Washington Trip

On the 26th we headed back to Washington to spend time with my family. Normally I would have no concerns at all about doing that flight solo but with being pregnant I was a little more nervous. Thankfully we planned it so I would have a super long overnight layover in Dubai which allowed me to fly from Saudi to Dubai early evening, go to a hotel, eat, sleep and then get up rested the next day for our flight to Seattle. The whole goal of the trip was to limit me having to carry kids. I bought some compression leggings for maternity/flying and between those, walking a bunch and drinking a bunch I managed to not get too swollen and have a pretty enjoyable flight. The kids were awesome and so excited to see family and have a second Christmas with my parents and sisters!

We did have the inevitable jet lag which was rough being pregnant and tired and having these two all turned around. I think it was even harder this time because it was so dark so early, I had no energy to get outside and play during the day and so it took longer but finally it passed!

Falling asleep grocery shopping at 5:00 PM….

My sister had bought gingerbread house kits so each kid was able to make their own. They loved decorating, eating icing and putting them together. Grahams is on the left and Peyton's is the one on the right.

My family waited until we got there to do a family picture in Christmas PJs. Graham was still super tired from jet lag and not into doing it.

My mom also arranged a spa day for us girls which was such a wonderful and unexpected surprise. We had a nice lunch by the water, a massage and facial and a nice afternoon spending time with my sisters and mom. 

Since I was pregnant and not able to work on our house at all, I took the time to do more fun things with the kids. We went to the Seattle Aquarium one day after dropping off my sister at the airport. The kids loved it!

We enjoyed beautiful weather, scenery and also days of rain and cold!

I did work on picking exterior paint colors for our house. We are having siding repaired, new gutters and then the house painted this summer and needed to pick out colors in case they got to the painting stage before we got back this summer. 

We settled on a color called Lemongrass by Shermin Williams with a cream color for the trim and then black for our front door and garage door. It has more green in it than you can see from the picture. I actually found a house I loved in Bellingham and then put the color swatch up to their house and matched it. Not sure if it is the exact color but pretty close and I am excited about how it will look in the end! It will be a big transformation from bland white with peeling paint :)

My other sister left before us and so after driving her to the airport the kids and I ventured to the Space Needle area and the Children's Museum. It was this day that it hit me how John and I were in Seattle nearly six years ago after my good friends wedding for a short baby moon while I was pregnant with Peyton. We enjoyed Pike Place Market, the Aquarium, dinner at the Space Needle and I fell in love with Seattle. It was our first time there but I felt a connection and we talked about how it would be nice to move their someday. We thought retirement, we never imagined that we would move to Saudi Arabia and that our journey there would bring us to the Pacific Northwest. I was so overcome with thankfulness and humility at how awesome and unknown to us God's plan is. I truly hope we will move there when we are done in Saudi but if not, I am so thankful for the time that we have now to call it our home and how richly it has already blessed our family!

We ended up having to buy a new fridge for our house. Since I couldn't work on the house much and the main point of the trip was family time, we stayed at my mom's the whole time but I had planned a fun sleepover night at our house, went to the store and bought groceries, snacks, a DVD player so we could have movie night…I carried all our bags into the house and the groceries and went into the kitchen to find that it stunk and our fridge was dead. So, I had to clean it all out and then realized we had nowhere to store groceries. I figured we could just eat dinner there and toss what I bought and then go out for breakfast and although it wasn't ideal I was bound to make it work…well, then the oven/stove wouldn't work :( So,  although I wanted to take sledgehammer and demo something in the house….instead we packed it all up and had movie night at G's house and it all worked out but we had to start looking for a new fridge. The process to find a fridge that would fit the small space we have in our kitchen was kind of amusing and left me with really only two options which was nice and frustrating. Thankfully we found something and it fit perfectly. Didn't bother with replacing the stove so that will probably be something this summer.

Our trip was such a nice time of relaxing, hanging with family and enjoying yummy gluten free food in restaurants and stores! We enjoyed all of the Seahawk support and game watching and cheering them on to the Superbowl. We had wonderful Sundays worshipping at our church home there. It was a nice time home and we left feeling rested, rejuvenated and so thankful to have Bellingham as our second home! Next time we will be back will be after Baby #3 arrives and we will be staying in our house 100% and hosting our first visitor (Grandma Martha) to Washington! Exciting things to come and again so blessed to be able to call this home!