Happy Birthday, Jenn!

Our sister-in-law, Jenn {married to Adam's oldest brother, Jeff} turns the big 3-0 today!

Three Things Jenn Loves:

Making homemade sushi.
James Bond books.
Her baby! Yep, Jeff and Jenn are having a baby in July. We are so excited to get the little cousins together!

Three Things Jenn Hates:

Staying up late.
Construction on her way to work.
Getting to the airport too early {as further illustrated in this not-so-funny at the time story}.


{Jeff and Jenn on a recent trip to Alaska.}

Happy Birthday, Jenn! We love you!

P.S. Here's her birthday post from last year.

Travel Dreams

Adam and I have a ton of Continental miles from trips between Houston and Pittsburgh and a few other wonderful trips we've been blessed to take. By a ton, I mean 65,000 each. We like to dream about the amazing trips we'll take courtesy of those lovely miles. Right now, we're thinking:

Alaska - 25,000 Miles.

Hawaii - 40,000 Miles.

We're not planning on going anywhere extravagant super soon. You know, since we just went to Europe and would like to spread out the fun a little. But maybe for a post-grad reward or our five-year anniversary!

Travel Dreams

For our past five years of marriage, we've mainly traveled to see our parents in Houston and our grandparents in Ottawa, New Orleans, and Orlando. We've also taken some just-for-fun weekend trips to places like Toronto and Washington D.C. while were living in Pittsburgh and Portland and Vancouver now that we're in Seattle. 

We've long dreamed of doing something big for our five year anniversary. In particular, we'd hoped to visit Shanghai to see my brother graduate from high school. But, when you factor in the cost of flights, visas, hotels (we can't stay with them because my mom and brother will be moving to a smaller apartment in their building when my dad starts work here) and childcare expenses (we aren't brave enough to bring the girls with us) it just wouldn't work with our $5,000 budget. 

Our other idea was to do something with my family because it's also my parents' 30th anniversary in August. We were thinking an Alaskan cruise. But, with taking my brother to scholarship interviews, college orientation, and getting him moved into the dorms, my dad wouldn't have enough vacation to spare this summer. 

So, back to the drawing board we went. For various reasons, we thought the beginning of May would be ideal. Although I tried to sell London to Adam (perhaps even showing Claire a video of "Peppa Pig World" so she could join in the persuasion) we eventually decided on a week in San Francisco. 

We feel really good about it! We've already booked our flights, apartment, and rental car for $2,400 - less than half of our original budget. We've never been to California before, so we're excited to explore the Bay Area. It will be the 12th state we've visited in our ten years together, so at this rate we'll have hit the whole continental U.S. at our 40th anniversary. 

While we were brainstorming, we realized that we only have fifteen more summer vacations with Claire before she goes to college! When we think about all the places we'd love to see with her, fifteen doesn't seem like all that much.

We really hope to take at least one more trip to visit our grandparents in Ottawa and Orlando (1). 

We'd love to explore more of California. San Diego, with the beach, world famous zoo, and Lego Land, seems like a fun spot for little kids (2). And, of course, we'd love to go to Disney Land at some point (3).

When we feel like we can tackle longer road trips, we'd like to drive to Salt Lake City to visit Adam's cousins and see Utah's national parks (4). In the other direction, Banff national park in Alberta would be another beautiful road trip destination (5). 

A ten-year anniversary trip to Hawaii would be a dream come true (6). Flights are actually pretty reasonably priced from here. And we still hope to make that Alaska cruise happen someday (7). You get to factor in some cost savings if you already live in Seattle! 

We couldn't leave Pittsburgh off the list. It would be so fun to show them where we went to college and where Claire was born. Maybe we'd combine this with a trip to Cedar Point or Philadelphia or a resort in West Virginia (8).

Another big dream of ours is to take our children to see where their patron saints are from. Maybe for our fifteen-year anniversary we'll go to Rome and Assisi, for St. Clare (9), and for our twenty-year anniversary we'll go to Edinburgh, for St. Margaret, and London or Dublin (10). 

Here is where Adam and I would probably have to make some compromises. I'm a big city vacation person, so I'd probably pick Washington DC (11) and New York or Boston (12). But Adam is the opposite, so he'd go for more national park excursions like Yellowstone (13) or Yosemite (14). I think we could both agree on the Grand Canyon (15) though! 

There's so much of the Pacific Northwest we haven't explored yet - Mount Rainier, the Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan Islands, Lake Chelan, the Oregon coast, Crater Lake. Our closest relatives are in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, so I'm sure we'll make many trips to British Columbia over the years. 

If we all do is explore the Northwest and visit relatives, we will be more than happy. But it sure is fun to dream, right?

