home again, home again...

…Jiggity Jig! After 15 days, 9 states, and 4328 miles, we are finally home. Although we spent 5 days in El Paso and another 5 days in Denver, it felt as if we spent the entire 15 days in a vehicle. We were always on the go, doing this and that, meeting up with people. The driving to and fro was never ending. We had a very low key time in Denver. It was a week that was all about Husband. We made sure that he got to see the people that mean the most to him. We had dinner one night with his doubles volleyball partner and her fiancé, and another night he got to play with his sand volleyball team. He had a lot of fun that night. It also made his realize just how much he missed his life in Colorado. We got to experience typical spring time Colorado weather. March is typically Colorado’s snowiest month…and it did not disappoint. The last day we had some business to take care of in the morning and some happy hour action planned for the evening. We set out that morning in heavy snow fall with a nice side of fog. We were on our way home from our morning meeting when while going about 60 on the highway my engine quits. QUITS! I get pulled over to the side of the road and Husband and I sit there looking at each other. Never have I been more thankful for a cell phone with 3G service. I get started on finding a tow truck to pick us up is a snow storm and Husband starts calling nearby repair shops. Now while breaking down is not lucky, we were able to get a tow in under 45 minutes, which in a snow storm is lucky. He happened to be close by, otherwise it would have been a 6 hour wait. The bad news was that my fuel pump had gone out and it was looking like we were not going to be on the road at 6 am the next morning. The repair shop wanted to get us the truck back that night, but as the day progressed it became clear that just wasn't going to happen. Good news is that my winter driving skills are still intact and with the use of my mom's car I got us to happy hour on time. Also...I did some name dropping and was able to get a discount on the repairs. We got on the road 6 hours late, but managed to make good time and got home exactly when we thought we would. Don’t get me wrong, I love being on vacation, but I love coming home more. Man it is going to feel so good to sleep in our own bed tonight.

early signs of spring

I am loving the trees up here right now. It seems with the mild weather that spring has come early. Everywhere you look you see the soft pinks and whites of cherry and plum blossoms. I went for a walk this afternoon and it was like walking in a fairytale with all the petals delicately floating down around me. There are so many things that flower up here this time of year. I hope that with our upcoming trip that everything will still be in bloom when we get back.

La Conner, WA

I have had the pleasure of meeting many of Liza’s relatives. If I were to sum up this brood in one word it would be creative. Her father was a beat poet, her sister a talented painter, and Liza herself is a talented writer. So when she said she wanted to drive up to La Conner to visit her uncle, I was game. Liza’s uncle is Fred Owens, author of the Frog Hospital blog (soon to be a book by the same name) and a contributor to the La Conner Weekly News. La Conner is located about an hour north of Seattle in the Skagit Valley. The Skagit Valley is most famously know for the tulip festival in the spring (it might be known for something other than the festival, but I don’t know what that would be). We met Fred at a tiny little café called Le Crema Coffee (which has the best Chai in the world…no really…the best). It had been 10 years since the last time Liza had seen her uncle so they had a lot of catching up to do. So we sat back, drank our coffee, and they did just that. We then went on a walking tour of the village of La Conner with Fred pointing out the sights, giving us a brief history lesson, and telling us funny stories. We stopped for lunch at a little deli over looking the Swinomish Channel. Fred then took us on a driving tour of some of the local farms located along the Skagit river. We saw cows, sheep, daffodils, and cabbage. The cabbage farms up there produce seeds, not large heads of cabbage. Fred had just written an article about the farming of cabbage seeds. We learned so much about the process of farming cabbage seeds that I am confident that Liza and I now had enough knowledge that we could start our own farm. La Conner has a lot of cute little shops and boutiques, so after we said our goodbyes to Fred we did a little window shopping and then stopped at the La Conner Brewing Company for a beer. We had a really fun day and I really enjoyed meeting Fred. He was quite the character, which I had come to expect from a member of Liza’s family. It is good to know that if I am ever up that way that I have someone to have a cup of coffee with.