Another week in Washington

 

Okay. Take yourself back in time. It was a warm and lovely August in Washington. The year was 2012. We had just left an island and were making preparations to head back to another one.

And I can’t believe we didn’t take one photo of our fun week with our awesome friends the Allens in Port Ludlow who hosted us at their house for a whole week. And this IN ADDITION to keeping three of our vehicles at their house all last year AND letting us unload our entire trailer onto their lawn and reorganize it all week AND letting our kids run amuck on and in their house and property. My kids loved it because they have four kids our kids’ exact ages (except Oakley and Po are a year off), and we loved it because Audra and Chris are just basically awesome. They are an inspiration to us.

We spent a week selling the last of the vehicles that we had left in storage at various places, taking loads of the things we had in storage to the thrift store, and packing up exactly ten bins to take back to Maui with us. I won’t bore you with the details, but its enough to say that three of the bins were costumes. After losing my life’s work of collecting the most awesome costumes ever in the New Harmony fire of the summer, I couldn’t bare to give up the three measly bins of costumes that my kids had brought with us when we moved up to Sequim three years ago. Seriously though, my kids play with costumes more than any other toy. Totally worth dragging around the world.

It was a little stressful getting everything sorted, sold, packed and organized (how did we ever acquire so much stuff?!), but we did it right on schedule. We even had time to dash into Seattle for an afternoon to visit my cousin and her kids who happened to be in town visiting my other cousin and her new baby. YAY! We always ALWAYS love to be with/around/loving the Velas/Youngs. We can’t get enough. My kids were overjoyed to reconnect with Jenye’s kids, whom they hadn’t seen for almost a year.

Check out the knitted tree-sweaters behind the kids. Only in Redmond.

It was so great to hang out with the new baby Brooklyn too. Luckily I got to go back and see her in September again (more later…)

 

The kids also tried on some funny bike helmets at REI…

And enjoyed a last ferry ride for the year….

And enjoyed a much nicer (though still a little junky)  station wagon than the one we own on Maui… before we sold it the day after we left (which ended up being a couple weeks after we left actually, sorry Audra…)

 

And the we finally made a hilarious mad dash to the airport. We only had about five major hiccups on getting to the airport from Audra’s house (she had to borrow a car and hook up a trailer to get us all to the airport, which was two hours from her house… she’s a saint. Seriously). … and then after we LUGGED our ten bins and 40 carryons +children to the ticket counter, I figured out we were actually flying out on a totally different airline than the one we unloaded the stuff at (big OOPS, and we had to run a mile in the other direction with all of our luggage on carts and get checked in… BUT we had subconsciously planned for all this craziness and still made it to the security line with an hour until our flight left. Well then… the security line was ENORMOUS (even with our skip-to-the-front-of-the-line-because-we-have-four-kids trick)… and once we finally made it to the x-ray machine, our luggage got trapped inside when the conveyor belt broke and we were stuck waiting for someone to fix it so we could get our bags out and go wait in another line. Yep. Efficiency in action. Jonah was on the other side of the xray and they wouldn’t let him back over to my side to help me move the 120 carryons to the other belt, or to carry the children or car seats or anything. It was completely, utterly ridiculous. I got the giggles/started crying because I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was worst-security-line-ever/nightmare material. THEN, we sent the kids to run ahead to hold the plane while we tried to carry Po and the luggage to THE FURTHEST gate at the whole huge Seattle airport. THE LAST gate. Yes. I am not exaggerating. Of course,  we missed our flight. We were at the airport 2.5 hours before our flight left and we missed our flight. By three minutes. When Jonah and I finally arrived at the gate, Ana was crying because the kids were so upset and worried that we’d never get back to Maui. And then… a ray of light and I  joyously get to say that Hawaiian Airlines is the very best airline ever. The gate attendant very nicely and calmly and compassionately said not to worry… that the other flight to Honolulu was (miraculously!) delayed so we would actually be able to get on that one (instead of having to wait another day) and it would take us an extra hour with the transfer in HNL, but we would be able to do it, and for free! Thank you Hawaiian! We fly often and I have never had such a crazy experience, but I’m glad it turned out okay. Plus they gave us the nice bulkhead seats right behind first class. And I got to spend a few minutes in Honolulu (my first time ever). And of course our luggage made it on the right flight since it got checked in two hours early, so it was already unloaded off the belt and waiting for us when we got to Maui.

And that is the last time I will ever fly with any luggage at all. In fact, Ana committed the family to only taking one backpack each no matter where we are going or for how long (Noah and Kristi—your visit here last month was a true inspiration to her…). I totally agree with her, though I may say one rolly bag each… I hate wearing a backpack.

 

And here we are! Thanks to the fire, everything we owned from before we moved to Maui fit into ten bins and a few carryons. We had a wonderful, fantastic, lovely trip, but it sure felt good to be home.