Emma finds a nose to pick. 

Rocky, Kathy and Butch 

Rocky's party again. 

Rocky threw a wonderful dinner party for the old office pals from Mahlum. 

My favorite photo from the trip! 

Our friends, the Turners let us house sit for them, unfortunately a bed of nails was all that Joey got. Not really, this was at the Pacific Science Center. 

upside DOWN

You will probably read the following captain/photo combos in reverse chronological order UNLESS you go to the bottom of the Seattle photo section and read UPWARDS! Unless you obey this command, you will be living our vacation memories in REVERSE, and you will likely be CONFUSED. Isn't it helpful that I am stressing CERTAIN WORDS for you? Just one other NOTE, tomorrow there will be a SECOND group OF photos posted. Come back for MORE!

The view from the bottom... 

There is a tiny little dot by where the water is coming out to the right of the falls, that is a little human, to give you scale..... 

Just a few more before I go to sleep. Snoqualmie Falls was one of our day trips. This is the view from the top, then we hiked down....

The evening after we played at the zoo, Emma and I went back for a concert with some Mom/Daughter friends; Masako and Maya, Sheila and Lucy. The singer was Nancy Griffin... or Patty Griffith, we never could remember, it might have been the wine and fun distracting us a bit. I used to work with Masako and Sheila and we were all pregnant at about the same time. We ate very well that night and had a wonderful time.

Monkeys 

And the monkeys are on which side of the glass?..... 

Joey got in touch with his inner hippo at the Woodland Park Zoo.  

We love Megan and Lauren! 

We love Megan! 

Joey bliss 

A picnic with Emma's godmother Connie, and Max's godmother, Esther Applesauce. We had many fun days at this little park when we lived on Queen Anne. The playground was vaguely familiar to Emma. Max acted like it was something he remembered too, although since he was 1 when we moved, I think he only remembers it from earlier vacations. The godmothers are as wonderful as always. 

New sculpture at the Ballard Locks. 

In the throat of the library.

Entering the conference room level... Joey called it going into the mouth... 

foam chairs 

Then we explored the cool building on the inside. 

M, E, and J playing on the library 

The new downtown Seattle library was the next stop, we explored the exterior, and then... 

Our first morning of our first day, we stopped by Safeway, bought some donuts, and ate breakfast al fresco. This was about the cloudiest it got the whole two weeks and it burned off by mid morning.  

Back in Austin

We finally got home from our best vacation ever. After being gone from our house for 15 days, we stumbled in today around 4pm. I am going to give everyone the online equivalent of a nice long, vacation photo slide show. But the good thing is, that if you happen to get bored, you can just log off!

I just got all the pictures loaded into my machine, but I don't want to shortchange some of the fun memories.... so I'm going to post a few at a time, over the next week or so, so I can give them ample descriptions.

Of course, real time marches on, and there will be important updates this week about the new school year. Tomorrow we drop off supplies and meet the teachers. Tuesday is the first day back for Max and Emma. And Joey starts his year on Wednesday. And Kathy is snowed under by volunteer work by Thursday.

But for now, it's still vacation time.

Seattle is Swell

We have been so busy! We have been having a blast! We have been seeing old friends!

Seattle is wonderful. Everyone is complaining about the heat, it's in the low 80's today and we just shake our heads and say, "It is not hot here." There is no humidity and a nice breeze. I'm typing while sitting next to an open window (no screen/no bugs) listening to planes fly by, birds chirp and wind rustle the leaves.

So far, we've hauled the kids all over the place asking them, "do you remember this? do you remember this?" They mostly forgot the big picture, but remember the details. For instance, they don't remember the Ballard Locks, but they remember where the toys are kept at the quilt shop I dragged them to 100 times. The old house looks smaller than Emma remembered it. They remembered the round about at the intersection by the old house. They remembered the playground at the park I took them to so often.

They fell in love with our friends' kids, Megan and Lauren. And they've met other kids who were babies when they were. We've seen friends from the old office, had picnics and dinner with other friends, have some on call for visits in the next couple of days. We bought a membership to the Seattle Zoo, since we think we'll come back for another visit before we head home to Austin, and since the pass works at lots of zoos in Texas (Dallas, Houston, Waco (did I know they even had a zoo?))

We drive around trying to figure out what has changed, what stores are gone now, what houses have been replaced by bigger ones. Queen Anne looks much like it did when we left. Even the staff at my old Safeway is still there, just a little older. The sack boy (who delivered my newspaper about 15 years ago) even asked what my old delivery address and name was when he thought he recognized me (although that sort of seemed like a Rainman type thing going on...)

So far, we've been to the new Downtown Library (amazing), Pike Place Market, the International District for Emma -- twice, our old office to see co-workers of the past, Snoqualmie Falls, Ballard Locks, the Zoo, a concert, three parks, our old street, and we've only been here for 4 full days!

More news soon...I can't figure out how to post pictures, so there will be a retrospective when we get home...