Richland Road Trips

There are so many trips we would have loved to have taken this summer - three weddings of dear friends, British Columbia for Canada's 150th, Oregon for the total eclipse. But ultimately, we knew it was most important (and most affordable!) to visit my parents in Eastern Washington. We made it to Richland for two long weekends. 

Over July 4th, we went swimming at a family friends' house and at my mom's gym. The girls had a great time playing in the sprinklers and kiddie pool in the backyard. Although Betsy mostly enjoyed stealing the cherry tomatoes from their garden! 

 

 

 

 We visited again the last weekend of August. We went bowling, got ice cream at the Country Mercantile, rode on the Carousel of Dreams, and played at the splash park. 

 

You often hear jokes about how traveling with several small children isn't a vacation, it's a trip. Sure, it's a bit harder to get everyone to sleep, but staying at my parents' house is much, much more relaxing than my regular life. They serve delicious meals, which we often get to enjoy on their back deck with a beautiful view of the golf course. While Betsy's napping and the big girls are watching a show, we don't have any chores or projects to work on and can play board games, read, or take a nap ourselves. Little things like getting to use their Keurig, walking to their neighborhood park, or watching donuts being made on after Mass trips to Krispy Kreme are just really fun. We still can't get over how lucky we are to have them only four hours away!

P.S. Adam's parents and his oldest brother's family made it through Hurricane Harvey unscathed, thankfully. Adam's brother was actually on a work trip in Oregon and couldn't get home for almost a week, so he drove up to Seattle to meet with some clients and we got to visit with him a few times. It's been really sad to see so many homes and so much of the infrastructure destroyed in the suburb of Houston we're from. Texas is in our prayers, as are all those fighting the forest fires currently plaguing the Pacific Northwest.

Our Anniversary + The Edel Gathering

Things have been kind of hard since Claire's hiking accident. One dad with a pretty badly sprained ankle + one quite pregnant mom + three very small children + emotional trauma = not exactly a recipe for success. But, today, let's focus on two bright spots over the last month.

First, our seventh anniversary! Adam and I had the best time celebrating on a really great date night. Seattle has an impressive food scene and we spent a while researching new restaurants we wanted to try. We finally narrowed it down to Bateau, Renee Erickson's new steakhouse in Capitol Hill. 

The beef is all grass-fed from local farms and butchered in house. They want to use the whole cow, so they sell some less-common cuts of steak and they have limited availability of everything. All the cuts are written on big chalkboards and the waiters cross things off as customers order them.

We started off with salads, then I ordered the ranch cut with mashed potatoes and Adam ordered the Denver with fries and garlic aioli. We had just enough room left to share a bread pudding for dessert. Everything was delicious and very reasonably priced. 

We had such a fun time reminiscing about our honeymoon at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico (we would go back in a second!) and realized I've been expecting for more than half of our anniversaries thus far.



After dinner, we had planned to go up to the Columbia Tower Observatory (the tallest building in Seattle) to watch the sunset, but, alas, the Sea Fair parade meant there was no parking to be found downtown. So, we went to go see The Big Sick instead. It was such a different and delightful romantic comedy. We'd highly recommend it.

The next day we had our traditional anniversary family feast of fajitas and derby pie, the food we served at our wedding reception. I promise our children were more enthused than they appear in this photo!



The following weekend, my dear friend, Libby, and I flew to Austin to attend the Edel Gathering. I am so thankful that Adam's ankle had healed enough by then for me to go, because I had been looking forward to this for many months. We arrived on Friday evening, just in time for the announcement of the crazy shoe contest winners at the opening cocktail party. We thought the Frito pie bar was such a fun and delicious idea.

We had planned to attend the Soul Core session on Saturday morning, but when we arrived the room was already full and we weren't quite gung-ho enough to join the crowd working out in the hallway. Libby actually did head to the gym, while I chose to read by the pool instead. We showered, walked over to the flagship Whole Foods for lunch, and then it was conference time!

