Week 2 in Washington

Happy Halloween to everyone! Yesterday was, in fact, our first visit to the actual city of Seattle. We drove across Lake Washington on the "floating bridge." It was a pleasant drive on a very mild fall day. We spent the afternoon at the Pacific Science Center, under the shadow of the Space Needle. It was great children's museum, with lots of great exhibits. We were able to get in free with our East Tennessee Discovery Center membership. (Having Zoo, science center, national parks membership pays off when you are doing a lot of travelling.) The Center was so extensive we were not able to do it all in one day. We decided to walk down to the shoreline, where we found a Spaghetti Factory, but will come back soon to see the rest of the museum and travel up the Space Needle.

Question: What do the Seattle Space Needle and the Knoxville Sunsphere share in common? Post your answers in the comments.

Saturday we spent in the great outdoors - at a pumpkin farm and corn maze in Redmond. We have been noticing how much more ethnically diverse the population is here, more than any place we have lived in before. I am especially aware of this more in a rural setting such as this farm. In my experience, those places are usually more "white bread," but that is definitely not the case here. We bought some pumpkins which we will be carving tonight.

Settling in Kirkland

We are still down with our home PC, but I have access at work ( and currently, a little down time).

First of all, it is hard to believe we narrowly avoided wildfires in CA! Pam and Craig's place is far out of the danger zones but some of the areas we visit to the north are in the thick of it. The city of Escondido and the Wild Animal Park are greatly affected. Thankfully, according to their website, the animals at the Wild Animal Park are safe despite damage to the park.

We love our new apartment. It is conveniently with walking distance of stores, playground, and a bus route that I am taking to my clinic. It has been mostly gray and wet, but we just had a 2 day reprieve, with a clear sunny sky that offered a great view of the mountains. We are near Lake Washington and have enjoyed several beautiful sunsets. Lots of nice restaurants. A nice library. Kirkland has a lot to offer. We are currently enjoying the fall colors and getting ready for Halloween.

My first 2 days with my job were spent at a training center in Renton, behind the screen of a computer (I am still behind the screen of a computer!). I have been learning to use a Electronic Medical Record program called NextGen. It is fascinating, yet mindboggling. Anyways, today was my first day at the clinic. It is a little chaotic, but hey! it's an adventure. Learning EMR is a very important step for me, and I feel I am finally catching up with the rest of the medical world. At the same time it is almost more of challenge to interact with a patient with a computer between us. I am concerned about how this affects bedside manner. The people here are friendly and helpful. I will be getting a lot of Spanish practice.

More later.

Arrived in Washington

Quick note. We arrived safely in WA. We are settling comfortable in our apartment in Kirkland, WA. We are having PC problems right now so there might not be many posts/ emails for a few days. Things are colder and wetter, but it is definitely beautiful in the Pacific Northwest. We will update with more pics as soon as we are up and running at home. Later.

Hasta Luego, San Diego!

The "Wedding Guests that Never Left" are finally leaving! I am posting as we await our delayed flight at the San Diego Airport (big fog this morning!). We have really enjoyed our stay and the hospitality of Pam and Craig (who are still enjoying themselves in New Zealand). Their apartment has been an ideal and comfortable base for us this past week. We have enjoyed TiVo, high tech cooking gadgets, and a wonderful rooftop to view the bay and landing aircraft.

Wednesday, we watched a puppet show at the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater in Balboa Park, and did some more exploring of the park. Thursday, the sun came out again. We took advantage by traveling up the coast to Torrey Pines State Reserve, a beautiful park with great ocean views. We lunched in La Jolla, where we viewed seals basking on the beach. Natalie wants to add that there was a great mermaid statue at the restaurant Azul. From there we stopped off at Mission Bay to fly kites, get soaked, and watch the sunset.

Yesterday, we packed in seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls at the San Diego Natural History Museum, Cabrillo Monument, and Coronado Island.

We are close to boarding so I will end for now. Next stop, Seattle!

Balboa Park

We have enjoyed exploring San Diego's Balboa Park these past two days. We have taken in the gardens, fountains, museums, restaurants, architecture and wildlife. The kids were especially excited to see another amazing mosaic sculpture by Niki de Saint Phalle called the NikiGator. Natalie enjoyed seeing the Old Globe Theatre and Shakespeare sculpture and bench. Walking through the canyons we enjoyed the scent of the many amazing eucalyptus trees and admired the roots of many others such as this tree above.

Seaworld

The weather is been cooler and cloudier lately. We still had an enjoyable outing to Seaworld yesterday. It was a great experience getting to be face to face with dolphins and petting their "melons." It was also really cool seeing the walrus and the beluga whale swimming in their tanks. The highlight of the trip was Natalie being selected to participate in one of the shows and get to shake hands with Clyde, a sea lion.

Legoland

Friday we spent at Legoland in Carlsbad, CA. Thanks to the generosity of our Knoxville friend Marsha Rhyne, we had two free passes! We enjoyed many unique amusement park rides, as well as the amazing lego sculptures and yummy apple fries with vanilla whipped cream.

