West to East and back again...

Last weekend I took off from Mom responsibilities for a few days and flew down to FL to pickup our lovely Bacon friends who are here visiting Alaska for the first time. I'm an excellent pilot in my spare time. I arrived on Thursday evening, and we left the following morning. We arrived in Seattle and had the rest of the day to explore. We took the train from the airport to the Westlake Center and walked down to Pike's Place Market. It was their first time there, and it was fun to see how much they enjoyed it. I took advantage of the great fresh produce and filled 2 bags to take home with me. I was also pretty excited to eat a delicious pocket full of goodness from Piroshky Prioshky, and if that wasn't heaven the coconut ice cream that followed later on certainly was. Mmmm!

We worked our way over to Chinatown after walking along the waterfront. There we stopped by the awesome Uwajimaya Asian Food and Gift Market. We were starting to hit a wall when we arrived and probably could have spent a lot more time exploring the store if we had more energy.

After unloading our goods at the hotel we headed back out for dinner, and after a quick and delicious meal we promptly headed back to get our butts to bed. It had been a super long day that started around 3:30 AM on the East Coast and ended an exhausting 19 hours later on the West Coast. Unfortunately there was no time to sleep in, and we were up again super early to check in for our flight to Alaska.

It's a long process to get all the way from Florida to Alaska, and on stand-by travel there's always the extra element of suspense when waiting at the last minute to see if there are enough seats open on a full flight. I'm so happy that our friends were game for the adventure! We're happy to have them here visiting us!

CDV to SEA to OAK to KOA

We left Cordova on Sunday afternoon and after overnight stays in Seattle and Oakland we finally made it to Hawaii today. My parents have been anxiously awaiting this trip and I feel bad that I was almost dreading it. For me it's hard to get really pumped for a trip, Hawaii or not, when I know what the process of getting there involves. It wasn't until we were making our descent into Kona that I was able to breathe easy and allow myself to get excited. I'm still in awe of how wonderful Ben and Zach were on every single leg of the trip. They were the best little troopers and they made me a proud mama.

We had enough time in Oakland for a side trip into San Francisco. Mom and Dad were very kind to watch the boys while Darius, Joy, and I took BART into SF. It was a much shorter trip than what we thought it was going to be. We're all looking forward to heading back when we have more time to explore. This trip's purpose was primarily for Chinese food so that Darius could satisfy his craving for Mongolian Beef. We ended up at Chef Hung's Restaurant on Clay Street in Chinatown, and it was mighty tasty!

Our flight from Oakland to Kona left early the next morning and typically it's a pretty long flight, but we had some crazy luck on our side and because of the accommodating winds, weather, or whatever it was the flight was only a little over 4 hours long. By mid-afternoon we were thrilled to be able to take the boys to the little beach outside our hotel and watch them experience it for the first time.

They had such a good time, and it was such a well-deserved treat for them after a long couple of days of travel. We all thoroughly enjoyed watching them play.

I'm looking forward to it again tomorrow...even if Zach throws more sand in my face!

Making Lemonade

When life gives you lemons...

I had plans to take the boys to Utah for a week. My sister Carrie is getting married soon (hooray!) and I wanted to spend a little time with her, and watch her try on some dresses. Another sister, Connie, had been visiting us over Christmas and the original plan was that I'd go back at the same time with her and she would be able to help me with Ben & Zach on the flights. As nice as flight benefits can be, they can also be very tricky. After checking flight loads it didn't look promising that we'd make it onto the same flights as Connie. Lucky for us, Darius was able to take some time off from work and come along. We left a day before Connie, on New Year's Eve and watched a beautiful full/blue moon from the window of the plane. We celebrated the new year at a hotel near the SeaTac airport in WA.

Finally a refrigerator he can play in!

Can't you just imagine Ben's scream?

