Life is Good

We went on our last vacation before school started. We flew to the Emerald City, aka Seattle, Washington for three days and then drove up to Vancouver, Canada for another three days.

But first Seattle. The last time Matthew and I were here was over 15 years ago... Which to me is eons ago. I have no recollection of it. Definitely BK..Before Kids.. And I vaguely remember Amos picking us up in Seattle to drive us across the border into Canada.

We traveled with one extra 'daughter', Shawna, who has always been a wonderful traveling companion for our girls. She came up a day earlier than her parents who met us the following day.

The Mineta airport's new terminal (new to us at least) was really nice! This was the first time I saw a store of this kind.

I've purchased a few of their t-shirts for Matthew but it was always from a Hallmark store. Who knew they had their own store? But I'd rather not have to go into an airport to shop.

Alaska Airlines was pretty smooth (only a 20 min delay for our departing flight; and we came home about 10 minutes earlier than scheduled) but we still had to stand in a long line to check in luggage even though we checked in and paid online.

Since we will be a group of 7, we rented a mini-van. The salesman at Dollar assigned us a Kia Sedona but recommended with a group our size plus luggage we would be more comfortable with a Toyota Sienna Minivan... but it's be $8 more per day. Of course, we declined. Signed our papers and went downstairs to pick up our Sedona.

But when we got to our assigned space, the car waiting for us was a Sienna minivan! What a pleasant surprise! The girls were so excited to be in a new huge car and found a baby seat in between the two captain chairs in the second row. We were shocked that this fancy new van had a tiny seat available with no backrest but it had a seat belt. What did we know... we never drove a mini van before and were not familiar with their 'amenities'.

Maybe this seat was for a toddler?

Sitting on cupholders?

Well we did not know that apparently there is a seat back in the trunk area where you can take and attach onto the cupholder section. Ohhhhhh. that's what it does.

Now Hannah had a backrest but the space was very tight. Not good for a full-sized adult.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Bellevue which I was told in advance that it has the awesome-ist mall ever!! It was quite large and we did go there three times, not to shop, but to dine at their yummy restaurants.

Our room

Shawna's room in the Suite

Our first day there we explored Bellevue by checking out their shops and of course take advantage of the hotel's indoor pool.

A BIG Mall Game

Candies for our namesake daughter

Warm Indoor pool... yay... no need for sunscreen!

 Let's just say, the girls were very influenced by the Olympics...

Up next... tourist time!