And it feels good to meet again.  I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, seeing the hospital where Korben was born,  seeing the first house we bought, visiting with old friends, and remembering just how lush and green this beautiful state is (the western part anyway).  What I have seemed to have forgotten is how much it truly rains here.  But I know that behind all those clouds are the most majestic mountains I have ever encountered in my 39 years of life.  Oh, how I would love to see them again.

We’ve had an amazing fall with incredible weather, that is until we crossed the Cascade Mountain pass on 90 to enter the Seattle area. And then the rain started and it hasn’t stopped in days!  I will not!… I will not let this rain stop us from getting out to show our children the stunning Emerald City.  Well, maybe not so stunning right now being that you can’t even see the city behind the dense clouds.

We went out anyway.  If there is one thing to remember about this area, it is how quickly the weather can and does change.

First up… Oxbow Farm in Carnation, WA.  In between the rain we did manage to get some pumpkins for carving and painting.  This farm is a sweet little place.  No charge to roam the farm and read their informative signs, which we did even in the rain.

 

 

We also met the owners of the Wicked Pies food truck, in the Oxbow parking lot mud lot who were just closing up shop truck.  We had a brief discussion on New York style pizza.  They insisted that is what they made… the real deal… NYC pizza.  I will have to be the judge of that next time they are around town and open.  Too many times now I’ve been told by pizza shop owners, that their pizza was NYC style and so far I’ve been extremely disappointed.

It was a fun day in the country, on the outskirts of Seattle.  I am so excited to get into the city again, back to some of my most favorite spots.

To be continued…

 

10/25/14

Life changes quickly, in an instant… like the instant your husband is playing basketball at 11pm on New Years Eve and he feels like he has been kicked in the heel but instead, he has ruptured his Achilles tendon.  The flight plans to return to the motorhome parked in Seattle are just a vast memory of what was “supposed” to be… those were my plans not God’s.  We kicked off the new year in style.

We flew home from Seattle to NJ on December 9th to celebrate two birthdays and Christmas with family and friends.  We planned to return to Seattle on January 13th to continue on our journey of traveling this amazing country in our motorhome.  But before I knew it I was in a waiting room of a surgery center waiting to hear that my husband’s surgery to sew his Achilles back together was a success.  And indeed it was a success but also there lies ahead a long road to full recovery. So here I am typing from the comforts of my home here in freezing NJ.  Winter in NJ wasn’t exactly in the plan either.

I was thinking of writing new posts about our travels and back dating them.  I instead will pick up from where I left off, several months ago, and start them here in January remembering the days that feel so long ago when I was living my dream, that has been only temporarily put on hold… I keep reminding myself of this!

 

 

We went with Seahawk blue!!  Go Seahawks!!

Three reasons why I loved this science center:

1.  It was empty.  Which was great for us, but I assume not good for the science center.

2.  There was something for all 4 kids 6 of us.

3.  We saw things here that we hadn’t yet seen elsewhere.  After stopping at so many science/discovery museums things are all starting to look the same… this wasn’t the case here.

 

The main exhibit here is a T-Rex named Sue.  This particular T-Rex is about 90% complete, the most complete T-Rex ever.  We aren’t much into dinosaurs, so as impressive as this dinosaur was, my kids didn’t stop for a second to check it out, especially when they spotted exhibits that involved water.

As a side note,  you may notice that the quality of some of these pictures are superb.  That is because the day we were here there was also a photography student here.  He was taking lots of pictures of Sue and then he asked if he could take some pictures of us and the kids.  I said sure and the next day he sent us some of the pictures he took.

Meet Sue.

 

I have to be honest, I’m not sure what they are looking at here but it must have been interesting.

 

Listening to the radio by biting on the straw.

 

Jeff and Korben spent a lot of time at this tube wall, creating the prefect path for a traveling ball. Between the water exhibits and this wall, it was like Korben had died and went to heaven. 

 

My personal favorite, the paper airplane shooter.

Airplane Construction.

And shoot…

 

While Jeff and the girls were shooting paper airplanes Koah was creating his own flying object with a paper cup and a fan.

 

But even better than the airplane shooter was watching Koah’s hair stand on its end.  For some reason this struck us all as very very funny.  Koah placed his hands on this large silver ball while Kenzie turned a crank, creating static electricity.   I know I know… it’s not nearly as funny for you as it was for us.  But you gotta love Koah’s face here.

 

A few other highlights.

 

As you can see here we had the place to ourselves, which always helps to make for a stress free day (mostly).

 

I highly recommend this science center.  We spend a good portion of our day here and it was well worth the stop.  It is in the heart of downtown Spokane, just steps away from the Spokane public library and only a few blocks to Riverfront Park.

We found it.

 

This is located in Riverfront Park at the heart of the city of Spokane.  We didn’t spend too much time at Riverfront Park since by the time we arrived there, there was little daylight left.  From what we saw the park seemed to have a nice variety of activities, even though some of the main attractions were closed for the season.

We were disappointed when the gondola ride was closed.  But that didn’t stop us from creating our own fun, like we have grown accustomed to doing.  The city blocks were a big hit for Freya.

 

In this area of the park the rides were closed and ice rink wasn’t quite ready for skating yet.  It was a neat little area that we unintentionally wound up exploring in search for a bathroom for the big K.  We never did find that bathroom.  So next time you are in Spokane stay clear of the  wet stop next to the little brown building by the…. oh never mind.

 

This park is well known for its beautiful waterfalls/rapids and its amazing bridges.  By the time we reached the falls we were only able to capture this one bridge by this one small area of the falls.  Not far from this bridge was another bridge that was super pretty.  We stood on it just as dusk fell and listened to the falling water although we couldn’t really see it.

 

This sign couldn’t have come into view at a more perfect time.  Freya was having a tantrum in the van about… well, that part is not important nor can I even remember.  It was one of those “take cover your life depends on it” kind of tantrums.  We had all made an effort to calm her with results ending in scratches and/or random van junk getting hurled at us.  But then I saw this sign…pointed it out to her and it was like a switched turned off inside her.  Instant joy!  I have thought about this sign often since this day and have even considered investing in one for those dire need situations but we all know it never works as good the second time around.

 

And then we went for ice cream but that is not too note worthy since it seems to be a nightly event.  Now there’s idea,  I travel the country testing out all the ice cream shops I can find.  No, all the bakeries I find…yeah that’s it!

I’m gonna stop now.  Good night!