And all the rest...

Michael has given you a great overview of our Orcas experience, now I will fill you in on some of the other details in between. I arrived on Tuesday, Aug 19th. I found out my cousin Amy's daughter had been involved in a serious bicycle accident. (They live here in town.) Ellie (Amy's daughter) was scheduled for some major surgery on Friday. I contacted Amy and let her know we were willing to do anything we could to help out. Ellie ended up a lot better off than they first expected and didn't need surgery after all. Amy said she was in charge of keeping Ellie from hurting Ellie. Ellie is a rambunctious 5 year old and this proved harder than expected. The next week we were enlisted to watch the kids while Seth and Amy went to Ellie's Kindergarten orientation. Michael and I had a blast. We played some games, had a good talk with the kids and followed up with a little TV while we waited for Seth and Amy. It was really fun to get to know Sam, Ellie and Jane (well, Jane only liked Michael... like most kids do). We had a blast!

We have also had the chance to hit the Seattle temple... as you can see, it is under construction.

Eating downtown has been an experience all it's own. As you can imagine the restaurants are a bit fancier than we are used to... but very tasty for the most part. You would think after 3 weeks we would have the program figured out. We are getting better but we are far from perfect. I remember Italian night... We had decided on eating at an Italian restaurant listed on one of the pamphlets we had been given. We headed out. We were both wearing shorts with a tee shirt. I hadn't bothered to fix my hair and it was just pulled back. Needless to say we looked like scrubs in the big city. We walked up to the door and realized it was a bit fancier than we were suited for that evening... but being the hicks from the sticks we headed in anyway. The hostess was very nice as she looked us up and down and asked if we had reservations. "Nope!" The food was fantastic! I wish this was the one and only time but unfortunately this experience has been repeated several times since... including at the Space Needle.