08.08.09

08.08.09

Seattle

Cruise is over:(  We were all pretty sad to be leaving the ship!  Also, our last day with Ryan's parents.  Just sad.  We had to be out of our cabin by 8am, so we headed up for one last "Fancy Breakfast".  Afterwards, we waited in one of the lounges until it was our turn to disembark.  This all went pretty smoothly, considering they had a couple of thousand people to clear off the boat!  Locating our driver AFTERWARDS was the tricky part... eventually he found us in the sea of people.  Might have helped if ANY of the drivers had "marked vehicles" instead of all driving the exact same SUV's and vans... We went back to the Fairfield Inn where we started out the week before.

I had to do about 3 loads of laundry and repack everything for Week Two of our fantastic adventure...  while I was doing this, the kids went swimming and before you feel TOO bad for me, I did jump in the hot tub in between loads.  VERY RELAXING (you know, in case I hadn't been relaxing enough in the last week!)

We headed out to Subway for a late lunch/early dinner... pretty happy to actually be eating HEALTHY food!  Afterwards, we had to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa and that was kind of sad... they stayed behind in our hotel room while we took off to see, who else, the RAYS!  Just for the record, WE DID NOT plan our cruise by the fact that the RAYS were going to be in Seattle on the last day.  Really.  We were just pleasantly surprised that our timing was so perfect:)  Ryan and I had seen them in Seattle 2 years ago and were pretty excited for the chance to take Ben and Carly to Safeco Field.  Very nice park!

We headed over to the field and got our tickets, then watched a little bit of batting practice.   We were happy to see Aki warming up with them, even though he wasn't able to actually play yet. 

GREAT WEATHER!  It was about 70 degrees to start out and probably around 62 as it got darker, so REALLY REALLY nice and we LOVED being in the outdoor park, which would be next to impossible in our steamy climate in Tampa!

One of the cool things about this park (other than the retractable roof!) is their Nintendo wireless connection.  The kids brought their DS's and where able to get a free download (only works in the park)... they could look up any MLB player and read their stats, play games, see any scores, watch the current Safeco Field game on a live feed, or a computerized feed... and if they wanted to play their own regular games, they could have the score from the baseball game posted across the top of the screen.  Also, they could order food and have it delivered to our seats (well, we did not let them do this!)  That was pretty fun for them...

Our other FAVORITE thing about this park (and yes, Ryan and I distinctly remembered this from our last visit!) would be the giant bags of kettle corn you can get for $4.  It is so good!  What we DIDN'T remember is how HUGE the bags are, and we got 2, then carried them around with us all week afterwards, eating them up!  It is really tasty!  

During the game, the Mariner's TV crew came up to our area and were trying to tape their fans, and very uncharacteristic of Ryan, he and Ben jumped up and got on the jumbo-tron in their Rays shirts... the camera guy was trying VERY HARD to keep them out of the picture.  Usually when we are in "Someone Else's House" we try to be very low key and quiet (not NEARLY as obnoxious as we are at the trop!)  you know, NO COWBELLS... so this was pretty surprising to me that he was acting like that!  And perhaps a little funny that they were on the Big Screen!

The Rays won, 10-4, which was nice for us!  Afterwards, we went down near the dug out to look for friends (Evan, Carl, Carlos, Jason.... THOSE friends) and Carly got a ball from the "Bat Boy" (it pays to be cute with crazy blue eyes!).

We headed back to our hotel... where Grandma had left the kids a "Goodbye note" that they LOVED and some candy.  After they fell asleep, I was turning the lights out and noticed her note sitting there, and then a note one of them "wrote back" that said, "Thank You" and that made me giggle!  We are so thankful that they were able to spend part of our vacation with us.  It was a really nice time, and something we really, really needed!