Fun and Busy Day

Following our breakfast yesterday morning down in the lobby area of the hotel, we came back to the room to get ready to go shopping. Josie had made a couple hat and scarf sets for her over the last year, and she modeled them before we left for our shopping trip. This is her favorite:

Our shopping trip was to the Tacoma Mall which was about 15 miles north of Lacey and the hotel. There were several different stores that we spent some time looking for outfits for Harmony, and it was fun watching her model the many different choices. She loves hats, and she modeled a couple of those:

but she ultimately ended up with a nice outfit of jeans, shirts, shoes and accessories. This is one of the combinations we bought for her birthday:

Our trip ended up at McDonalds for a quick lunch:

 and we headed out to Walmart to pick up some batteries and other items, including a pair of flip-flops that we got to replace a broken pair she had been wearing. This was taken during the hunt for flip-flops in Walmart:

By now it was time to return to the hotel where she changed and we went down to the indoor swimming pool. As we didn't bring our suits, we sat and let her entertain us with her swimming skills:

She wanted to spend the last night with us before we leave today for home. It was a wonderful visit and we will drop her off on the way out this morning. We don't expect to get back to Jackson much before 10 PM tonight, so we're off to drive another 900 miles to get back in time for work again on Saturday...

North Bend Outlets

There were a couple items we wanted to get for our trip next week to IL, so we went to North Bend where there is a very nice Outlet Mall. We had been there several times in the years we lived in the Redmond/Woodinville area and thought it would be nice to see the changes there. It looked pretty much the same as we remembered with a few store changes, but we picked up the items we wanted and then sat and enjoyed the sun while drinking a latte outside of the coffee shop at the Mall.

A very good friend of mine - Paul Schooling - used to live in North Bend. He had passed away before we moved to AZ but I kind of remembered where his home was so we wanted to drive by that to see his old neighborhood. Like everything else, it has changed in that all the young trees are now grown into large trees and the neighborhood looks great. Once again, it was a short walk down memory lane. Josie did some laundry when we returned home and we then started pulling together our things to take on our trip.

We keep hearing about a bill that has passed in Congress regarding the furloughed Air Traffic Controllers, and hope that all is resolved before we travel on Monday to Chicago. The delays resulting from these missing Controllers are substantial, so we hope they get back to work quickly.

Our plan today is to visit with Kristine and the kids one time before our trip. She can do Josie's hair the way she likes it and then we should be ready to pack up, ready the rig for our time away, and do the early check-in online for our flight which we can accomplish 24 hours before the flight...