Nashville!

I met Abigail during Adam's senior year at Pitt. I had just graduated and was working as a nanny and tutor. Abigail and her husband, Tim, were serving as FOCUS missionaries. We bonded over expecting over first babies within a few days of each other, along with our other dear friends, Kelly and Rosemary. 

Adam graduated over three years ago now, but we've been lucky to see each other several times since. We went back to Pittsburgh to visit once, Abigail visited Seattle right after Maggie was born, and we've randomly met up in Texas and Florida. 

After their two years of service at Pitt, Tim and Abigail served another two years at Vanderbilt. They liked Nashville so much they decided to stay, so they recently bought a house and Tim started working at a tech start-up.

When Alaska Airlines announced a direct flight to Nashville starting this fall with super cheap introductory prices, I decided to fly out and visit right before Maggie turned two and could no longer fly free. This was the first trip I've ever taken the girls on by myself and the longest I've been apart from Adam since we've been married. 

And it went really, really well actually! We flew out on Tuesday and back on Friday. The girls did great on both of the four hour flights. We got an extra seat for Maggie each time, which helped tremendously. They played for a while with the goodies loaded in their backpacks, we ate the meal I'd packed (lunch on the way there and dinner on the way back), we took a trip to the bathroom (goodness, the three of us just barely squeezed in there!) and then they watched a movie on our tablet while I got to read a book.

It really helped that Tim and Abigail's two kids, Amelia and Peter, have the same car seats as we do. The car seat installation task has always fallen to Adam, so I honestly don't really know how. I mean, I could figure it out, but it was really nice not to! Tim installed our car seats in his car, which he generously let us borrow during the visit, and then carried the car seats into the airport on our way home. 

On Wednesday, we met up with a blog friend, Lindsey Jo, at the Nashville Zoo. It was so much fun to spend time with her and her three little guys!

 That evening, we had dinner at Edley's Barbecue followed by popsicles at Las Paletas. 

On Thursday, we had lunch at Chick-fil-A (Claire and Maggie were fascinated by the play place, since the new locations in Seattle don't have them!) and explored Centennial Park, home to the famed Pantheon replica. 

And on Friday, Claire got to accompany Amelia to her Catechesis of the Good Shepherd class, followed by a walk through the Cheekwood Gardens before we headed to the airport. 

Of course, I excessively Instagramed the whole trip. You know me. I don't plan to travel solo with small children again any time soon (I definitely couldn't fit another child into an airplane bathroom!) but I'm really glad we made this trip. 

A Perfect Seattle Weekend

My mom and little brother, Scott, are visiting from China! {My dad is an engineer for a big oil company and was temporarily transferred to Shanghai. Fingers crossed, they should move back to the states when my brother graduates from high school.} 

On Saturday, we took them to see Snoqualmie Falls, one of our favorite Seattle spots. It's a half-hour drive from our Eastside suburb. 

Amazing, right? Although they're obviously not as wide, these are actually taller than Niagara Falls.





After taking in the falls, we like to have lunch in the nearby town of Snoqualmie. Our favorite spot is the Woodman Lodge. They have ridiculously huge portions, so I'd definitely recommend sharing!

After lunch, you have to walk around the cute little town. It's right between the falls and Mount Si, at the foot of the Cascades. If you feel so inclined, you can take a historic train ride up to the top of the waterfall.



We like to end our walk at the riverfront park. Before heading home, we usually stop for ice cream at the old-fashioned soda shop, but we were still stuffed from lunch.



Instead, we stopped at a roadside stand for some locally-grown cherries. Yum!

 

After Mass on Sunday morning, we headed downtown to Kerry Park for the awesome view of the Seattle skyline.



We met our friends from Pittsburgh, Joe and Alex, there! Joe is interning at Adam's company for the summer and his fiancee, Alex, is in town visiting him this week. We are majorly rooting for them to move to Seattle permanently after they graduate next spring!

 





Claire had a blast playing on the metal sculpture in the middle of the park.





Kerry Park is in the super fancy Queen Anne neighborhood. If you walk a few blocks down {past some gorgeous $10 million homes} you'll come to another outlook with a view of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains. You can also see all the cruise ships getting ready to set sail for Alaska! There's a really pretty public garden across the street too.



We had lunch at Pike Place Market. Our favorite spots are Beecher's Cheese and Pike Place Chowder. It can be kind of tricky to find seating, but there's a little area indoors behind the chowder place that's never too crowded. And even has high chairs!



Although the prime attraction is the seafood booth famous for their fish throwing routine, I just love browsing through all the flower stalls.



We've never braved the crowd of Asian tourists to get a drink at the very first Starbucks, but if that's your thing, more power to you!