Seattle, again!

Two weeks ago, Dane and the other interns were invited to a behind-the-scenes tour of the Boeing factory in Everet, WA. It was on a Tuesday. When we looked at flights for Monday, the weekend before, they did not look promising, so we thought, "Why not?" and flew to Seattle to spend the weekend with my sister, Leslie Ann and her family. Getting there was a little bit of a roller coaster ride and I don't think I will ever forget how we felt.

Here's the skinny. All day Sat., flights were oversold. And even though that does not always mean you won't get on, it did not look promising. Sunday, looked great though. We decided that spending all day in the airport on Sat. just to get our hopes up wouldn't be worth it, so we went to bed Friday night, planning to hope on a plane on Sunday. Saturday morning, my alarm went off around 5:30 am. Wonderful. Don't you love it when you forget to turn it off for the weekend? I mutter into my pillow, go back to sleep as Dane checks the flight just in case. "WAKE UP!" he shouted, "There are 70 open seats on the flight in 2 hours. If we leave now we can make it!"
We hadn't packed a thing, so in 20 min, we packed and ran out the door just in time to realize that Dane had actually been looking at the flight for Sunday. Grrrr. There was no chance of going back to sleep now, so we though, since we were ready to go, we might as well see if we could get on.

I am realizing that this is not really the short version that I meant to tell...So basically, after dealing with an unhappy gate agent who acted as though her acknowledging our presence should have been an honor we got on the plane. It was oversold by 2 and she had put us dead last on the standby list. Numbers 9 and 10. I could not believe how lucky we had been to get on! I settled into my seat, made friends with my neighbors and suddenly heard someone calling my name. It was the gate agent. He told me that I had to get off the plane. NOW. What? Our carry-on was all the way in the back and by the time I had made my way back to grab it and was off the plane, all I would have needed was a little poke to burst into tears. "What a morning." I thought.
I was just about off the plane, when I heard, "Never mind, ma'am. You may sit down." I have no idea what happened, but they let me back to my seat. It was awful. But really good to know that we were on our way to see Leslie Ann!

So now that I have that story off my chest, let me tell you about how wonderful the trip was!

We loved spending time with Leslie, David and Molly and Annie. My only regret is that I didn't talk more pictures. We went swimming for FHE, out to the hot tub almost every night, decorated Easter eggs (Martha Stewart style), went shopping and maybe my favorite of all was the walk/hike. Molly took her bucket and she and Annie picked all the dandelions they could find and filled the bucket. It was cute to see their personalities show through in this activity. Annie was vary careful in making sure they got all of them, and no dandelions fell out. Molly on the other hand was completely unaware of the little yellow trail she was leaving behind as she swung the bucket round and around. It was like watching a movie. She would squat down to pick up a flower and unknowingly knock over her bucket. Then, discover the spilled flowers on the ground, pick the bucket up, and knock it over again while putting in the first spilled flowers. She kept spilling them and picking them up. Her face was so happy and I am sure she thought she had scored the jackpot of all spots to find dandelions. I think it was really frustrating for Annie. They were both so cute.

Can you see all the dandelions on the ground?







We had so much fun! Thanks for being such great hosts, Dave and Leslie!
Here we are with Molly and Annie.




Dane went on the tour with the interns on Tuesday and we had all been planning on flying home that night on a read-eye. The loads were not looking good. Surprise, suprise, eh? In fact, the chances of us getting on a flight from Seattle to Houston all day Wednesday didn't look good at all. We hadn't checked in either, which meant, all of the interns an other travelers with our same priority would be ahead of us. So, to make a long story short because the flight was wide open, we flew home out of Portland on Thursday. We had a day longer than we had expected, so on Wednesday, we rented a car (thanks Mom, and Dad) and took a little detour over to Prosser. Again, it was amazing to be able to have family close enough that we could see them, share a warm meal together and have somewhere to sleep. This is a picture we took of Mt. Hood on our way to Portland from Prosser.





SIGH. Talk about a long weekend in Washington. I cannot even express how blessed we have been to be able to travel and visit family. Thank you very much Continental Airlines.