After finishing my final week of EFY this summer I was blessed with the wonderful opportunity to hitch a ride with my sister, Alena, and her husband, Mike, and her son Neal to visit my brother, Amman in Washington. I was looking forward to this opportunity, because I had never been to Washington before.
Early Wednesday morning, August 11th, we departed from Utah and traveled 14 hours by car up to Washington. It was long, but worth it considering how expensive it would be to fly.
On Wednesday evening (August 11th), we met Amman at a little Italian restaurant in Olympia, Washington called Portofino Ristorante. I must say it was unlike any other Italian restaurant I'd been to, but the food was absolutely wonderful. The salad, bread, and ravioli were divine. Unfortunately, I was so tired that I didn't think to take pictures, but I did thoroughly enjoy eating the food there.
On Thursday (August 12th), we made a trip up to Seattle to do a few things up there while Amman went to work. I'd grown up watching the movie: Sleepless in Seattle
and . . .
I was looking forward to seeing what the actual city looked like. I learned quickly that I could spend a whole vacation just in Seattle, because there are so many things to see. We barely scratched the surface while we were there, but what we did was great!
We started out by going to Pike's Place Market, one of the oldest farmer's markets in the United States. It was a great atmosphere filled with a variety of shops, bakeries, restaurants, etc. If I lived there I would visit that market a lot for a variety of reasons.
If you are a huge lover of seafood, Seattle is the place to go. One of the most famous parts of Pike's Place Market is the seafood place I'm standing in front of in this picture. The employees that work here really put on a show by doing things such as playing catch with the different varieties of seafood. Their customer service is definitely up to par. Unfortunately . .. I'm poor and could never afford to buy things there.
Another wonderful feature of Pike's Place Market are all the wonderful flower bouquets. The whole place is swarming with flowers. Seeing all the those wonderful flowers made me wish I had a girlfriend that I could buy a bouquet for, because they were absolutely gorgeous. As you can see Alena couldn't resist buying a bouquet and can you believe it, she only paid 5 bucks for it. If only I could find a flower bouquet liked that in Utah or Kansas, then I would shower girls I date with flowers.
Along with beautiful bouquets of flowers, Pike's Place was swarming with street musicians. I honestly felt like I was in Europe again. The guitar player and accordion player on the left were very good at imitating different musical artists and the guy on the right . . . . well, let's just say he was a circus performer. He could keep two hula-hoops going while balancing a guitar on his head while playing another guitar and adding some harmonica accompaniment with his mouth. He was very impressive and fun to watch.
One of the other things I really liked about Pike's Place was the set-up of all the shops. Like in the picture above there was a little alley way just for shops giving a nice intimate, but crowded atmosphere. Even though we didn't buy any, there was also plenty of wonderful assortments of fruit and vegetables everywhere.
After Pike's Place Market, we headed right over to the Seattle Aquarium, which I know Angela and Russell also went to. It was a fun aquarium and great for kids like me.
One of the best features of the Aquarium was a section where they actually let you touch some sea creatures such as starfish, sea urchins, and many other things. I admit I was a little hesitant at first, but I did live through the experience and can now say I got a more intimate experience with the creatures of the sea.
As you can see, Alena and Neal got to have a more intimate experience with an Octopus. Unfortunately, as exciting as it sounds, it was not a real octopus, because being attacked by a real Octopus would suck. (Bad joke . . .I know).
Following our experience at the Aquarium, we went on a cruise tour of the beautiful harbor around Seattle.
Isn't he beautiful?!!! I mean . . . isn't the scenery (he) beautiful?
I think Neal thought just thought that his Mommy's camera case was beautiful. Look at that smile.
From the boat the tour guide talked about the different docks that we were passing by. There were a lot of cool docks.
I also thought the skyline was absolutely gorgeous.
And . . . Neal. Well . . . he was just happy with playing with his pen. I can just imagine him thinking . . . Skyline? Space Needle? Water? Beautiful Scenery? Who could be so interested in those things when I have a perfectly good pen I can bang around. That's the life.
After our Harbor Tour Cruise Amman came and met us at the dock after driving from work to spend the rest of the evening with us. The first thing we did was go to a gift shop.
Before entering the gift shop I felt a need to feel loved. So, I got in the stuffed bear's arms. All I can ask is. . Don't Judge Me! Sometimes, a man needs some love. As you can see, Amman was a little frightened of this gesture and Mike . . well . . . he just stood by me and supported me.
and . . after the Gift Shop . . . yes . . .there was a PENGUIN!
I like penguins. They make me happy. While the picture was being taken I started literally moving like a penguin, which is why I'm so . . . convincing :).
BUT our evening didn't end there.
We headed over to a park on the side of the water and ate at a Thai restaurant that was really quite good. Thai food is my favorite food, which is a recent discovery. Chinese food has always been at the top of the list, but Thai surpassed it. YUM!!
After our restaurant experience, we had to ride in separate cars to go back to Amman's place. So, I went with Amman in his car. As we were leaving, we took some night pictures of the skyline.
It really is a beautiful sight.
After taking pictures of the night Seattle skyline, Amman put in a CD called, "U2 can yodel" and we learned the art of yodeling together. I came to realize that it is a hard thing to do well. But, I learned that it can improve your overall singing quite a bit. You should have heard both of us practicing yodeling in the car. It was highly entertaining, but put me in a very good mood. So, the moral we learn from this experience is: If you're feeling down just "yodel" a happy tune.
