Surprise!

      I know, I know, I've been away for a bit. It has been a crazy few weeks. I'm hopefully going to put up a string of posts. (depending on kiddo naps, so it may take a couple days to get them all up) So, the last post you all saw, I mentioned that I had been busy doing/making things that I couldn't talk about. Well, the majority of it was a gift basket of homemade pampering items for my sister-in-law, Carley, who just graduated from nursing school. So, obviously I couldn't talk about them on here because she reads my posts, but also, it may have been a hint at the bigger gift some of us were giving her. If she started thinking about why I'd be making her a graduation gift, it might occur to her that we were planning on being there, despite her living in Washington. Yup, we had arranged with Oscar, her husband, to surprise her by being there for her graduation. So, a week-long trip to Washington is a large part of why I've been MIA for 3 weeks.  
      So, on Wednesday June 13th, we packed up our van, grabbed Oscar's oldest son, and another niece and headed up to Washington. It is about 13-14 hours driving time, depending on who's driving. ;) Unfortunately, with small children, that can get stretched out quite a bit. We left Salt Lake City after picking Nathaniel up from work around 5:30, and didn't arrive in the Seattle area, at Oscar and Carley's house, until around 12 noon the following day (Thursday).

 

This was the view in the back of our car the majority of the way up there, all 4 "kids" were asleep. I think Jessica was actually awake more often than the 2 teens. 

 

Shortly into Washington, probably around 7ish AM, Jessica sounded like she was throwing up (just gagging luckily) so we got her out of the car for a bit. It was so cute though, she started crying that her stomach was coming out.  Shortly after this, we stopped in Ellensburg and met Nathaniel's sister, Amara, for breakfast before continuing on our way. 

     When we got to Oscar and Carley's house, Nathaniel texted Oscar, so he came out. We had Oscar carry Jessica inside to surprise Carley. Carley was in the laundry room, so we were all able to quietly enter the house, and hear her reaction. Oscar continued into the laundry room and said "look what I found outside." SILENCE. Then Jessica asked Carley why she was crying. To which Carley responded that sometimes people cry when they're happy. Carley said later that her first thought was "I'm dreaming. No, wait, I'm not dreaming, she's really here." She was so very excited to see us. I think she gave the best reaction ever, in the history of... ever. It was fantastic.

 

This picture is shortly after we got there, Carley asked Jessica to show her her funny face. This was the face she made. 

 

  

We had all sorts of fun up there for a week. Board games, chatting, awesome company. I took Jessica to the park a couple times, but she wasn't a very big fan of all the equipment being wet (dew). I didn't think about that problem. It hadn't been raining recently, so I figured it'd be fine. Yeah, Washington isn't quite as dry as Utah. Dew stays a bit longer there. 

 

We also went to the beach on the afternoon of the one sunny day up there. It wasn't the only day without rain, but it was cloudy the rest of the time. I enjoyed going to the gym with Carley, and taking advantage of their free child care. I also taught Carley how to make jam, and we made possibly one of the best things ever known to mankind. Strawberry-Mango (or Red Mango) jam. The name came as we were talking about the mangos, and Jessica piped up "Red Mango?" (I think she might be as addicted to that place as I am) We figured that since the jam was red, and it had mangos in it, that Red Mango was a fitting name.  I also had my first sushi up there. Yeah, okay, I think I see what the hype is about, but I doubt I'll be able to eat it down here. They just know how to make it better there. We left their house the afternoon of Tuesday the 19th, and barely made it back for an appointment we had the next day at 2:30PM. Nathaniel and I were both just extra tired, so we ended up taking a longer nap than we'd expected just west of Boise. 

     So, that was the very short synopsis of our trip to Washington, and unfortunately it is time to get Jessica up from her nap. There is a slight possibility that I will write another post tonight, but it is more likely to be tomorrow. (I just figured it would be better to do multiple topic-driven posts, rather than one, super long "past three weeks" post).