Tara's Mom Visits & New Car!

This week we had another visitor from the West Coast, Tara's Mom! She was in from last Tuesday until yesterday and we really enjoyed showing her around. We visited Olympia, Lacey, Tacoma, Fort Lewis, Steliacoom, and Seattle.

The first night she was here we took her to sushi. She had never tried it before (ever!) and she said she liked it! I hope she really did... On Thursday, we visited the Tacoma Farmer's Market where she bought some delicious peaches and we sampled some popcorn, shaved ice, and donuts - an all around healthy food day. We took Ty to the dog park which is always a good time, watched the sunset over the water in Steliacoom, and then came home to have homemade Alfredo.

On Friday CR was on call, so the girls went to Seattle for the day. Surprisingly, we were able to meet up with one of our translators from Fort Liberte. Herman works for a cruise line now and he contacted my Mom via Facebook and told us he would be docked from 6am - 4pm on Friday. How's that for perfect timing? We did a tour with Ride the Ducks of Seattle which is an hour on land and thirty minutes on Lake Union (which is by the way where the Sleepless in Seattle house is located and on sale for 2.5 million if anyone is interested). We also went to Pike's Place Market and Mom was completely overwhelmed with the amount of shops and people there.

On Monday and Tuesday and some in between, we baked pumpkin bread and Mom made CR some chocolate chip cookies. Mom and I made two visits to Shipwrecked Beads (a local bead warehouse) and between the two of us we made 12 pairs of earrings! Lookout friends and family, your Christmas gift this year just might be homemade :) We also went shopping, slept in, walked A LOT, caught up on some reading, and watched several movies.

On her last night in town we introduced Mom to Pho (pronounced Fuh). Pho is a soup with rice noodles, usually beef or chicken (but they also have veggie or tofu), basil, lime, bean sprouts, and chives. Pho restaurants are very common here, but before moving neither of us had ever heard of it.

On a different note, I must give my Mom credit for being so patient with us. She was up for anything or nothing at all and was ready to go with whatever plan we threw at her. On Sunday after church she was even kind enough to go car shopping with us and maybe she was our good luck because...WE GOT A CAR!!!! We are the proud new owners of a 2010 Sage green Subaru Forester. It is exactly what we were looking for and we cannot say enough nice things about this car!