Trip to Seattle

We're back in St. Louis after a great trip to Seattle to see family. The trip didn't start out so great because St. Louis had an ice storm last Thursday, the day we were flying there. Our bad luck with air travel as of late is becoming legendary. It took an hour an a half to get the airport (should be 20 minutes) through about 10 accidents and a major freeway shut-down. At that point, our flight was still on time. We boarded at 8:45am and then sat on the airplane for 3 hours...they showed an entire movie while we went nowhere...too bad it was Jane Austin Book Club. At one point, the pilot came on and said that it had to be 1 degree warmer for the plane to fly. It was -6 and it had to be -5. Can't they just breathe on the thermometer and pretend?!? Later, we taxied out and they de-iced us and we were told to "fasten your seat belts for take-off and enjoy your flight to Seattle." Yeah, not so much. Two minutes later, they told us the airport was shutting down because weather had deteriorated. When they finally cancelled the flight C.J. was able to get through to someone at American Airlines (while we were still on the plane) and get us on a flight going through Dallas at 5:45pm.

We were really disappointed to have to wait that long and seriously considered just moving our whole trip to a different weekend. We decided to move our return flight to Monday (instead of Sunday) and sucked it up and waited. In the mean time, we saw every flight to Dallas (and everywhere else in the country!) before ours get cancelled because of the weather. The weather cleared up at about 4:30 and it was looking like we were going to be able to go, but then our flight got delayed until 7. Thankfully, the flight from Dallas to Seattle was also delayed.

We made it to Dallas, but had to RUN through the Dallas airport to catch our flight. They had already closed the gate, but because there were about 8 of us running to catch that flight, they let us on...and then told us that the plane was still at the gate because it was having a minor maintenance issue. It was minor, but after we ran, we sat on that plane for an hour before it took off. After all was said and done, our quick trip to Seattle ended up taking us about 20 hours.

On Friday in Seattle, we drove up to Mount Vernon to have lunch with C.J.'s Grandpa, Grandma, and two sets of uncles/aunts and cousins. It was so great to see them, even if for only a little while! We were blessed all three days we were there with beautiful, sunny weather. Keri has been to Seattle 4 times now and has gotten good weather every time. If it weren't for how green everything was (that has to come from somewhere), she wouldn't believe it rains there all the time!

Saturday, we got to go out to Haley's (our sister-in-law) parents' cabin on Vashon Island. We took a ferry there and spent a relaxing day watching our nephew Nate throw rocks in the water. We saw two bald eagles very close up, a sea lion, and some otters. We also had a gorgeous view of Mt. Rainier the whole time. There are some pictures of our time at the cabin below.

Olympic mountains from the ferry

Nate and Aunt Keri on the ferry

Bald Eagle #1

Picnic lunch in the sun

Excuse the "graphic nature" of this picture, but Nate is potty training and it's just so cute!

Mt. Rainier

Uncle C.J. and Nate throwing rocks in the water

Bald Eagle Number 2

It was SO fun to play with our nephews! Nate is 2 1/2 but has a very advanced vocabulary! This is the first time we got to see Dexter (5 months old), and he is adorable as well. We feel so blessed to have seen them and Jon and Haley, and it was very hard to say goodbye. We miss seeing those little boys--they change so much between visits! Nate didn't make it any easier when we got to the airport. He just turned away from us when we had to leave with sad eyes and a pouty lip. When Keri asked him to give her a kiss goodbye, he said, "Ummm, not right now." Thankfully, kids get over stuff like that. It's the aunts and uncles that have to deal with that guilt! :)

Dexter and Aunt Keri

Uncle C.J. and Dexter

Nate playing

Dexter in the car

Dexter

Aunt Keri and Nate playing soccer in the backyard

Nate playing soccer--he's got a good left foot already!

Apartment Continued

Here are some more pictures of the outside of the apartment and some updates from the last time we posted pictures. We had a blast picking which pictures from our trips around the world to frame and hanging them up. Down the hall we have 7 8X10 pictures of cathedrals in Nova Scotia, Ecuador, and Peru (see picture below). Our bedroom is going to have 8 4x6 and 5x7 pictures of my Grandma's cottage in Michigan. Another photo collage of scenery from our trips is also shown below. Tomorrow we get to fly to Seattle to see Keri's brother, sister-in-law, 2 1/2 year old nephew Nate, and 5 month old nephew Dexter whom we haven't even seen yet! We are so excited to get to spend some time with them all, having missed them at Christmas. We also get to spend a little bit of time with CJ's Grandparents and some extended family north of Seattle. Plus, we are flying direct flights for FREE (well, $5 each). God knew money would be tight around now and that we needed to see them all, so he had us get stuck in Ecuador for 30 hours on our way to Peru. Because of that whole fiasco, we got 20,000 frequent flyer miles each, more than enough to put us both over free tickets! Thanks, God! We'll take a day in Ecuador to get to go on this trip! Anyways, enjoy the pictures, and we will report on our trip with pictures when we get back.

Cathedrals down the hallway

Trips photo collage in kitchen/dining room

Updated basement with 9x9 rug and ottoman

View down the street from front porch

The other way down the street

The front of our apartment (our door is on the right and our window is on the 1st floor)

Our back porch (shared with other tennants, but still pretty sweet!)

New Apartment

As promised, here are some pictures of our new apartment! We are really enjoying it so far and were relieved to have our first weekend in the apartment this past weekend. We had a big shopping trip (8 home decor/improvement stores in one day...don't try this at home!), and a frenzy of putting things on the walls and setting the place up. The biggest project was completed last night by C.J. That was putting our couch back together. Our apartment's original construction was in 1884, and the doorway to the basement shows it. It's a small nook with a tight turn to get down there and two very narrow doorways. Because our TV room is in our own private basement, we needed a couch down there. In the chaos of moving day, 6 guys ripped the back off of our couch-fabric, wood, and all to get it down there. My genius husband spent hours last night cutting new pieces of wood for the ones that had splintered and painstakingly piecing our couch back together. Our apartment has a private entry and 1 unit above us. We'll take some outside pictures this week of our street and our back deck, but for now, it's dark, cold, and snowy out. Here are the pictures of the inside:

The Living Room (ignore the glass-less coffee table)

Mantle and fake fireplace

Other side of living room

The Kitchen

Dining room and view of shot-gun style apartment (Straight back and narrow)

Bathroom

Basement/TV Room

More basement-look at that couch! Can't even tell! :)

Bedroom

More bedroom with his/her closets

We're still here!

I promise we're still alive and well! I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since our last post! Life has been crazy, but we'll try not to let that happen again. We have to go to a superbowl party right now, but wanted to tell you that we made it in to our new apartment and we really like it. We'll hopefully put some pictures up this week. There is still a lot to do to make it feel like home, but we're getting there and VERY thankful to be in our own place together after 8 months of living with people or at least in someone else's home. The church plant is going very well. We are blessed by what has all happened in the last 4 weeks of meeting as a leadership team and will update more on that this week as well. St. Louis got more snow than we've seen in 3 years of living here this week....it felt like we were back in Michigan! We felt very thankful to be safe in all the driving we did around here during the crazy weather! On Wednesday, we hit a record high of 71 degrees and then it snowed that evening...you've gotta love living in the midwest. I hope some people are still reading this blog and promise we'll do better in the future!