i'm lacking inspiration

Hello again! I'm back in blogland. I've been waiting around for the blog fairy to hit me with her wand of creativity, but alas, she must be working overtime as the tooth fairy this week or something. I wanted my next post to be exciting and fun, but it's probably just going to end up as the normal recap of the family time from mom and dad's trip. Not that that's a bad thing.

Before I get to that, though, I must tell of my bargains of the day. We're half-way through VBS at church, and today my friend, Angie, and I went out with her two kids for lunch at Panera Bread. (Let me tell you, I was so happy when that place finally opened up here in Vancouver.) I had a delightful turkey/bacon sandwich on tomato basil bread with a cup of baked potato soup. YUM! If only I could figure out how to make my sandwiches at home taste that good. After that, I had planned to hit up the Goodwill across the street. I shop there for books for my classroom because I can usually get them for 49 cents and I hate paying full price for books that get smashed in desks. Well, I scored 19 chapter books for under $11. SWEET! I also ended up bringing home a nice hardback edition of the Polar Express for $1.99. On the inside cover it says it retails for $18.95. I couldn't leave it sitting there. Now that August is almost here, I'm starting to think school stuff again. I've already started stocking up on 88 cent Crayola markers and 22 cent packs of glue sticks. (Where is the summer going???) Come next week, I'll probably be spending a bit of time in my classroom.

Now for some vacation highlights. I'll post my favorite pictures, trying to keep the number per day at a minimum, that way I won't bore you with the over 300 pictures we took, and I'll try to use different ones than I put on facebook (and that will eventually make it to myspace). Mom and Dad had 242 printed out at Costco and then we had probably 25 more done the night before they left. I'm going to be making them a scrapbook, just waiting for the vacation pack to come from Creative Memories. We got one of those picfolio albums, where you just slide the pictures in under the plastic. Should be much easier to work with that what I'm used to using.

Saturday - we went downtown to Sand in the City, rode the Max to Saturday Market, and toured the Rose Garden (where Phil proposed to me). Here is the winning sand sculpture. Don't ask me how they do it, I can't even get sand out of a bucket to stay standing for very long.

And here's mom on her very first ride using public transportation. If you ask her, I'll bet she'll tell you all about the strange looking "creatures" that were also on there with us. (We're not in Ashland anymore, Toto!)

Sunday - It was up to Safeco Field early for the game: Seattle Mariners vs. the Cleveland Indians. Our seats were great (dad didn't want nosebleeds) and the banter between dad and Phil was fun to listen to. I had a hard time knowing where my loyalties now lie. I grew up an Indians fan and married a huge Mariners fan. Times are tough. I didn't really cheer for either team at this game. How could I break the hearts of two men I love the most?

Time for the National Anthem.

After the game we headed to the Seattle Center and the Space Needle for a great view of Seattle. Here I am at the bottom and the top. Cheesy, I know.

Monday - We started at the History of Flight Museum near Boeing Field and then went downtown to Pike Street Market and the waterfront. We ended the day with a ferry ride to Bremerton. Do you know how weird it is to drive your car onto a boat?

This next one is in the space section at the museum. Turns out, Boeing has helped design part of the space station and this is an example of the module where they'd do experiments in space. Notice the treadmill is up on top because when you're in zero gravity it doesn't matter if you walk upside down or not.

Here's one of my favorite pictures from the week.

This one of Mt. Rainier was taken from the ferry. The mountain almost looks fake, doesn't it?

Tuesday - On our way back from Seattle we stopped at Mount St. Helens. It was pretty cloudy, so we could only see a little bit of it. We were at the Johnson Ridge Observatory and we watched a movie about the 1980 eruption. At the end of it, the screen was raised and then these red curtains behind the screen were raised and it was a wall of glass that overlooked the mountain. And let me tell you, even though it was so cloudy, it was one impressive sight to see. I wish I would've taken a picture right there from my seat.

This next picture shows the mountains on the northeast side of St. Helens and Spirit Lake on the top left. There are literally tons of logs that ended up in the lake after the blast. This whole area was all forested until the north side of the mountain collapsed and the whole face of the mountain blasted out. Now it's a national monument and it's been left to recover on its own.

I was a bit bummed that this was all of St. Helens we got to see. There's just a few bits of snow. At this point, we were 5 miles from the mountain, but it sure didn't seem like it.

It's getting late, and I promised myself I'd get more than 6 hours of sleep tonight. I'll work on posting more of our wonderful week tomorrow.