Allie's Visit

Wow, it's been quiet here for far too long! Right after Easter, my sister came to visit from her orphanage in Honduras for ten days. Then she went on to visit my parents while the rest of us embarked on a two-week road trip from Denver to Houston. Once we got back to Seattle, my brother came to visit for a long weekend and the following weekend, Adam went camping with some friends. But I've finally got all the photos edited and I'm determined to catch up as quickly as I can. 

So, I picked Allison up from the airport on the Tuesday evening of Easter week. Of course, we went straight to Molly Moon's for ice cream! On Wednesday, she graciously watched the little girls while I volunteered at Claire's preschool. On Thursday, we took advantage of a rare sunny spring day and went to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We were sad to go without Adam, but the forecast was nothing but rain for the weekend. The tulip fields are already extremely muddy on the nicest days. 

 

 On Friday, we lucked out with even more beautiful weather and spent the afternoon at Discovery Park in Magnolia. Since my dad has every Friday off now (he works four ten-hour days), my parents decided to visit for the weekend. We were thrilled with the fantastic view of Mount Rainier from the beach!

Traffic getting back from Discovery Park was horrible - if I ever go on a weekday again, I need to remember to leave early! We got home just in time for Claire and Adam to leave for the preschool overnight camp out. They saw a marionette puppet show, sang around the campfire and made smores on Friday evening, got to sleep in a cabin with two of her best friends and their dads, had a pancake breakfast, and ended with field games on Saturday morning. 

While they were gone, we went out for pizza, rented The Founder, and played lots of board games with Maggie. My parents could only stay for one night, so they left after lunch on Saturday. That evening, Adam, Allie, and I went out for Thai food and saw Cirque du Soleil. About every two years, Cirque du Soleil performs at our local park. The three of us actually saw the last show, Kurios, together too, back in 2015. This show, Luzia, was all about Mexico. The costumes were so fun and colorful and they did the coolest stuff with water. The stage basically turned into a pool at one point - seriously amazing! We had a great time and would highly recommend it.  

Just as the weather forecast predicted, Sunday was a dreary rainy day. We had lunch at Cafe Rio and introduced Allie to our favorite indoor pool in Lynwood. We love that in addition to the lazy river, water slides, and kids' splash area, there's a warm water pool and a family hot tub.



On Monday evening, Allie and I went to a macaron making class at The Pantry, the cooking school operated by the famed pizza place, Delancey. After watching the pastry chef's demonstrate, we broke into four teams and were each tasked with making a batch of macarons ourselves. Allie and I were on the rhubarb macaron team (the pink ones). The other flavors were pistachio, lemon, and chocolate - we got to bring a dozen (three of each) home. My favorite were the chocolate because it was filled with this awesome garam marsala ganache. I don't think I'll be making macarons at home on a regular basis, but it was really fun to learn!







Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with the usual preschool volunteering and grocery shopping, along with binge watching The Crown at every spare moment. Thursday was Adam's birthday! It was actually his golden birthday - 27 on April 27th. Unfortunately, it was a pretty stressful day at work for him, just trying to finish up a project before our vacation, but we did our best to make it special. I made these lemon sticky buns for breakfast, we brought him Chick-fil-A for lunch at work while Claire and Maggie brought birthday cards for his office, I made steak with baked potatoes and roasted asparagus for dinner, and Allison made his favorite chocolate peanut butter cake for dessert. I gave him "Poems Every Catholic Should Know" and tickets to a Jim Gaffigan show.



On Friday, in between packing for our trip and attending a first birthday party for our goddaughter, we squeezed in a visit to Pike Place Market. Sadly, I left my good camera at home, so I didn't get many pictures, but we had a great time stopping at all of our favorite spots - Beecher's Cheese, Pike Place Chowder, Daily Dozen Doughnuts, Ellenos Greek Yogurt, Fran's Chocolate, and Market Spice Tea. We were so sad to part ways at the airport on Saturday morning! She went on to see the rest of our family in Richland, followed by visiting friends in Boston and Houston before heading back to Honduras. She is done with her two years of missionary service right around Christmas. We are counting down the days until she calls Seattle home!