On New Year's Day we planned to fly to Boise, connect to Idaho Falls, and then drive to Utah. Unfortunately our plans didn't work out the way we had hoped. The flight to Boise had gone from twenty open seats to no open seats and we didn't make the flight. We checked flight loads for the rest of the day and following days, but there was clearly no way for us to get where we wanted to go any time soon. To make things worse we had already checked our bags through to Idaho Falls, so we were left with just what was in our backpacks. I thought for sure we'd have our bags back by later in the day....not so lucky! The flights coming back to Seattle from Idaho Falls were overbooked and passengers and bags were bumped from flights. It was nearly two full days before our bags finally came in.

Okay, so we finally got our bags back and in the interim we were trying to make the best out of our situation. We had a nice place to stay near the airport and there were trains and shuttles to get us to other places. We spent one afternoon piddling around downtown Seattle and killed more time at a gigantic mall that was near our hotel. After our bags finally arrived we were ready to cut our loses and go home. Again, we weren't so lucky. There must be at least a dozen or more flights leaving Seattle everyday for Anchorage, but there wasn't one single flight we could get on the following day, so we spent a fourth night in SeaTac.

Today we're finally going home. We're currently enjoying a very long layover in the Anchorage airport and have another five hours or so to kill before we board our flight back to Cordova. Personally, I'm glad for the break. Let's just say our flight this morning was a little hellish. Ben has a piercing scream, much like an amplified bald eagle screech, and was doing his best to damage mine and our fellow passengers' eardrums. Zach was doing his part to annoy the passenger in front of him too, by kicking the tray table while he was trying to sleep. What can you do? At least it's almost over and our next flight is only a short thirty minutes. I'm very disappointed we didn't make it to Utah (sorry again Carrie!), but we'll be glad to get home.

I won't look at our attempted trip as a failure or bad omen for 2010. One of my resolutions for this year was to keep the big picture in mind...be grateful for the good I have in my life and do my best to get through the bad gracefully. The past few days have been good practice for me!

Happy New Year!

Jaunt to Seattle

Late in the afternoon on Friday Darius calls me up from work and tells me to pack a bag for the boys and I. His boss told him she wouldn't be calling him into work on any of his upcoming days off, and to take advantage of a late flight to Seattle (these are rare out of Cordova). Darius had to work the flight we left on and boarded with me and the boys after he helped load all the cargo and luggage. The flight was nice and spacious with only two or three other people on the plane.

We arrived in Seattle around 4:00AM and checked into a hotel near the airport for some rest before we started our day. After we checked in early at The Paramount Hotel, we headed straight for Pike Place Market. It's been about 10 years since I was last there, and about 6 for Darius. It's just the way we remembered it! We loaded up on lots of delicious fruit and marveled at how cheap it all was! The boys loved it all, but particularly the strawberries. Ben would shove entire (and very large) strawberries into his mouth.

It was fun to see all the signs in the market for fresh Copper River salmon. Darius likely helped load a lot of the very fish we saw on display.

One of my favorite things from the market are the beautiful bouquets of fresh flowers that they wrap in craft paper. The colors are great and you see people carrying them all over downtown.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of shopping. I did however come across my all time favorite clothing store (H&M) and had to stop in. They have the best stuff and there are so many different styles and colors to choose from. Darius got some shopping in for himself, and we both had fun finding things for Ben & Zach.

It's been quite a while since Darius and I have been able to splurge on a great dinner. We did just that at Cutters Bayhouse located at the end of Pikes Place Market. It was so delicious! It was definitely the best meal we've had since the dinner we enjoyed on our wedding night at A&B Lobster House in Key West.

We did a lot of the same stuff on Sunday. Tackling the crowds at the market is tricky with a double stroller on it's last leg, so I sat with our sleeping boys in a park area near the market and Darius went in search of food for us. He came back with piroshky from Piroshky Piroshky. YUM!

After lunch we took the boys to the Seattle Aquarium. When you enter the aquarium there is a huge tank of tropical fish. We got there during feeding time and there was a scuba diver in the tank feeding the fish. The diver interacted with the kids on the other side and played peek-a-boo with Ben and Zach, which made them both laugh.

It was great to be able to get away and enjoy the buzz of a city for the weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the weather was excellent the entire time. The boys did really well and they were excellent travelers on the flight home.