Seattle!

Can I still blog about something that happened almost 2 months ago?  Good, because I still have some summer pictures that are coming.

At the end of August, Chad and I headed to Seattle for a long weekend to attend a wedding of one of Chad's classmates from veterinary school.  Of course, we had Tessa in tow, but it's amazing how easy one baby feels when we're used to 3 kids.  We didn't know just how breezy life was 6 years ago when all we had was Caden.

The couple who was getting married listed some of their favorite eateries in Seattle and we pretty much planned our entire itinerary around hitting up as many of them as we could.  Sometimes, when I lay awake at night, I think about the pork sandwich from the Honey Hole.

We saw the original Starbucks (in the background) and you can tell how thrilled Chad was by it.  Starbucks is everywhere in Seattle.  I think Starbucks is to Seattle what church steeples are to Utah.

We were just walking down a path when we unintentionally came to the gum wall.  I was gagging and could barely stay long enough to take a picture, let alone add my own spit to the wall.  Next time, maybe.

Pike's Market was a highlight, of course.  So many beautiful colors and fun things to see.  I had a fresh crab cocktail (yum!) and Chad ordered garlic fries.  And by garlic fries, I mean burn-your-mouth, smell-for-days amounts of garlic.  I'd pass on those next time.

We hiked around different parks and trails around the city to see different points of view.  Again, it's amazing how easy these things were with just Tessa.  I can only imagine the handfuls of skittles it would have required to get my boys through the day.

The non-food highlight of this day was the Ballard Locks and Salmon ladders.  I won't bore you with all the details of the salmon life cycle, but the transient woman who was hanging out there made it all so fascinating.  We stayed here for awhile watching ships pass through and salmon swim the ladders and I all but dragged Chad away to go to dinner.

On our way to the wedding the next day we stopped at the salmon fish hatchery to see the end of the process that we'd seen at the ladders the day before.  It was in such a beautiful area and really, truly amazing to see what the salmon do.  I know it's crazy, but the salmon were really one of the highlights of our whole weekend.

We also stopped at Snoqualmie Falls, but since Tessa was asleep in the car, we took turns getting out to see them.  

Selfie at the falls.  I sent it to Chad since he was in the car.

And the wedding was beautiful.

Seriously--look at this.

We had fun seeing Chad's classmates that had flown in from all over the country.  We danced, drank (lemonade for us--which was funny because we instantly picked our the other LDS couple there) and enjoyed being in such a beautiful place.

And this girl--she was a trooper.  But even the best of them get tired--