WHAT AN AMAZING 

FIRST DAY

OF OUR 'VACATION'

So early, and I do mean early, this morning we headed from our home to IAD (Dulles Airport) to catch our flight to Seattle Washington.  It was a fairly quick flight....relatively speaking!  5 1/2 hours isn't bad after all.

This was our first time coming to Seattle.  We have been very impressed with what we have seen today. A great place to visit.  Flying in we had an amazing view of 

MOUNT ST. HELENS!  

And in the background was Mt. Rainer.  She is impressive, she is.

 We had a couple of hours before David and Becky's flight arrived so we decided to go out and 'explore' the area around our Marriott Hotel.  And lookie what we found......a very, very popular and famous place.....PUBLIC MARKET CENTER.

 We had a passerby person take this picture of us.....with a Norwegian Cruise Ship in the background.  Ours will be the 'Pearl'.  We are looking forward to being on the Alaskan Cruise for a week!

 Once we hooked up with David and Becky and the kids at the hotel, we were off to visit the 

SEATTLE SPACE NEEDLE.

What a very, very cool place.  And it was the perfect day to go up top because it was a clear day and you could literally see for....ever.....

 Porter and Claire on the balcony of our hotel room.  Notice that Claire is making a 'heart' with her arms and hands.

 Got a little FAMILY PICTURE of Becky and David and kids while we were on the top of the space needle.  Cute picture.

 OKAY.....Now this is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!!!  Just listen to this....I will try to make it brief!  We were all standing in line to get our tickets to go up the SPACE NEEDLE.  The guy standing right behind us said something about Finland.  I turned around instinctively and said 'Oh you mean Suomelainen?'  He starts speaking to me in Finnish and I start responding back to him.....you know, we like have this little Finnish conversation going on!  Amazing, absolutely amazing.  About that time Wayne walked back over to where we were standing (he had walked a few feet away to look at something) and this guy looks at Wayne and says....'I was your missionary companion in Finland'!!!!  Could have blown us away!  Actually, he did blow us away!  Sure enough it was Veli Paskett and he and Wayne served together 47 years ago as companions in Lappenranta!  We had about a 45 minute wait to get up to the top of the Space Needle and we used every bit of that time just catching up with all kinds of Finnish things.  We have decided that the 4 of us want to go to Finland in 2 years and serve together in the Finland Temple!  How cool would that be.  It is a SMALL WORLD in the church!!

 After we got back to the ground from the top of the Space Needle we decided we were hungry.  Across the street was a little dive of a Bar-B-Que place.  David suggested we eat there.  We got our food and sat on the ground at the base of the Space Needle to eat.  Well, we looked up and the owner of the little dive was coming across the street to make sure our food was good......it was GREAT pulled pork and slaw.  We recommend it to anyone coming to Seattle!

 This is the little BBQ place across the street.  Great place.

 Kind of out of order in sequence of the day's events but here is a shot of some of the flowers inside the MARKET PLACE.  The place was just amazing.

Okay....it has been a really, really long day.  Time to head to bed.  We board the ship tomorrow about noonish.  Hopefully I will be able to get a 'connection' so I can add to my blog each day.  We are OFF to a great start.  Looking forward to a great week.....  :-)