We left on a Friday night. I was surprised to find that the airport was not only different, but NEW. The old terminals had been torn down and new ones had been built. They have obviously been busy during Covid. The B gates were very far away. You have to walk quite a ways to get there. One guy was running down the stairs and lamenting that he had 5 minutes. Then at the bottom of the stairs it said on a sign, “ 7 minutes to B gates” Poor guy. I wonder if he made it.
Here we are on the plane. I read and June started watching Me Before You since she missed watching it with us before.
We were able to do a lot of things while we were there. We played a lot of games, looked through a lot of boxes, ate lots of good food, enjoyed being with family, and watched General Conference. I have pictures of a few things we did so those will get more coverage of course. Pictures always win.
June and I tried to go on a walk every day. The weather was amazing almost the whole time we were there; sunny with mild temperatures. We walked around and saw so many beautiful flowers and plants. Washington is lovely. I saw some plants that I don't remember from my childhood.
We were also able to go down to the Sound. Hunting for crabs is always a favorite. I taught the kids how to catch them and then usually I'm too chicken to do it. But June encouraged me and we did it together. It was really fun to hang out with her. It was towards evening so we got some fun sunset pictures as well.
We spent a lot of time at the store, buying ingredients we forgot and such. It is still a party at the grocery store with June. We even found the IMMUNITY BERRY!!
One of the highlights was getting to do a Crack off with my family. Grandma found this really cool dye kit. It had such bright colors. Then June had a genius idea to paint with the dye instead of just dipping eggs. It gave you more control over colors and you could get a great skin color using just a bit of orange. Brilliant.
I had fun making my tennis ball, Lucky Charms, and Sunburned Panda.
I really liked playing with the wire dipper. It looked like a monocle to me.
Looks like a great batch of eggs. Time to vote everyone. You too can look through and pick your favorites. (In order: Grandpa's, Grandma's, Miranda's, June's and Tim's)
Votes are in and Miranda took first place with her Rose Scales. Grandma took second with her snake, and June and I tied for third with her Welcome Spring and my panda. (That is Grandpa holding Miranda's egg. Her hands are not that hairy.)
Then we cracked them all. All that hard work, turned to egg salad. And what do you know? Miranda won again! I'm not sure if have ever had the same egg win both competitions. (Probably, but I couldn't remember a time.) Nice job Miranda!
Another fun thing we discovered was Qwerkles. It was a coloring book that Grandma was getting rid of. It looked neat, so we grabbed it for the girls, but we ended up coloring quite a few. June did one first using only a pen and doing lighter or thicker crosshatch. It looked awesome.
Then we tried doing one filling it in completely and just using different shades. Not too bad.
But we agreed that we liked differing colors using crosshatch the most. So we did a few more like that.
Here's a couple other pictures. The first is one of my drawings from Caveman telephone. I was very proud of these birds in a storm. And the other is an epic doodle from June. It was so pretty I had to take a picture.
Soon enough, it was time to go. I like visiting my family, but I always miss my girls. Our return trip was easy, which is always a blessing. Our gate was a bit different this time. In fact, we were at this interesting gate with 8 sub gates. We were gate C2b. There were sub-gates all the way to gate C2h. When you went through, you walked down a couple ramps and then into a tunnel with different doors to different planes. Ours was at the end and then we got to walk across and then up another ramp to the plane. It was so cool. It was smaller and walking out there was awesome. It felt like a movie.
I read my book and June watched the end of Me Before You. *SPOILER AHEAD. I thought it was weird, because it got to the end where he dies and June wasn’t crying or anything. This really surprised me. She is quite the romantic and I thought she would be in tears. I thought, 'maybe she doesn’t cry on planes?' But it wasn’t until it was completely finished that she realized he actually died. She thought it was not real, that he would come out any second or the girl would meet him somewhere. She couldn’t believe that he went through with it. And then the tears came. Thought so.
And then we just had the long walk back from the gates.
I'll leave you with the funniest picture I found while visiting Washington. I went through a lot of old photos and saw some awesome things. (My parents wedding photos were amazing.) But the funniest one by far was this studio photo where somehow they made Grandpa look like a giant. He isn't that tall people, and his head certainly isn't twice the size of Grandma's. What a classic 80s picture.
