Last Thursday we were in Portland and met up with my sister, Gaby’s, daughter Beth and her family. One thing about our stay in the US this time is that we have been able to see so many of our family this year. We were blessed to see Beth, Toby and girls at David Paul’s wedding. Now we got to see them in Portland as well. As it turned out, they were just finishing up their remodeling of their home so they had to be out of their house for the night. We told them about our hotel and they ended up staying there! We shared our evening meal with them and the next mornings’ breakfast. We had so much fun getting to know them better and spending time with their two sweet girls, Kate and Lexi.

Before we hooked up for dinner we spent the day touring Portland. We visited Portland’s Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden and loved our visits. Dave will post some pictures of our visit.

On Friday we continued our drive up the coast to Seattle. We were visiting many family relatives here since Dave’s father and relatives grew up in the Seattle area and my oldest sister, Lonnie, has her daughter, Anne, living here with her family.

We stayed with Anne, her husband Grant and their two little daughters, Evie and Lilly for the weekend. It was wonderful getting to better know them and we had a lovely room that we stayed in while we visited. Anne cooked wonderful meals for us and the family both Friday and Saturday. Sunday we took them out for dinner. They hired a sweet college student to babysit for the kiddos while we went out. The meal was tasty and we were able to have some great “adult time”.

While we were staying with Grant and Anne we went to lunch with two blog readers, Matt and Dave who drove up from Centralia to meet us. They had emailed us a number of months ago suggesting we get together when we arrived in the Seattle area. We met them at a lovely seafood restaurant. They have been reading our blog and are interested in the cruising life as well. We had lunch with them and got to know them better. Dave will post pictures of everyone.

On Monday we headed north to Bellingham. As we left Seattle we stopped in Edmonds to meet Dave’s cousin Brenda for lunch. Brenda is Dave’s father’s brother Bill’s daughter. I have known her since Dave and I have been married! (44 years this August!) She was not able to come for David Paul’s wedding but it was great seeing her again – we saw her at Christina’s wedding six years ago. We had a fun three hours of talking and catching up on our lives.

Late in the afternoon we arrived in Bellingham to visit Dave’s sister Doti. We rested that night and then saw Doti on Tuesday. We spent 4 or 5 hours together and had some great quality time together. It was lovely seeing her again. Before we got together, Dave had a chance to play a round of golf at the Sudden Valley Golf Club. Dave’s mom and dad used to live in Sudden Valley and Dave wanted to play a “memory” round. He had such a wonderful time smacking the little ball around and remembering the great times he played there with his dad and even sometimes with his brothers Don and Del.

Yesterday, we continued to go north and crossed over to Vancouver, British Columbia. We are now staying in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver. For dinner we met up with some other blog readers, Sheldon and Grace, who have been in touch with us for at least five years. They have sold their house and have moved onto their boat as they prepared to start cruising. They are retrofitting their boat and unfortunately had some vandalism occur on their boat which they are also dealing with at this time. We saw their beautiful boat and then went out to dinner. We had an interesting evening talking about cruising. We will be seeing them again on Saturday as they have offered to take us into Vancouver and explore Granville Island. We will post their picture soon. As you can tell, this has been a really whirlwind week but it has been so special being able to see so many friends and family.
Until we speak again…