Vacation to the Emerald City

I’m happy to announce that we made it home. It’s always nice to get away on a vacation, and it’s always nice to come home. Especially when the to and from involves lengthy flights with a 14 month old. To be fair Jack did pretty well. But no toddler likes to be confined to a pair of seats for five hours, and no parents (even those with the best of preparations) can convince them they don’t want to explore the rest of the plane but would rather, in fact, like a nap. 

Jack napped pretty well on our flight to Seattle (with layover in the beautiful LA X), but only napped for 15 or 20 minutes just prior to landing on the way home. This made the transition to Seattle not so bad, while the go home adjustment is ongoing.

     Let us not dwell on the travel. The most interesting part of the sandwich is what goes on between the slices of bread (usually), so let us move on to the meat, cheese, and maybe even the horseradish of our trip.

     The compelling reason to go to Seattle (other than 65 degree weather in the midst of a Maryland heat wave) was that both of Hilary’s siblings and their families would be there with us. This allowed Jack the opportunity to mix with his Alaskan cousins (they are in fact his only cousins) for the first time since he has become more interactive. For instance, he was able to hear his big cousin Celia sing on their great-grandmother’s hearth. Truth be told Jack didn’t seem to care much for the singing, but when people clapped he ran to join in.

  Jack also developed a relationship with his younger cousin Sabrina. They were set up with neighboring highchairs during meals. They soon became quite adept and stealing each other’s food. I believe it was clear to everyone that Jack started it. He remembers the good old days eating puffs and mum mums (Sabrina is still waiting on teeth) and was quick to purloin one or twelve from her tray. Sabrina fought back by snatching his orange juice and the rest, as they say, was history.

The three cousins all together were always a lot of “fun.” Consider the following story in pictures. It is a simple story, that of “Hey, let’s get a nice picture of all the cousins together.” I will let you fill in the between the shots action of various parents and grandparents who gave their all by seating, reseating, asking, imploring, pleading, and bribing the kids into the final shot, which we will dub “good enough.” I will for your enjoyment provide some probable thoughts of these young ones below each picture.

Celia: Can you believe they let me get away with sitting up here? I will look above and to the right of the camera until they offer me marshmallows.

Sabrina: I wonder just how far I can lean over before I pitch onto my face? I’ll bet my balance will improve if I look at the camera, but not the lens.

Jack: Man, did you see how fast I was. I went from sitting down to jumping off the couch in no time! Also, what camera?

 Celia: Ah Hahahaha! Hee hee hee!

Sabrina: I can’t believe I’m the only one whose eyes are even visible to the camera. It’s like you guys aren’t even trying to take a nice picture.

Jack: I’ll teach you to steal my juice.

Celia: Still holding out for marshmallows.

Sabrina: Hey, this thing I’m looking at is way more entertaining than this camera circus in front of me.

Jack: Hey, there’s a camera.

            Yeah, kids are fun, especially around large bodies of water.

*And so this post has been sitting on my computer since Sunday waiting for Chris to finish it, but it is just too hot hot hot to do anything so this will be posted now and continued later.