On Friday (August 13th), we woke up and headed down to Portland, Oregon. When we got down there we met up with Rebecca, a good friend of our family and her sister and kids and went to the Portland Science Center. It was a special day where they were letting in everybody free, which we couldn't pass up.
Here we are. Rebecca is to the left of Amman and her sister is on her left.
And here's the Science Center.
One of the great features of the Science Center was the kid's play area. As you can see, Neal had a great time.
Also, I was a little shocked to see that a T-Rex was still roaming the earth. . . . OK .. . I know. I'm standing in front of a preserved skeleton, but I thought it was cool and had to take a picture.
Outside the museum, there was a real submarine, which I thought was pretty darn cool.
After the Science Center, we said goodbye to Rebecca and headed over to a beautiful area about 30 minutes east of Portland called Mutnomah Falls and it was absolutely beautiful.
Beautiful! I could just live there forever, but unfortunately . . . it cannot come true.
This is my commercial picture for GATORADE! So . . . my message is . . . if you drink Gatorade, you'll end up in beautiful places like this!
The higher we got, the more beautiful it got.
And . . . the higher we got . . .
the more tired Mike and Neal got. Unfortunately, Mike, Alena, and Neal were sick and a simple hike was harder than usual.
BUT . . .
we did make it to the top.
AFTER the hike, we decided we were very hungry and were ready to get some FOOD! So we stopped at:
We were hoping they had a buffet that night, but they didn't. So, we ordered some pizza from them and ended up ordering more than we needed. I guess 4 medium pizzas, an order of cheesebread, and an order of monkey bread is a little much for only 4 adults. It's OK though. We had enough to cover two more meals of the trip.
The drive home was 2 and a half hours. I was just glad that Amman drove. He did a lot of driving on the trip, which was very helpful to give us all a good rest.
When we got got home that night we decided to watch a movie and you won't believe what we chose. Yep! You guessed it.
With Amman there, we had to watch an Elvis movie called "G.I. Blues" that Amman got from Jacob and Tonya. It was definitely not the greatest movie, but it was so fun to laugh at how unrelistic and predictable the movie was and how you could always tell when a song was coming on.
Funnily enough, it was one of the more memorable parts of the trip.
On Saturday (August 14th), we decided that we needed a more layed back day. We had planned on climbing up part of Mount Ranier, but decided that wasn't really possible considering how sick some of us were. So, we spent a lot of the day kayaking. Amman is very blessed to have some good friends in his ward that let us borrow their kayaks in a private area. It was truly a fun experience.
At the private area where we canoed there was a shipwreck that had been left there for many years as a tourist attraction. It was cool to kayak around it and if you look in the background, you can see a perfect view of Mount Ranier.
Here's the other side of the shipwreck. Cool, huh!
Another thing I saw a lot of in the water was jellyfish. They were all over. It was cool, because I had never seen wild jellyfish outside of an aquarium or zoo.
Also, close by was an old, abandoned dock. Amman and I headed over and found that there were oysters all over the wood. Unfortunately, we didn't have an oyster's license to take any with us, but it was cool all the same.
Alena and Mike also canoed and they had a great time. At the end they even raced.
At the end we headed home happily and relaxed.
On Saturday night we had the great opportunity to go to an amazing Thai restaurant called: The Lemon Grass Restaurant.
It was a high-class restaurant with excellent food.
I especiall loved the Green Curry and also . . .
the yellow curry was to die for.
After the wonderful restaurant we got to go to the adult session of Amman's stake conference where we were blessed to hear Dallin H. Oaks speak.
In a stake conference setting, Elder Oaks was really great to listen to, because he was more casual with the way he spoke. I loved it and my testimony of him being an apostle of the Lord grew.
On Sunday (August 15th), we went to another session of Amman's stake conference with Dallin H. Oaks presiding where I had the opportunity as part of the prelude to play an arrangement of "I Love to See the Temple" that Amman wrote. It was wonderful to play with Amman and play his style of hymn arrangements that are an extension of his wonderful testimony. I can honestly say that it was more first time playing the violin in front of an apostle of the Lord. After playing the duet with Amman, Amman played a beautiful solo of "Love One Another" with piano accompaniment that was absolutely gorgeous. Amman, thanks for sharing your talent.
Oh, the power of music!
After Stake Conference, we went and found lots of blackberry bushes and started picking blackberries.
We ended up picking about 7 cups of blackberries, and even though there were a lot of thorns on the bushes it was worth it, because we made a very tasty blackberry pie with the berries.
After a pie with a wonderful dinner of filet mignon, veggies, mashed potatoes, and etc.
After dinner we played a nice game of Scattegories. Probably the best part of the game was where we had to think of terms of endearment, meaning terms you would call your loved one such as "Honey Bun" but we came up with some better ones such as:
 |
| MY CHILI BEAN |
 |
| MY RITTER SPORT BAR | | | | | | |
 |
| MY RUMP ROAST |
 |
| MY NUTTY BUDDY |
and many others. I just can't think of all the others. My personal favorite was "rump roast" made up by Amman. He also got a double word score for it. So, good for him.
On Monday (August 16th), our vacation came to a close and we traveled the long trip back to Utah. We got back at about 4:00 in the morning . BUT . . . we made it.
I'm so grateful to Amman for making our trip so special and being so generous. It was truly a wonderful experience. I Love you Amman!
