Hey There! Remember Us?

Over the past few years I've truly felt time speeding up. Every year seems to fly by faster than the last. Unfortunately, the number of days between our blog posts only serves as further proof that what feels like a short moment in time is more like a month or two. I'll try to catch ya'll up on the highlights of our last month.

Last fall my younger sister, Suzi, got married in Spain. Knowing that most of her family and friends wouldn't be able to go, they planned to have a reception in the states this summer. Because her husband, Jeff, grew up in Philly and we grew up in Spokane, the plan evolved into hosting what I refer to as bi-coastal wedding receptions. To allow for travel and maximization of time together, each party was planned around a three day weekend this summer. When they started making plans we let them know that we were unavailable for the 4th of July weekend (more to come on the reason for that), and I'm not sure they were really taking us into consideration but they did plan for Philly over Memorial Day weekend and Spokane for Labor Day weekend.

Philly happens to be one spot that is tough for us to get into. Tickets run around $700-800 and because Alaska Airlines doesn't fly in there, we either have to pay full price, cash in miles, or fly to a relatively nearby location that AK does fly to (Boston, DC or Newark) and then drive. This go round we cashed in miles and the only seats available were first class (darn it!). Our plan was to fly to Seattle first thing Friday morning, catch a connection to Salt Lake, meet my parents there and fly on to Philly, arriving around midnight. This would give us a shot as a decent night's sleep before helping set up for and then enjoying the reception. Unfortunately, even the best laid plans can go awry.

We made it to Seattle just fine, but after walking from the far end of the C terminal at SeaTac to the far end of the A terminal, we heard the announcement that our flight to Salt Lake would be about 5 hours late. Not to worry - we'd all been rebooked. Right. Simple math made it pretty obvious that even if we got right on a connecting flight when our delayed flight finally reached SLC, we'd reach Philly no sooner than about 6am. Our prospects turned out to be not even that good. We were told that we'd been rebooked and would arrive in Philly at 6pm on Saturday. The reception started at 4pm. Not gonna work. I heard an announcement that there was a flight leaving soon for DC that could accommodate folks who were trying to get to Baltimore. I'm sure you know this - DC is much closer to Philly than Seattle or even Salt Lake. I hopped in that line and got us on the flight to DC with the thought that we could drive to DC if need be. Fortunately, the agent found us a 6am flight to Philly instead and they offered to put us in a hotel for the night. So off we ran - to the North Satellite.

I won't go into all the gory details, but needless to say, we were not in first class anymore. We had 2 middle seats, one right behind the other. All of our luggage was tagged to Philly via DC, but 2 pieces came off on the carousel so we spent an extra hour trying to figure out what was up with that. We waited a hour for our hotel shuttle and another good long time for someone at the hotel to figure out how to use the airline voucher. After a nice 3 hour nap, we were back at the airport for our flight to Philly. The little commuter flights don't pull up to a terminal so we were shuttled out by bus; only they couldn't figure out which plane they wanted us on. The bus did circles around the planes, they let us off at one, put us back on the bus and drove us 30 feet to another. Luckily, the sunrise was beautiful so we had something to be thankful for during the wait.

The part that makes me laugh now, but baffled me at the time, was our luggage situation. We had checked 3 boxes of frozen fish and one little suitcase. In DC, one fish box and the suitcase came off on the carousel. I decided to pull out all my party clothes from the suitcase and put them in a carry on, just in case. John poo-pahed me, but sure enough, when we got to Philly we had only 1 fish box show up. The fish boxes were delivered mid-party on Saturday and my suitcase at about 11pm that evening. Apparently the suitcase made a side trip to Phoenix during the day. Luckily the fish had been well frozen and packed tight so most of it was still partially frozen and nothing was ruined.

After all the chaos of travel, we spent a terrific weekend with my family trying to empty kegs and refrigerators while enjoying the balmy spring weather in the backyard of my sister's in-laws. The trip home went as planned and we appreciated those first class seats all the more for the experience on the way over.

