I Want to Be a Part of it….

We left home at 11am and arrived at the border at 11:05. We sat in a humongous border lineup and 2.5 hours later we were driving away on our way to the I5 and Seattle.

As we headed south we noticed that there was much more snow here than back home.

We figured we’d head to our hotel at the airport, but stop to do some shopping at Southcenter as there were some things we needed to pick up that we either didn’t have/didn’t bring, such as some wintery clothes for the kids. But it soon became apparent that we wouldn’t be doing any shopping today…the roads soon got worse and the snow started coming down. The driving conditions were bad enough to cause traffic along the I5 to slow to a crawl and almost 6 hours later we finally made it to our hotel, the Red Lion Hotel at Seatac airport. It was now around 7pm and the snow and wind was such that we didn’t want to risk driving anywhere, so we just checked into our hotel and got our car parked in the pay lot across the street.

We hung out in the room and watched some tV, and goofed around. This is Kelsey taking a bite out of her gigantic Mr. Big from her Christmas stocking (we gave them to them early so they could use some of the things that were in them, books and such).

We also goofed around with some photos:

Kelsey always bugs us about getting a hamster, so we gave her a stuffed one in her stocking. She forgot he was sitting in her scarf when we took the photos above, and we had a laugh when we noticed. Then she decided she wanted to take photos of HIM all over the place on our trip too. Here he is eating her “Sushi” erasers:

Her and “Hammy”

We made it an early night.

DAY 2

We woke up around 7am and we all dressed up warm and bundled up to walk down the street for some breakfast at Denny’s before heading into the city for the Seahawks vs jets game. After breakfast, we walked the very short walk up to the airport to catch public transit into the city.

The roads in Washington are horrible after some snow as they don’t use salt on the roads, for environmental reasons (kills fish I think). I have to say that I’m glad they use it on the streets back home! For the amount of snow we get (and same for Seattle, really!) I think the pros outweigh the cons of using it (such as human lives at risk on roads that are barely navigatable.)

The bus ride was only about a half hour, and relatively painless. We got off the bus and walked a short way down to Pike Place public market. It was only about 9am, so not many stores were open yet.

The fish market was already in full swing though.

This fish is too pretty to eat (and the screaming guy in the background makes the photo, I think. )

Kelsey and her favorite animal:

We went out to take a look at the view of the harbor, and take a couple of photos.

It’s always at least one of them being goofy:

As you can see, generally Jorden just refuses to smile or pose for photos, the little wanker.

John trying to be cool, but the look on Jorden’s face he’s not acheiving it tho!

By now Kelsey’s feet were frozen solid and wet in her crappy shoes, so we walked up to Nordstrom Rack where they had some SERIOUS sales on shoes. Okay, if you haven’t read any of my previous trip reports or know me well, you’ll know that somehow on every trip I find some way to purchase mass quanitities of shoes. I have a problem, and there’s no 12 step program for it.

We found Kelsey a nice pair of waterproof insulated boots, and in the process I found a nice pair of red patent platform pumps and a pair of Ed Hardy canvas “chuck taylor”-type runners. As soon as the kids saw the Ed Hardy’s they went on a hunt of their own, both of them finding a pair as well as a pair of high-top Hardy’s. I trained them well! They were such a good price, tho…less than half off what they would cost back home. So now we all had matching shoes…yeesh! They are VERY cool shoes, though.

Some photos we snapped along the way:

Harry Potter?

We left there and headed down to Hot Topic. Jorden really wanted to go there to get some band shirts, and he found a Slayer, Pantera, and SlipKnot shirt. Goodness. We also found him a new pair of jeans there (the kids both like these new “skinny” jeans, which I tend to like better than the jeans kids wear that are four sizes too big and hang down to their thighs). Kelsey found some stuff she had wanted for awhile (mainy GIR merchandise) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIR_(Invader_Zim) and I found some cool jewellry and stuff in my favorite “gothic” style.

Packed with stuff to carry, we headed off and walked the 10 or 12 blocks down to Qwest Stadium. We had enough time to grab a bite to eat at the stadium, use the restrooms, and get settled into our seats. It was snowing and cold, and a spectacular day for a football game!

Lots of crowds, of course:

These guys were dressed for the occasion:

Jorden’s new hat:

It was cold, and soon enough it started to snow again, and the field went from looking like this:

to looking like this:

Some Favre pics:

The game wasn’t the greatest, and the Jets lost which didn’t make us very happy. We are seeing the Jets/Miami game next week and it would obviously make for a better game if they were fighting for a play-off spot!

Kelsey had a GREAT time freezing her arse off at the game, can you tell? haha:

But she enjoyed her garlic fries!

It was COLD though. I noticed it a lot less with every beer I drank. When we were leaving, I went to the washroom and while there I realized that my arse and legs were icy under my jeans, and in fact my arse was pretty much completely numb. Frostbitten arse. Nice.

After the game we grabbed a cab back to our hotel. We were all freezing and didn’t feel like waiting for the bus.Halfway back John tells the cab driver he has to pee….cabbie pulls over in the MIDDLE OF THE MAIN BUSY STREET and puts on his flashers, and hands John some napkins. WTF??! We laughed pretty hard at that one, it was a big snowstorm and cars behind us weren’t happy! John told him just to stop at a gas station or something. Wow.

We had some dinner at the restaurant next door. Dinner was horrible and expensive, always a great combination. Then up to the room and I checked on our flight which seemed okay for now. We were a little worried about our flight given the weather, this is the view outside our window at this point:

But we still saw planes taking off, so remained positive. That positivity would soon change!