Quail Botanical Gardens

Natalie and I enjoyed a wonderful time on Thursday afternoon at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas, CA. We saw desert plants, lots of native plants, topiaries and many fruit trees as well as a waterfall and bamboo forest. Enjoy the pictures in the photo album. The highlight was getting really close to a rabbit and getting a great picture. I also admired the bamboo sculpture.

Encinitas

A little time to blog now. Oliver and I are hanging out in our hotel in Encinitas (a pretty coastal town) while Karen and Natalie are exploring the nearby Quail Botanical Gardens. Earlier we explored the Museum of Making Music and then had lunch with Pam at her workplace, Biogen IDEC. Oliver has been craving "homeschooling" for a few days now, so we are giving him some downtime.

We spent the day a the Wild Animal Park yesterday. It was unlike any zoo we had ever been to. The scenery was incredible. At almost any point you could look down upon a vista of herds of giraffe, gazelle, rhinos, etc. intermingling on a savanna surrounded by the rocky tumbleweed mountains of Southern California. Unfortunately, my camera had not recharged properly so we have almost no pictures to share.

Tonight we plan to enjoy the beach. Tomorrow will be a day dedicated to Legoland in nearby Carlsbad. Day after tomorrow we return to San Diego to live in Pam & Craig's apartment for a week while they honeymoon in New Zealand.

Incidentally, we are all doing fine. Just the normal wear and tear after being on the road for a week. I think, like our youngest, we all look forward to a little more routine in our lives. Still, it's a great environment with a lot of unique things to experience. It is a little drier than what we are used to, but one can hardly complain about the climate here.

Escondido

We are in Escondido, CA tonight.

On our travels today, we passed by Orfila Vineyard and stopped by for a bottle and a tour. Karen made a really cool discovery in our AAA guidebook - an art installation called "Queen Califia's Magical Circle" by Niki de Saint Phalle. It was a large sculpture garden consisting of mosaic sculptures (with beautiful polished stones) and a maze. It was a little confusing to get to, but very much worth a look.

Escondido is about 40 minutes north of San Diego. Our plan is to use this as a new base for two days as we explore some of the surrounding attractions, including Wild Animal Park, which will be our destination tomorrow.

The Wedding in the Flight Path

Greetings from sunny San Diego! This our third day here. It has been a festive weekend celebrating my cousin's wedding (Team Rajachard). It has been a grand reunion with family and friends traveling the globe to get here. Our family represented the extent of the Tennessee contingent. We have enjoyed making a lot new friends, too.

This was the best wedding we ever attended! Pam and Craig carefully planned a meaningful, elegant, and fun ceremony. They also chose some breathtaking locations in Balboa Park. The actual ceremony took place in a courtyard that was the focal point of a marathon the couple had trained for together. That it happened to be in the flight path of San Diego International Airport, with jet engine interruptions every few minutes, only served to add to the character of the wedding. The reception took place at the San Diego Natural History Museum, and it was awesome! Oliver conked out around 11PM in the arms of our aunt, but Natalie plugged on through, among the dancing, flowers, and fossils, till after midnight. "I wish I could start this day all over," she said as she got ready for bed.

We'll be seeing a lot more of San Diego over the next two weeks.

Las Vegas and the Unicorn Adventure

We are posting from the Excalibur hotel in Las Vegas. What a fascinating and crazy place! Part of it may be the jet lag (or getting humiliated at Blackjack) but I am in a daze. Anyways, it's been an experience.

Our travel this far, has gone pretty smoothly. Our only near catastrophe involved Natalie's unicorn, Brietta. Natalie discovered that Brietta was missing as we were about to board our flight out of Knoxville. We realized she had left her in our taxi! Incredibly, we were able to contact our driver, and even more incredibly, he was able to meet me at the security gate with the strayed unicorn. Crisis averted! Much thanks to our courteous driver (we don't even remember his name) and Odyssey Airport Taxi (865-973-6212).

Fairy Picture Information

Several of you have asked about the lovely Fairy Pictures of Natalie that were taken at the UT Trial Gardens last spring that are featured in one of our photo albumns. They were done by Knoxville's Laura Owens and her number is 865-803-6427. She sews the outfits and made the mushroom chair, too! She has clothes of all sizes for boys and girls. Enjoy!

Ohio Renaissance Festival

We returned safely from a whirlwind trip to Canton, OH for Karen's 20th high school class reunion. Along the way we had great fall weather, and a fun hotel stay with an indoor water park. On the return trip yesterday we had a great stopover at Ohio Renaissance Festival. Karen and the kids have been studying the Medieval and Renaissance periods during homeschool the last two weeks. This led to the discovery of this little excursion, and it was definitely a worthy stopover. The 'village' which this takes place is a permanent structure that has such an air of authenticity about it that you feel like you are in a different era. During 3 hours there, although exhausted, we hardly got to experience all there was. We did, however, get to experience mead, archery, and catapulting frogs!