September in Seattle

After spending Friday afternoon and evening with our terrific grandkids Harv and I drove to the Hotel Vintage Park in downtown Seattle and spent 2 nights on our own. We had a fabulous day exploring Pike Street Market and Seattle Centre Saturday and then spent a bit of time shopping before heading home Sunday evening.

Here are some of the sights we saw!

The Seattle Central Public Library.

Another of Seattle's beautiful buildings.

This working man stands in front of the Seattle Art Museum.

Harv took a number of pictures at this fountain on the waterfront.

The first thing we saw when we got to Pike Street Market was this flower stall.

I love the combinations these talented ladies compose. I wish I could have taken several bouquets home with me. They were only $5 and $10. per bouquet!
More Dahlias!

Looking down the centre aisle of the indoor part of the market.

Outside, the beautiful sunshine drew buskers to entertain and crowds of shoppers.

We strolled streets that were dappled with sun and shade . Then we took the monorail to Seattle Centre where we sat for a long time watching the children (and adults) play "chicken" in the International Fountain. If you haven't been here, the fountain spouts water randomly - often in time to classical music from speakers located around the fountain. The trick is to run up and touch the sphere in the middle without getting wet!

We watched three little girls with blond ringlets - about 3 years old, I'd say, who were running in and out of the spray. They would have made a great ad for Fruit of The Loom in their pink flowered panties. They were so cute.

We had to take one picture to prove we'd been here.

Finally, the Space Needle against a brilliant blue sky. We always enjoy coming to the Seattle Centre park. There is so much to see and do. This time we did more seeing than doing and loved every minute of it.

Friday with the Grandkids

This past Friday Harv and I headed out to Seattle to spend some time with our grandkids. Grandboy B had a birthday this month that still needed some celebration time plus Grandma had been kids clothes shopping lately so we drove down laden with gifts and cookies.

We visited with our DIL and the two oldest while grandboy B finished his nap. Grandboy N and Princess E kept asking their mom when she would go shopping so they could visit with PopPop and Nana. Too funny! When Grandboy B woke up he opend up his gifts ( 3 Duck books by Jez Alborough and a pair of Cheeky monkey pyjamas)

Daddy came home from work early so we had some fun in the yard with the neighbours...Head first down the slide is so much fun!

A little soccer


some vigorous red wagon pushing

And more than a little hanging around upside down.

....before heading out to "Five Guys Burgers and Fries" for supper.

After supper we had enough time to spend a half hour at a local playground before it was time to go home.

Granboy N loved the zip line

Walking the balancing wall looked like fun when Princess E did it so Grandboy B had to try it too. The first time he had a bit of help from Nana.

Mama and Daddy showed us that playgrounds are for grown ups too!

On his own now!

And once more down the slide.

Then it was home to stories and pj's and bedtime.

Sister Time

My sister and I got away this weekend for some long overdue "sister time".

I only have one sister so I'm especially blessed that she and I are also good friends.

I turned 60 earlier this year so when we talked about taking a couple of days together she told me she would treat me to an overnight stay at the Village Inn in Fairhaven Washington.

Fairhaven was a town site established by "Dirty Dan Harris" in 1883. The town grew and prospered on the anticipation that the Great Northern Railway would establish a terminal there. However the railway decided to locate in Seattle and the town went into a period of depression. Many people moved away and buildings were left unfinished. In 1888 it amalgamated with the small mill community of Bellingham and slowly established itself as a thriving community.

Today it boasts many locally owned shops and restaurants and is very proud of its small town appeal.

The Fairhaven Village Inn is a lovely heritage building right across from the Village Green and central to all the shops and restaurants. When we arrived we had a great soup and sandwich at a local bakery and then the walking trail along Boulevard Park lured us and we spent several hours walking along the water.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped to admire the yard art and I thought of Ellen from http://happywonderer.wordpress.com/ as I took this picture.

The flower beds in that yard were in full bloom with a variety of Dahlias in brilliant colour. The perfection of each petal and the amazing complexity of patterns fascinated us and I spent some time taking pictures.

Aren't they incredible?

Later we sat outside a cafe and enjoyed a lemonade, went back to our lovely room to read for awhile and then went out to browse a few of the shops. There were a couple of wonderful toy shops where we found some unique gifts for our grandkids, a kitchen shop (always my favourite) and several art galleries. It was so nice that we could walk everywhere we wanted to go.It was also wonderful to have no agenda or time schedule pushing us.

Dinner was at "Dirty Dan's" - I had some amazing Dungeness Crab stuffed Prawns and Janet had a lovely fettucini dish.
We then spent a very happy 2 hours among the "stacks" at the Village Book Store.

A bonus was the beautiful weather we enjoyed. The forecast had been for heavy rain both days and we were fortunate that it was wrong! In fact we had no rain at all and it was warm enough on the way home to put the top down on Janet's Toyota Solare.
We stopped at Bellis Fair on the way home to do some clothes shopping, and then had a jolt at the Border because we'd bought more than the allowed amount (my fault - I should have checked) Fortunately we had a compassionate customs clerk who mitigated the damage and we were home in time for supper.
We both promised to treat ourselves this way again - soom.

Thank you Janet for an awesome couple of days.

Look what came in the mail!

I saw Marg's recipe for creamed corn on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog yesterday and decided to make some for Harv who loved creamed corn. So this is what I was doing this morningWhile this was cooking in the oven I went to the post office to pick up our mail.
There was an envelope with a Saskatchewan return address and this is what I found inside.





Grandson E drew this unique perspective of a house.

This spaceship is exploring new worlds.

And this ocean is teeming with a variety of colourful fish.
(and the artist, Grandson K can identify each species)

These pictures will join our art collection in the hall.Needless to say it is one of the most precious collections in our home.

Wasn't that a party - day 3

On our last day, Ellen and I took advantage of the sunshine and hopped into my VW and drove out to join the girls at Minter Gardens.

We met at the Trillium Restaurant where we enjoyed their buffet brunch.

We then headed off to walk through the gardens which were spectacular as always.

It was a gorgeous afternoon and we leisurely strolled through the beautiful gardens and took time to chat with each other.

We stopped to do an errand and then sat on our patio until it was time to drive up the hill to Julie's where she'd rented the clubhouse. She'd set up her table with every attention to detail. It was lovely - all lace and pretty dishes and there was a rose at each place setting.

It was fitting that our last meal together should be a Mennonite one. Julie treated us to her wonderful schnetki (recipe on the MGCC blog), zwiebach, borscht and flapper pie.
Absolutely delicious!

After dinner Kathy and Marg - our intrepid and creative social coordinators, presented us all with kind words and a small gift.

I think these are the girls that deserve the accolades as they did an incredible job of organizing our first ever MGCC "summit".

Our time together ended the way it began with an "Aufwiedersehn Gedicht"

(farewell speech) from our two Mennonite Frauen (ladies).

Our time together ended all too quickly and we hugged and promised to meet again soon.

Thanks so much to Betty , Charlotte and Ellen who traveled here so we could all be together;

to Kathy and Marg for all the hard work they put into planning this;

to each girl who hosted us and

to Lovella for putting her dream into reality and including all of us in it.