a visit from rachael

rachael graced us with her presence this weekend! it's hard to believe we have lived out here for 4 years and rachael had never visited us until now. out of all of aaron's siblings, rachael is the one i know the least, so it was fun to finally have some one-on-one time to hang out with her.

we started off right, but grabbing some happy hour appetizers and drinks at nijo's sushi bar & grill downtown on thursday. that sustained us until we made our way back home. we popped open some champagne and had a toast rachael. then went straight to work making mushroom bisque with focaccia.

i had to work on friday, so i didn't get much rachael time during the day. after work, aaron and i showed her the rose garden that close to our house. it's really amazingly beautiful. we don't go there as often as we should (it's practically in our back yard, we don't have an excuse). each time i do go i always vow to come back more often. the rest of the night was spent with a lot of laughter. we started game night with monopoly and taboo, which quickly morphed into charades.

saturday we celebrated the solstice by attending the fremont solstice parade (see prior post). both rachael and aaron had never seen this parade before so it was fun watching two newbies. aaron knew what to expect, but rachael was definately in for a shock. this isn't your typical "welcome summer" parade. i loved watching all the little kids get so excited by all of the wacky costumes and excitement. children's enthusiasm is contagious. afterwards, we went back home for a quick lunch and a nap. then went outside to a nearby park to play frisbee.

sunday we did the whole downtown-seattle experience. we toured the public library (which sounds lame, but seattle has the coolest public library ever, which rachael can now atest to). we window shopped. we went to pike place market. this, while it might sound fun, is actually obligatory, because if greg finds out any of his children are coming to seattle to visit us he insists on them transporting a huge box of crab back to wisconsin for him. it is delightful for aaron and i to watch our guest(s) lug around a 40lb box of crab, but surprisingly, they aren't that into it. good thing everyone loves greg.

we drove rachael back to the airport on sunday night. hopefully it won't take her 4 more years to visit us again!