Editorializing the Everyday. : If only we'd have had a smart phone....

How I spent my summer vacation... number 3. Well, to start off with, I spent a good amount of time here:

Getting my car fixed, so that we could actually drive it on our vacation. Boy was that a lot of fun, and so cheap. I love paying for things :)

So we got into Portland around what, 2 AM? Something like that. So needless to say, we were pretty tired in the morning. Nevertheless, we got up and going the next day, and made the quick little drive over to the coast. That's right people, the Pacific Ocean; something that Gavin had a hard time believing in at first. We made him a believer.

It was an awfully windy day, and the water was pretty much freezing. Just goes to show, maybe the ocean isn't all it's cracked up to be. A life lesson, Gav?

This is how I felt about being cold.

So, enough of the beach. We headed inland a few hundred yards to this little restaurant where they serve the best tuna fish sandwiches on earth. For those of you who know me, you know how much I love tuna fish sandwiches, so maybe it's a good thing that I don't live near here, otherwise I'd waste away all my money coming every day.

We shopped around a little bit...

... and went to the best candy store ever. Bruce's. Haha, aptly named, with pink and white stripes everywhere. We got mini jawbreakers and reminisced about the good ol' days at the Peppermint Place.

Up north a bit, and we found ourselves in Astoria. I heard somewhere that they are long overdue for a huge earthquake that's going to put them all underwater, so luckily we got to go before this happened.

We rode the trolley up and down the riverfront...

... and of course, saw all of the movie memorabilia-- Starting with the Goonies house.

And the school from Kindergarten Cop. Who knew Astoria was the place to film movies?

The view from the top of the Astoria Column. Was it worth the climb that made my calves all shaky for the following two days? I haven't decided...

Day 3 of our trip found us in Portland. I like Portland, I guess. The roads are very small and there are lots of one-way streets everywhere, and for a lot of time, we felt like everything was miniaturized to accommodate the pedestrians, but overall, I think it's a pretty cool town.

Getting sick of Portland Saturday Market? This was before she bought her cute new bag.

And we ended the morning with a chocolate-filled elephant ear. Mmmm....

Said au revoir to Portland, and headed up north once again to see Seattle. That was a bust, so we just had pie instead. Chocolate Cream Supreme. Mmmm.... This pie is at a place called Sheri's in Tacoma. I have been thinking of this pie for four years and how great it was. I remember going on at least two bad dates just for this pie, and boy oh boy was it worth it.

Day 4: Sunday. We went to my old branch, the Bridgeport Branch. I was going to say, to say hello to all of my old friends, but let's be honest, I never made any friends in the 6 months I lived here. Oh well. I did get to say hi to my old Branch President though, who was there visiting. So that was fun. We sat by our cousins, who are now old enough to be attending the single's ward.... weird. We spent the rest of the day exploring Tacoma.

We looked at this picture afterward and I was like, finally, Gavin, a good picture... nooo... look at your hand!! So... almost a good picture :)

On the bridge of glass. They just love blown glass in the northwest... why is that? Not that it's not cool or anything, it just seems like they are getting a little bit carried away.

Megan thought these were trash bags :) Constant entertainment.

Day 5: SEATTLE. We decided to give it another try. Thanks to all who suggested that we get a City Pass, but no thanks to our jobs that we had to get back home to, forcing us to do everything included with the pass in one day. Hopefully Megan had a good birthday, despite all the power-walking. Oh, and we brought our cousin Leavitt along, which was a fun time since we don't see each other very often.

We started off the day at the Aquarium. Who knew that fish could be so fun?

Next, we took an hour-long cruise tour of the harbor. That was also a lot of fun, and we got nachos, which made it even better.

Sorry Gav, but in all fairness, you could have let me know that I was completely blocking you.

Went up to Pike Place Market for a little bit, just to look around. And, of course, take a picture with the pig.

Next stop was the zoo! Gavin loves penguins, and it just happened to be the first thing we saw upon arrival.

She's really a monkey.

Gavin also wanted to see the red panda, which was totally worth the extra time we took to run over there because it was dang cute.

Oh, and huzzah for the great ice cream that they have at the zoo. I know that the other three didn't appreciate the "flavor bursts" as much as I did, but that's okay.

Here's us at the top of the space needle! It was my first time going up, and if you know Seattle at all, you can see that we lucked out by going there on a perfectly blue-skied day.