Family Addition

For those of you who know my husband, you know that he has been wanting a boat forever. When we were getting married, on the day of our wedding my dad and Vern (our good family friend who officiated the wedding) tried to convince Chris to draw up a marriage contract that stated he got to buy a boat. This of course is because I am cheap and it just wasn't a good time to buy one. So he looked almost every day on Craigslist for the past two years for a great deal that would fall into my stipulations. When he got home from work he would look under Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho's listings. Well....all of his hard work paid off and he found a beautiful boat for an amazing deal. The only catch was that it was in California. We got a full blown appraisal done on the boat and then decided that even with the trip down south, it would still be a great deal to get the boat. So we spontaneously got tickets and headed to Seattle to visit my sister for a few days (for those of you who know me will realize that this was a really hard decision because I don't do spontaneous!!!)

Hayden did amazing on the plane ride down. We had to get him up at 5:00 and the catch a plane at 7:00am, so by the time we were ready to take off he was already snoozing away. The guy at the airport was kind enough to move our seats in a row that didn't have the 3rd seat filled, so we had the entire row to ourselves to stretch out and take naps as well. Hayden is such a happy baby in the morning so he woke up smiling and played the rest of the time! Of course the happiness ended quickly once we got in the car and it was a long drive to Gig Harbor.

We had a great couple of days with my sister, it was wonderful to see her and for her to get to spend time with Hayden. She was kind enough to let us stay at her beautiful house and catered to our every wishes...including spending a long afternoon at the mall!! I wish she lived closer, we had a great time together and Hayden loved playing with his Auntie :)

On Halloween we handed out candy to the kids that visited my sister's house. It was fun to see the kids in their actual costumes running around the neighborhoods....quite different from being bundled up in snowsuits with costumes on top and running from the car to a house then to the car again!!

Hayden had a great time eating his costume, which made Chris and I hungry so we headed down the road to an awesome Italian restaurant that sat right next to the Ocean. This was the first time we took Hayden out to dinner and he did wonderful. He is a big flirt, and smiled at all of the waitstaff and he actually sat in his carseat and played with his toys. The little monster, I mean dinosaur, had a long day of shopping and playing and passed out in daddy's arms!

Like I mentioned earlier, Hayden hasn't gotten over the carseat thing, so my sister was kind enough to take the day off of work and watch him while we made the long journey to Oregon to pick up the boat. The guy that sold us the boat agreed to save us time and meet us half-way from California in Grants Pass, Oregon. It took us about 6 hours to get down there, it went quickly because it was the first time Chris and I had time alone and the scenery was beautiful. I thought that Alaska had beautiful falls, that is until I got to see the gorgeous deep red leaves throughout Seattle and Oregon.

The boat turned out to be as perfect as we imagined. The guy kept it in pristine condition and had a ton of extras added to it when he ordered it. It is a 21' Boice Jet Boat,which are very hard to find because they are a custom boat and the manufacturer went out of business in 2004, the one we purchased was one of the last boats made. This boat was actually bought from the father who owned the company. Anyways, it was a gem and was the gentleman's baby. They have been hit really hard by the recent economic turmoil and he had a really hard time selling his boat....this was actually the last thing he sold (we are talking he sold his house before his boat). After having a wonderful afternoon with him and learning all about the boat we had to get back on the road to our little munchkin that we were missing. It was a long drive back and took about 7 hours on the dark busy freeways. But we made it, and Hayden did pretty good for my sister while we were gone. He only had 1 meltdown, but she is a wonderful pediatric nurse and knew exactly how to handle his shenanigans!

The next day we had to run the boat over to get shrink wrapped and then take it to a shipping company to barge it up to Alaska. Yikes easier said then done, my sister had to work so Chris and I tried to figure out the stinking roads in Tacoma and it was crazy. We got lost and then had a hard time trying to get back to the right freeway in the right direction to get back on track again. Let's just say it was a really long 4 hours of driving and that Hayden pretty much screamed the entire time. It was very trying on all of us, but we made it through okay and got the boat all ready to make it's journey home! We made a quick stop into my sister hospital because she saved us two H1N1 vaccines and then we headed to the airport. We made it with about 10 minutes to spare, and were beat by the time we sat down. But our trip wasn't quite over yet. The flight left in the evening, which isn't Hayden's happy time, and it was packed as well. So of course we had a little bit of fussiness, which was hard to deal with because we were exhausted and tried to keep him quiet to avoid the evil glares from people. He finally went to sleep and then slept the entire way home. It will all be worth it in about 7 months when we finally get to use our boat :)