{{Our Visit to Washington: Lynnwood}}

Since I've slowly been posting about our vacation, the days just keep ticking by and it's almost October!

After our time in Oregon, my sis-in-law Rachel drove us north to meet up with Anna.  It's great having those two families in the same vicinity!  It was a 2 hour drive for Rach and about 1 1/2 for Anna.  We met up at a McDonalds and the kids each had a sundae.  She'd brought the 3 littles with her, so they were all excited to see sweet Chasey and vice versa!  I think Chase was in shock and trying to pinch herself to see if they were for real :)

We lounged around the house a LOT while we were there.  It was just so nice to be a family, that nothing else really seemed so important. The Seattle sites will always be there, right?  The kids had so much fun being together.  And Uncle John was in his glory playing with Toby and Drew nerf gun wars!  I do believe if there was a vote/prize, Uncle John would win "best uncle award".  It makes me sad that we don't have that regular contact with those kiddos anymore for exactly that reason.  And him even sadder.

But one day we emerged and took a ferry ride from Edmonds over to Kingston.  About a 30 minute ferry ride...we got to experience the true WA life that way.  Kingston is just a SMALL one block downtown area, but they had an open field right on the harbor, so we picnicked there and played good old fashioned races for a while (another Uncle John fave)

We ended our stroll with ice cream, followed by running very quickly to make the ferry ride back over!  We were all a little out of breath when we got there, with ice cream melting down our hands.  We actually saw the tiniest bit of Mt. Rainier this day.  But I mean tiny, shrouded in clouds.

One night we walked over to the local park at a school.  We all had fun running around there and Uncle John got to play ball tag with the kids in a spread out area.  Afterwards we walked home and had a birthday celebration with the 3 summer Hitchcock kids (Toby, Drew, Whit) and Chase's fall birthday.  Abby had made a yummy cake and the kids had fun opening gifts.  Before the park we had a traditional "Hatch-cock" dinner of fun-due!  This time the fundue was made from scratch and Ellie had made homemade bread.  Probably the best rendition EVER!

This was the night that we announced that I am pregnant!  That was so fun to do in person!  Better than we'd hoped.  Everyone was very excited.  Ellie had even asked me on our walk home from the park if I was ever going to have any more children.  Can I bluff or what???

One beautiful sunny afternoon we headed over to a little harbor town called Mulkiteo.  Chase and I had been here before.  There is a great playground and a "beach" and a lighthouse.  The kids had fun skipping stones and they even found a crab that they tortured  played with for a while.

Whitney and Chase were forever playing dress up and dancing and making things up.  One afternoon they did a show for us...

Chase has a way to go to catch up to Whit's talent, but she is coming right along.

Oh what a joy this time was!  It will be remembered and cherished for a long time.  Who knows when our next trip up there will be...I do believe that they will come down and visit a cute new little niece or nephew in the spring.  Boy!  Some people have to go to great lengths to get a visit!!  Just kidding.  It will be a joyous time for them to come...and maybe we'll even be able to have a baptismal by the Pastor.

Anna has several great posts with pictures on her blog to check out as well.