By far my favorite part of the weekend was when we pulled out the Alaskan delicacies. Renee's (Suzi's mother-in-law) family also stayed for most of the weekend. Sunday morning Jeff's (Suzi's husband) cousin brought bags and bags of bagels which we smothered in cream cheese and John's smoked salmon. I can hardly believe how much salmon we went through but everyone seemed to enjoy it. As the day wore on, we nibbled on left overs and worked on the kegs. By about 4pm, a real meal seemed like a good idea. We broke out the fish boxes and pulled out some dunginess crab, shrimp and king salmon. John bbq'ed two full king salmon fillets while I boiled shrimp and crab. You would think that no one had eaten in weeks. I could barely get the shrimp out of the boiling water before I was swarmed. I know people had singed fingers and burned tongues, but no one seemed to care. I knows at least one person, who shall remain nameless, ate an entire shrimp, shell and all (all I can think is, "that one's gonna hurt in the morning!"). It was total seafood mayhem and I loved it! Suzi made the comment that everyone was high on seafood and I think she was right. I wish we had photos!

Two weeks after Philly, I made a quick trip to Seattle to go camping with my best pal, Sharon. We had a really great time hiking and touring around, plus just hanging out at a campfire is about as good as it gets in my book. My folks were in the neighborhood for wedding, so they joined us for one day of wine tasting and camping which was sort of the icing on the cake.

Yes, Sharon is taller than me (isn't everyone?). Not that much taller though!

Right after I got back from Seattle, John took off for a week of fishing with his buddies on the outer coast. I'm going to let him (or make him) tell you about his trip since my version would be something like.... he left, he fished, he came back and the house was clean the whole time he was gone.

In the time between our trips, I've been playing some golf. We "golfed" a few times at an amazing municipal course on Kauai a couple years ago (the view made up for my score), once in town last summer and once on Whidbey Island last fall. I say "golf" because what I had going was nothing akin to true golf. My goal this summer is to go from hideous to horrible and then work my way up from there. There is a ladies league on Thursday nights and I've conned a couple of my hockey friends to join me. Our first time out they let us all play as a group and it was a best ball scramble night so our score was decent (keep in mind that our course is 9 holes, Par 3). We decided to meet up the following Sunday to try a real game and we limited ourselves to 10 strokes per hole. After that game, my goal became finishing the course under 60. When we showed up for Thursday league, they informed us newbies that they limit players to 6 strokes per hole to keep everyone moving. Well look at that! I had achieved my goal without even teeing off! Since then I've been consistently terrible with a score of 53 (that means one double bogey, maybe a couple triple bogeys and the majority cut off at 6 strokes). Each week there is a different twist on the game - only score the odd holes (in which my best plays are on the even holes), one club (6 iron was NOT a wise choice), closest to the pin (on the drive? not gonna win that one!). I hear one of the nights will be most holes with the same score. I'm thinking that category's got my name all over it (6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6). This Thursday was my best so far; I scored a 49 - 2 bogeys (4), 1 double bogey (5) and a handful of honest triple bogeys (6). Unfortunately, I played in a fundraiser on Friday night and I just quit counting strokes because it was so bad.

We've also gotten a little fishing wedged in there along the way. Here are some photos from a couple weekends ago. The little guy is our 2 1/2 year old neighbor, Luke. I think he would have climbed into the cooler with the fish if we'd let him

There's actually 3 fish there. Mine is the largest though :)

So, next up for me is a quick trip to Anchorage to help put on the Stockholm Junior Water Prize national science fair competition. It will also give me an opportunity to spend a little time with my cousins, Craig and Holland, while I'm there. Immediately after that we're flying out to a USFS cabin on Young Lake on Admiralty Island for the long 4th of July weekend. We should have some great photos and stories to share after that trip!

Until next time, we'll be fishing you were here!