Traveling Days

Thursday, June 10th we headed to the Greensboro airport at around 2pm for our 4:45pm flight to Seattle, WA. We managed to get 5 suitcases, 3 car seats, 3 backpacks, 3 carry-ons and 4 kids into the airport. The people at the airport were all very helpful and patient getting us checked in and all the bags and car seats checked. We ended up having lots of spare time to pull out games and toys and play before our flight.


We had about a 3 hour layover in Cincinnati where we ate some Chick-fil-A and played some more. At almost 10pm NC time we boarded our plane for Seattle. We let the kids watch a movie on our borrowed portable DVD player and then got them settled down to sleep. They managed to sleep about 1 1/2 hours before we landed in Seattle. Our only issue was on our descent into Seattle when Bastian woke up with his ears hurting and cried for a while. Other than that the kids were amazingly well behaved!



We landed in Seattle at about 10:15pm (1:15 NC time) and managed to navigate the airport subway and elevators to pick up all our bags and car seats and find the location to pick up our shuttle to the hotel. We waited about 30 min. in the chilly Seattle night air for our shuttle and headed to the hotel. By the time we were unloaded and settled in our hotel it was about 3am NC time. What a long day! I managed to get a few hours of very interrupted sleep (due to my littlest) before getting up and ready to head to downtown Seattle to get Dave his passport. I guess this needs explanation. Dave and I applied for passports about 6 weeks before we were leaving for our trip to Canada. About 10 days before we left I got my passport and Dave got a letter from the passport agency saying his birth certificate was not valid for passport application. We did not know what to do and couldn't talk to anyone until the Tuesday after the holiday weekend. After a couple of phone calls we figured we didn't have time to wait for a birth certificate, send it back and have time to get our passport back so we ended up scheduling a special appointment in Seattle in the hopes that he would manage to get it that day. My dad picked us up at our hotel and we got all our stuff loaded in the van and headed downtown with the kids to the Federal building. We dropped Dave off and walked around Seattle with Opah while we waited for news. We saw some cool totems and toured the Gold Rush Museum.



We also peeked into this glass shop which had some really beautiful things. I made the kids wait right in front of the doors and look from there, where Bastian danced around to the Michael Jackson music playing in the store. That made me just a little nervous! The price on the salmon chandelier (upper right) was $25,000!


We got a call from Dave around noon with the good news that we would get his passport, but had to go back to the office just before they closed at 3pm to pick it up. We had a little more time to kill, so we ate some bread from a bakery and some other snacks and walked down by the bay and around Seattle some more. We picked up a postcard to send to Grandmom and Pop-Pop and headed back to the Federal building where the kids and I waited outside and wrote our postcard. At about 3:15pm Dave came outside with his passport and we were all very excited!

We loaded up the car and were on the road up to Whistler, Canada. Woohoo! We were all very excited to be on our way!


We had a six hour drive with some great views of Horse Shoe Bay and a stop for an English Fish and Chips dinner. Yum!