We heard three beautiful talks, indulged in some shopping from all the fabulous vendors, went to the Vigil Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, and made some new friends during the closing dinner and dance party. The face painting booth was such a great addition to the evening. One of my friends from high school, Katie, was there too and it was so great to catch up with her.

Our flight didn't leave until 7:30 on Sunday night, so we had almost the whole day to explore Austin. We read by the pool until checkout time, then walked around South Congress, where I purchased my first pair of Kendra Scott earrings and we had tacos at Guero's. We finished off the afternoon with pedicures and Amy's Ice Cream. It was such a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend away!



We took 2016 off because Betsy was a little baby the whole time, but Adam and I really like to give each other a couple days of kid-free time a year. I've been to the Edel Gathering twice and to Portland with my sister. Adam's been camping twice and visited friends in Pittsburgh, while also accompanying my brother on a scholarship interview. When family members offer to watch the girls so we can both sneak away, we are all over it. They are awesome and either my parents or my sister have kept them overnight several times. The last time was our fifth anniversary, but my parents are coming to give us 24-ish hours off next month. To say we are very, very excited would be definitely be an understatement.

2017 Vacation: Road Trip From Denver to Houston

For our big vacation this year, we flew to Denver, drove to Tulsa for Adam's sister's college graduation, and continued onto Houston to spend more time with his family. Previously, the most we'd ever driven with our kids was five hours, so we were a little apprehensive, but it actually went really, really well. 

The one thing we weren't worried about at all was our flight from Seattle to Denver. It's just over two hours and up to that point we'd only flown much longer distances with three kids (to Montreal and Orlando) so we figured this would be a piece of cake. Well, we made the rookie parenting mistake of switching Betsy to a new pacifier the night before (the ones she had previously were for babies 6-12 months). She decided she hated the new one about halfway through the flight and screamed the rest of the time. We switched back as soon as we got our luggage from baggage claim! 

We were in Denver to visit our good friends from college, Matt and Kelly. (They visited us in Seattle two years ago.) Their three kids are each a couple months younger than ours, almost to the day. They were such gracious hosts! They served the most delicious food the whole time and even had two guest rooms in their basement for us. We arrived on Saturday evening and went to Latin Mass with them on Sunday morning. 

It was snowing when we arrived on Saturday, but it was in the high 60s on Sunday so the snow melted very quickly. Claire and Jude had a great time playing in their backyard that afternoon while the little kids napped. All the kids played together incredibly well the whole visit. At one point, I said to Claire, "Jude is a pretty nice friend, huh?" and she replied, "Yep. I think I want to get married to him when I grow up." (Which means Kelly's and my plan is working out quite nicely so far, ha ha!) 

After dinner that evening, we went to a park in their neighborhood for an awe-inspiring view of the Rockies. Wow!

On Monday, we drove up into the mountains to have lunch at Beaux Joe's Pizza (apparently a Colorado institution) and walk around Evergreen Lake. Aren't Betsy and Mary Catherine the cutest baby friends?

On Tuesday, we drove up to Mount Genesee for another little hike and picnic lunch. Because a couple baby girls took very short naps, we had some extra time that afternoon, which we spent at the Littleton Museum. It's right next to the library about a mile from their house and it's basically a way better farm park than the ones by us here in Seattle. Many more animals, like peacocks and donkeys, a log cabin, and a historic farm house.



 We got an early start on Wednesday for our longest drive - about eight hours to Wichita, Kansas. We rented a minivan because it was just a smidge more expensive than a sedan. We were driving a Kia Sedona, which must have a large middle row middle seat than our Toyota Sienna, because we were able to fit Claire's car seat there. It helped so much with her carsickness, plus she was great at entertaining Betsy. We stayed with my friend Abigail's parents in Wichita that evening. They were such generous hosts, even when we got there an hour later than we'd hoped because we forgot to factor in the change to central time. With two guest rooms in their basement and many awesome toys, it was much, more nicer than staying in a hotel and we were very grateful.



