Washington and Stuff

Hello Family! Mom, thanks for the reminder to post on Fast Sundays. Here's my contribution. 

This is Oakley and I on the airplane to Denver from Cedar Rapids. Everyone is pretty excited at this point... after a three hour layover in Denver, not everyone was quite as excited. However, we made it to Seattle in one piece and all was well. 

This is one of the swans at the hospital where I'm working. They keep all the annoying, ugly, and prolifically pooping Canadian geese away. I guess the swans are really aggressive and territorial so they scare off the Canadian hosers who are larger in numbers. 

Here's Mt. Rainier from the old parade field. Awesome. 

This has become one of our favorite activities out here. There are blackberry bushes just about everywhere you look on post and Wendy loves looking for them. She and Oakley will go through a bowlful everyday. They're delicious but you've got to be careful picking them because they're surrounded by thorns. 

Here's the house we used to live in. It looks mostly the same as I remember it. Good times. 

We got to go to Mt Rainier last weekend and it was awesome. Clear skies, wildflowers blooming. We lucked out. Wendy posted a bunch more pictures on our blog (daveandwendy.wordpress.com). 

I had to include this picture from the Mt. Rainier trip. May qualify as our most awkward/awesome family portrait to date. 

The old pet cemetery up on the bluff. There were some fresh graves up there. Pretty spooky. 

We went to the local aquarium. Here's Oakley standing in a shark's mouth. She wasn't sure what to make of it. 

We took the ferry out to Seattle from Bremerton. So pretty!

We caught a Mariners game. They lost. D'oh. 

We're loving it out here in Washington and hoping that we'll come back and live here for a few years. We'll see how things shake out but I think we'll make it. 

One other thing, and this is a little dated now, the US men's national team beat Mexico in a soccer friendly in Mexico City for the first time ever last month. It was extra awesome because the Mexican Olympic team had just won the gold and they were having a special celebration ceremony just after the game. Booyah. For those of you aren't familiar with the US/Mexico rivalry, it's crazy go nuts. The really cool thing is we beat them with a lot of second string guys and a new defensive line up. So cool. Here are the highlights. The winning goal was scored on a combination play from three subs. I was geeking out. 

One other thing, did you guys see the Cougars win? Awesome stuff. Especially the fact that we held Washington State to -5 yards rushing offense. I'm excited for the Utah game in a few weeks. I really hope we can beat them this year. The last two outing have been pretty painful. Party on guys.