Finally, a summery summer

    The combination of the warm weather finally showing up and Sam taking some time off, we finally have been getting into the groove of summer. Right after we got back from our camping trip, we took a rather short-notice trip down to Vancouver. I took the kids down on the train and Addie was SOOOO excited about that. Oh man, the train is all I heard about from the moment I told her we were going to take one until it finally pulled into the station. She loved the train, I didn’t though. Due to delays, it took us over 4 hours (driving it takes 2.5 without traffic) to get to Vancouver and that is a really long time to try to entertain an excited 3 year old and 1 year old quietly. Luckily she watched a movie for part of it:

     I got to see Les Miserables with my dear friend Heather while I was there and it was SO amazing! I’ve seen Les Mis live 7 times now, including performances in London and NYC, and I havent ever seen it this good! They have really amped it up for this 25th anniversary tour. The all new stage, the cast, the ensemble. It was mind-blowingly good. If you have any inclination at all to see this show, then now is the time—this current production is Les Mis at its best.

    We also were able to go to the Clark County Fair with Sam’s parents and his brother’s family and it was really fun! We LOVE the Clark County Fair and are always glad when we happen to be in town while it’s on, it’s definitely one of the best fairs around.

     We’ve definitely been hitting up the lakes and the waterparks lately. I especially like to go to the lakes in the evening before the sun sets. They’re so peaceful and pretty! We stopped by one the other day on the way home and I let Addie take her dress off and play in the water a bit, it was too nice of a night to not take advantage!

     Then here we are at a different lake for a different sunset, this time with a picnic dinner too!

     We were going to drive up to Canada for a few days, but my back just couldn’t take the drive. I was pretty bummed about it, but you can’t argue with a back! We decided to just stay here that week and just do some local things that wouldn’t require so much sitting in a car on a weak lower spine.
     We did a 2 hour cruise on Lake Union and Lake Washington and it was SOOO cool! We live in such a gorgeous area and it was really incredibly fun and interesting to see it from the perspective of a fancy boat. It was also cool so see where all of the rich and famous live and also learn history about the area.

     I’m a huge fan of our floating bridges here. It’s way fun to drive right on the water like that, so it was pretty cool to be able to boat right by the floating bridges and see it from a different perspective.

     The houses on the waterfront of Union and Washington Lake are insane! Seriously, in the 10-20 million+ range. We saw the home of people like the owner of Starbuck’s, Dave Matthews, and a few well-known Microsoft executives; the most impressive being Bill Gates himself. You can’t see too much of his house due to the trees, but his lot is HUGE and all the facts we learned about it were truly impressive. For instance, he has tropical sand transported in yearly for his beach, he built a tunnel through the enormous hill behind him so he could have quicker access to his home, and his house has over 100 computers in it that run just the functions of his high-tech lifestyle (lighting, temperatures, music preferences all based off of your preferences you upload to a lapel pin).

And here is the houseboat from Sleepless in Seattle!

      Then afterward, we went over to see some Seattle sights. Here is a cool cement troll that an artist built under a bridge. He has an actual VW bug in his hand.

     We also went to the pacific science center and the grounds of the Space Needle. I LOVE Seattle. It’s such an amazing and beautiful city and I’m so glad we get to go there whenever we want. If you have to do a staycation instead of a vacation, then living by Seattle is a good place to be!