Before leaving Wichita on Thursday morning, we stopped at Eighth Day Books, an independent Christian bookstore we'd read about on Rod Dreher's blog. Adam and I could have spent all day browsing there! But, since we had three small children with us, we had to settle for taking turns making a quick lap around the store while the other parent watched the kids in the basement children's section. It was a pretty great children's section though - we picked out two more chapter books to get us through the rest of the trip (The Moffats and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.) Adam also got a beautiful little icon for his desk at work.



The Pioneer Woman Mercantile is about halfway between Wichita and Tulsa (it's a three hour drive total) so we had to stop there for lunch, of course! We didn't arrive until about 1:30, but there was still a line to be seated, even on a weekday. Handily, there's also a deli counter where you can pick up ready made sandwiches. We shared two turkey clubs, which came with pasta salad, grapes, a cookie, and strawberry lemonade. After lunch, we browsed in the mercantile, where I picked out a vintage jadeite platter, and then picked up some croissants for breakfast the next day at the bakery upstairs.







 We arrived in Tulsa late Thursday afternoon and checked into our very nice two-bedroom Airbnb. Adam's parents and two of his brothers also came for the graduation, so almost the whole family was together. We had planned to go to the Clear Creek Abbey on Friday morning, but ultimately we decided that we all just needed a morning to rest. There's pretty much all we did in Tulsa between graduation events - take our kids to parks, let them nap/play at the Airbnb, and enjoy a few favorite restaurants we don't have in Seattle (Pei Wei and Jason's Deli).









Our kids weren't perfect, but overall I think they did really well at the graduation, various festivities, and baccalaureate Mass at the Newman Center. It was nice to see where Katie went to school and to celebrate her accomplishment!





We left Tulsa on Monday morning and opted to split the drive to Houston into four-hour chunks, spending the night in Dallas in between. We got to stay with our dear friends from Seattle, Bruce and Leslie, who moved to back to Texas last year - they are originally from the Houston area too. We had such a great time catching up with them and are very grateful for their hospitality. We had tentatively thought if we had extra time in the Dallas it would be nice to check out the George W. Bush presidential library at SMU or the Magnolia Market in Waco. And we have a couple wonderful friends from high school we would have loved to see in Dallas too. Unfortunately, we were feeling a bit rundown by this point on a two-week trip with three small children (I was also in the first trimester of pregnancy and still feeling a bit crummy) so we had to keep things as simple as possible. We did at least squeeze in a stop at Buc-ee's on the drive to Houston!



We arrived at Adam's parents' house late Tuesday afternoon. The big highlight of Wednesday for the girls was experiencing Build A Bear for the first time. They are still talking about how much fun they had. Aren't grandparents they best? For the grownups, the highlight was dinner at the Cajun fish place Adam's parents are always raving about - it definitely lived up to their very high praise.









On Thursday, we met Aunt Jenn and their cousin, Estelle, for lunch at Torchy's Tacos in Rice Village and an afternoon at the Houston Children's Museum. It was really fun to take my kids to the children's museum I fondly remember visiting as a child. Although, of course, they've remodeled the entire thing since then and replaced all the exhibits I remembered.

 













On Friday, we went swimming at the home of one of Adam's mom's (and my mom's too!) great friends. I think the theme of this trip was wonderful hospitality - Linda was so nice to open her home to us and even provide frozen pizza and fresh fruit for lunch. After a particularly rainy winter and spring in Seattle, it was really great to experience all the sunshine and warm temperatures in Oklahoma and Texas. Swimming outside in early May was the icing on the cake.



We crossed one more favorite restaurant off the list on Friday evening (a local barbecue spot), spent Saturday morning packing, and flew back to Seattle that afternoon. Equipped with the right pacifier this time, Betsy did much, much better, although I am very glad that was her last flight as a lap baby. Adam's parents will be married for forty years next summer, so obviously a family reunion is in order to celebrate. We spent a lot of our time in Houston discussing where we should go and the location that was decided on will be seriously amazing! The only downside is that we have to wait a whole year to go. Of course, we hope we get to see everyone in Seattle before then. After all, we will have a new baby to snuggle with pretty soon...