We flew out to Washington State last week to visit Paul’s family. Flights were a lot cheaper to Seattle than to Portland, so we flew into Seattle and then took Amtrak down to Vancouver, WA, near where Paul’s family lives. It was quite the adventure.

We got into Seattle and figured we’d eat and hang out at the airport for a bit before heading to the Amtrak station, but we found out that there isn’t really any food (or anything else) outside security. So we made our way to the light rail station at the airport and took the light rail up to downtown Seattle where the Amtrak station is. Andrea was fascinated by the light rail train, and even more excited to be going on “Thomas” (the Tank Engine) for our next train ride. (We kept trying to explain that the next train wouldn’t look exactly like Thomas, but she had already made up her mind that it would be Thomas.

Here’s a picture of her on the light rail:

We checked in at Amtrak, then walked to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Of course it was cold and rainy. (We were in Seattle, after all.) Andrea loved the adventure though. We packed her rain boots and raincoat in the top of our suitcase and got them out for her to stomp around Seattle in. She was so adorable!

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We took Andrea to Florida for a vacation last week. The only other time she had seen the ocean was two summers ago in Hawaii for my brother’s wedding and she was too scared to actually venture out onto the beach or into the water, so it didn’t really count. This time she was super-excited about the beach and the ocean, so it was really fun. We decided to stay in Cocoa Beach, at a family friend’s condo, but we also wanted to spend some time visiting with my grandparents, who live in Melbourne.

Paul invited a friend from Canada to fly down and go surfing with him, so we drove down Wednesday, and picked up Paul’s friend in Orlando late that night. Then I had the brilliant(?) idea to take her to Disney World the next morning (Thursday). That meant a late night and early morning for us, so we were seriously dragging at Disney, but I’m still glad we did it. Andrea probably would have preferred to have spent that day at the beach or the Disney Store, which is what she thought I meant when I said Disney World, but I think she enjoyed it. She didn’t smile much or get as excited as I thought she would, but she is still talking about it. She spent most of the day looking a bit confused and overwhelmed by the whole experience. And the Winnie the Pooh ride scared her of all things, which is all she talked about for a while. (She randomly muttered, “I got a little scared on Winnie the Pooh” for days after…) We only did 5 rides and had lunch before she fell asleep in my arms around 2pm, while waiting for the Jungle Cruise (which she slept through), then she eventually woke up as the parade started to pass. She is still talking about the parade, and yesterday, she even drew all the princesses she saw on the parade route. It was so cute.

We spent the rest of the trip at the beach, the condo pool, or my grandparent’s retirement community for the most part. Andrea called the condo “the beach house” and was completely in love with the fact that was so close to a pool AND the beach. She didn’t really want to go into the ocean, but we waded in to her knees a couple of times before she yelled, “Done! Done! Done-done-done-done-done!”

I have more pictures in the gallery and on Facebook, but here’s a few quick ones…

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