Four Part Harmony

To say we’ve had a lot going on lately would be a bit of an understatement.
For starters, we’re finally getting around to having the exterior of our house painted.

We’ve had a small crew here the past two weeks, and we’ve been a bit cooped up as a result. They’ve had the windows taped off and it’s been kind of dark and gloomy in the house. It got to the point where we had started referring to the house as “the cave”.

Thankfully, we had planned a weekday trip to Seattle, to take advantage of some free Mariners tickets that I had gotten from work. We decided that it would be fun for Anna (and us too) to take the train up there and spend the night.

Here we are in front of the Portland train station preparing to head out on our adventure.

Riding the train.

We stayed in a little hotel right across the street from the field, and just a block or two down from the train station. Here’s a shot of the stadium from the rooftop balcony. The hotel had a shuttle van that would drop you off and pick you up at various points throughout the city, and we really didn’t miss having a vehicle at all.

There was also a pool up on top of the balcony, so we managed to get a little swimming in too.

We got into town in the early afternoon, but the game wasn’t until 7:00 so we hopped on the shuttle and went to the aquarium on a whim. Didn’t get many photos there, but had a lot of fun. Otters and seals were the big highlights. We spent a few hours there, caught a bus back to the hotel, walked over to the pyramid brewery that was right across the street, had a quick dinner and then headed over to the stadium for the game.

The Mariners were playing Minnesota, and I was conflicted. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the Twins in the past 10 years or so, but I still thought that they were My Team. I quickly realized, though, that I knew absolutely no one on Minnesota’s team. I guess Kirby Puckett retired at some point? No Kent Hrbek? Gary Gaetti? I did recognize at least a few of Seattle’s players, and they were the clear underdog in the game. And so, I finally came to terms with the fact that it seems I’m a Mariners fan now (at least until Portland gets their own MLB team).

It had already been a long, long day, and it was no surprise when Anna fell asleep sometime around the 3rd inning. She ran around for a while, watched the game in one or two pitch increments, tried out every unoccupied seat in the section, and then fell asleep in my arms.

Milo was pretty content, so we ended up sticking around until the seventh inning. Seattle was playing well, and had the lead when we left. We checked the paper in the morning, and sure enough they won.

Next morning we headed out to the Pike Place market and spent a leisurely morning wandering around.

Veggie stand.

Anna found this giant piggy bank on the corner.

We had time for a quick dip in the pool and then it was back to the train station to head back to Portland. The ride home took a bit longer than the ride up, but it was still nice.

Nicki had brought along a bunch of these sticky letters, so we made this little picture(?) to commemorate our trip. We got home late and had a bunch of preparations to make for Anna’s 3rd birthday the following day. I’ll put some pictures up from the big day later on.