Seattle: Friday thru Sunday

I've wanted to write down our trip experience in a journal, but I don't have one here with me--so it's going in the blog. :)

Friday started off really well. We made it on to the road about 15 minutes later than we had planned, which, to me, was close enough to be great. We were meeting Ryan's brother's family in Bountiful to start caravaning together. We decided to say a prayer before we left, and I am SO glad that we did. I was driving the first few hours and we were in the "spaghetti bowl" section of the freeway in SLC, trucking along at about 72 in the carpool lane. I saw the car in front of me put on their brakes, so I started to put mine on as well. There was no backed up traffic on the freeway, so I presumed they were just slowing to drive the speed limit. It suddenly occurred to me that the car in front of me was completely STOPPED in my lane! I stood on the brake and tried to maintain control of the car without hitting the one in front of me. I screeched to a stop, slightly in the shoulder, missing the car in front of us. Turns out the people in front of us had to stop hard, too, because a TAXI DRIVER, that's right--a man who drives for his profession--had voluntarily come to a complete stop in the middle of the car pool lane because he wanted to illegally cross the double white lines and get over. THERE WAS NO TRAFFIC ON THE FREEWAY--HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN OVER WITHOUT STOPPING!!!! I got the phone number, but didn't catch the cab number, which is unfortunate, because I would have called immediately to report the dangerous driver that should have been fired. Oh--and when he finally got over, he was going about 20 mph in the other freeway lanes, continuing to work his way over into the right hand lane. Anyway--needless to say--it was pretty scary!

So--after that, things went pretty well. Whitney wanted her bed at one point a cried for a bit, but both girls were really so good. I didn't even have to use everything I brought to keep Kallie busy. That just means I'll have a few things left for the trip back. That night, when we got to the motel, we put Whitney in bed and she slept until her normal 6 a.m. wakeup. We had light and the TV on, plus Kallie was running around everywhere--and Whitney still slept! Looks like our girls are going to learn to sleep through anything. There was a pool at our motel, so Ryan took Kallie swimming, which of course, she loved. She was also enthralled with the phone in our room, so we ended up unplugging it and letting her play with it. I seriously think that room was almost the ultimate playroom for Kallie. She jumped on the beds, played with the phone, and climbed on every climbable surface--and Ryan and I didn't care all that much.

The next day was also a good travel day. Kallie had a bit of a meltdown when we couldn't find her binky at one point. After missing out on naps, and an extremely late bedtime the night before, I couldn't really blame her--but it was still a bit stressful. We arrived in Seattle around 3:30 and went to my in-law's anniversary dinner that night. We had a wonderful time hanging out with Ryan's family.

Today, we went to church with Ryan's parents and his brothers' families. On the way into church, Kallie tripped and skinned her knees. Thank goodness for the 72 hour kit in our car! We slapped a couple of bandaids on and went on with the day. Tonight, everyone came over to my in-laws house and we had a luau celebration. All of the grandkids were running around everywhere--which is pretty fun when they're not together very often.

Tomorrow morning, we're going to Silverdale to spend a few days at Ryan's brother's house. We enjoy spending time with them, so it should be fun!