally got home at two in the morning and both kids were ready to party, we got them to sleep around 3:30 and then everyone in the house slept until 10. Overall, it was a great trip. Thanks to all those who hosted us, ate and drank with us, or invited us to your wedding. We enjoyed seeing all of you and hope that it’s not too long until we meet again.
