we're baaaack

wow. that was a very... condensed trip. we saw almost everyone we wanted to see (missed one bro-in-law), drove practically all over western washington, and had a pretty good time too. day one, friday, we flew in, went up to stanwood to get a car, visited with the dad for a while, then drove down to everett, hooked up with seth and melinda to go over to joel's... where enoch and some buddies were. we took those who were not severely intoxicated out for pie. poor joel informed us that he probably should not be in public in his present state, and we were forced to agree with him. seth showed us a slideshow-video he made of enoch's adventures in iraq over the past year. the video is set to a music track lifted from ... dun dun duuunnnnnnn ... twisted metal! yep, the video game has been immortalized, with stryker vehicles instead of mr. slam and all the rest. quite a cool movie. after the pie shenanigans, we crashed at seth & melinda's place.
saturday morning we saw john dougherty and trinity and rascal (trinity is shadow and twilight's mom; rascal is their brother). i am envious of his place, which is way bigger than ours, way cheaper, only one level, plus he has cool neighbors, and a YARD!! like i said, i am envious. after john, we saw adam & his place. he's the resident manager (that sounds sooooo responsible for adam) of this big cool house in seattle that's been converted into apartments. adam has the whole top floor and collects rent from a bunch of students that live below him. they all have "separate" apartments, but nobody closes doors, and adam has the big tv with cable, so his place is the hangout spot. adam just bought a balance ball, and shaggy coached him for a while on how to use it. then we headed to mara & darren's house, where we were introduced to "the baby". notice the lack of a moniker. (added context - no last name either! he'll get thornton or miller, whichever goes best with the first name that hasn't been picked yet.) he's a cute enough baby, but i'm guessing he'll grow up one confused kid if they don't think of something soon. from the strange (yet happy) home, we went back to joel's to meet up with ethan, say hi to the boys again, and head up to cousin wil's house in lake stevens. there was lots of food at wil's house, as well as several people, more food, and a game of rummikub. fun stuff. eventually adam dozed off, and ethan drove him home, while the rest of us meandered to the basement to watch recorded tv shows (and make fun of ghost whisperer). talk about non-original screenplays! this episode had some guy die, he was an organ donor, and he left a brokenhearted fiance behind him... he wanted jennifer love hewitt's character to find out who got his donated heart. can anyone see where this is going? (return to me, 21 grams...). around 3am we fell asleep, knowing we would be woken up by the alarm shaggy had "set" for 5:00. one wonders why the difference between "am" and "pm" should be so great. so wil (who doesn't sleep) woke us up at 5:39.
we got up so early because dad came and got us at 5:45 to drive us out to mom's place in ocean shores - and we had to get there in time for church. we made it in just about 3 hours, in time to hustle into church clothes, then pile sweaters, jackets etc. on top of those church clothes to stay warm, then wonder why the heck we bothered to change, then go to church for a televised broadcast meeting. it was an experimental thing, and i'm not sure if they'll do it again. shaggy fell asleep. i had slept in the car most of the way there, so i was able to stay awake for a while.
after church, i hugged and snuggled with olaf (shaggy's "little brother" cat) he was nuzzling my neck and face, which is normally great, except this time i broke out in HIVES!!! this has never happened to me before. i knew i was allergic to, say, nine cats at once, or one very big cat (like a lion), but i had no idea that this would happen. poor oafie - i dropped him and ran to wash off my neck. he followed me around for a while, begging to be picked up again. i distracted myself by making japanese food for lunch. then we went out to dad's newest fixer-upper house. it is the total party house! when it is done being fixed-up, i want it! it's right on the ocean, with picture window after picture window, a deck, a balcony, and a bar built into the wall in the living room. not that i have much use for a bar, but it's pretty cool. so after the tour we headed back to mom's, where she had some apple crisp and vanilla ice cream waiting for us. yum! then she took us and baxter (the border collie) out to the beach. keep in mind that this is washington. it was freezing outside, raining, windy, and absolutely fabulous. we ran and yelled and got horribly soaked and frozen and had a great time. poor baxter tried to keep us all together (those herding instincts) and got worried when we didn't walk in a straight-across line of three. this caused us endless amusement as we took turns being "strays" - wandering off and baaa-ing until baxter came and drove us back to the herd. fun times. so then we went back and thawed out and had hot cider in front of the fire to warm up.
monday started with sleeping in and then washing the wet clothes we had left on the floor from the day before. once they were dried, we said our goodbyes and headed back to wil's to pick up the car. we hung out there for a while. wil - formerly a licensed massage therapist - worked on shaggy's back, and showed me what to do when it acts up. after the massage, we went out to everett to see natasha (quasi-sister) her husband russ, her parents, nephews, neice, etc. i played something along the lines of "swing the kids around until they're dizzy and you're dizzy and you both fall over, then grab a different kid and repeat" for quite some time. the workout led to my taking off a sweater, which i ended up leaving there... but we had a great time. that night, we drove back up to stanwood.
tuesday morning, dad took us out for breakfast, then drove us to the airport, where i called the person from work who was going to pick us up... she answered the phone, i told her when/where we were landing, and she said, "wait, you weren't kidding?" i explained that, no, i had actually meant it when i asked for a ride home from the airport, which it turns out she couldn't really give, so i called work and asked doris if she was free that evening. let me say that doris is THE COOLEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!! she drove downtown, picked us up, and fought traffic home. and she doesn't want me to give her money for gas. i'm trying to think of some gift certificate or something she won't be able to turn down. so that was the trip. i'm sure i left out some stuff though - like what kind of pie...