Relaxing weekends

Jon and I have had a very relaxing few weekends. For Jon's big 28th birthday we went out to eat some lip smackin' BBQ in downtown Seattle at a place called Frontier Room. I made Jon some mocha cake, a Gray family tradition, and Jon opened up

his gifts. As usual Jon got lots of good Wii games, some DVDs, a "NerdKit," and some computer things which I can't really go into detail about because I don't understand them. :)

Then on Friday night we went to the DBacks v. Mariners baseball game at Safeco Field. We had some pretty good seats, althou

gh surrounded by Mariners fans, and we had fun cheering on the DBacks when they hit a home run or scored some points. We decided to leave at the mid point of the 8th inning which ended up being perfect timing because the DBacks lost in the bottom of the 8th. We sure would have been harassed if we were still there! Then on Saturday night we went to an improv show in the UDistrict of Seattle. It was pretty fun and we really enjoyed ourselves.

This past week was Fourth of July, and we had a very relaxing 3 day week

end. On Friday we hiked Snoqualmie Falls and went to the bottom.

We were so close we could feel the mist whenever the wind picked up, and believe me this felt good after a long hike. There were a few people fishing, but luckily we got there early because when we left the place was PACKED. Nearby are

a few factory outlet malls, and I ended up scoring some great deals on a basic GAP shirt and some heavily discounted ski pants. Now I need to make sure I use these pants come winter time.

Saturday was the 4th, and I knew I wanted to see fireworks because it had been such a long time since we had the chance to do that last. (A year ago exactly we were on a plane to Europe).

We had heard the fireworks were the biggest at GasWorks park in downtown Seattle, but we didn't want to brave the crowds and the rumors of two hour traffic jams. Instead we opted for the Kirkland fireworks, a small suburb on the Eastside which was having their fireworks on Lake Washington. This was a huge plus for me because I t

hought it would be romantic and fun to see fireworks shimmering off the water. Not knowing how early people arrive

d in Seattle for fireworks, we packed a picnic dinner, playing cards, some books/magazines, a few party poppers (which we could never get in AZ), and we headed out.

We arrived at Houghton Beach Park around 6:00PM and we found parking on the opposite side of the street. We picked our spot, looked around, and we quickly noticed that we were the only people there for the fireworks. Everyone else was in swimsuits tanning it up! So in retrospect we got there about three hours

earlier than everyone else, but as Marie so astutely pointed out "how often do you get to just lay around and do nothing

!" Well, that's so true and we had fun hanging out together and just relaxing. We ended up really enjoying the fireworks and from our vantage point could see 3 different shows (GasWorks, Bellevue, and Kirkland) in addition to the numerous illegal little shows that were occurring along the water.

Troy got in town for a brief stopover late Saturday night, so we made arrangements to meet up for breakfast in SeaTac (we couldn't have picked a nicer locale) at the local Denny's. I really enjoyed seeing Troy and catching up with him about his Beyond Malibu YoungLife trip and updating him on how we were doing in Seattle. It was a really enjoyable time.

On a totally different note....I really appreciate how so many of you have lifted me up in your prayers during this difficult transition time. You know who you are, and you are wonderful!

There is no way to wrap up all of these random updates, so I'll just say bye for now.