natsukashii

THANKSGIVING!
just a few months late...

So this happened the first year too (and the first year was WAY worse - we had this lady with a group of kids representing the countries of Africa...oh my she was *the* most high maintenance woman I have ever met. Her kids were darling, the dances were amazing, the music was beautiful, and she was absolutely the most difficult woman I have ever met. She's known around our (not so politically correct for being the International Office - although I think that we've all agreed that we make fun of all cultures equally.) office as "Ms. African Queen," even though she's only from Detroit. She once called her husband at our office, yelled at him so loud on the phone that we could all hear her and then hung up on him. Just a tad awkward. She somehow got me to buy a song for her on iTunes with our office card - we would have done nothing of the sort for any other performers but I think I was just afraid of her. Did you know that iTunes is the biggest source of corporate credit card fraud and will immediately shut down a corporate credit card upon purchase??? I didn't either.Until I used it to buy the song, ironically titled, "African Queen" and then tried to go buy other stuff for the department, only to have the really loud automated voice Walmart lady at the self checkout counter tell me, "your card has been declined, please choose a method of payment." Ahhhh...WorldFest 2008 didn't deserve a post.) but as soon as WorldFest is over, I start telling myself, "it really wasn't that bad." And I start looking forward to next year!

So as soon as it was over, like I wrote, I jumped in the car with my family and drove to Seattle. That night. It was awesome. The baby slept quite well, the boys were not fighting, as it was the middle of the night, and they were mostly sleeping. Todd is a pretty good night driver and I stay awake when I take my shift by eating sunflower seeds and listening to him snore. Our family actually loves road trips. So we got into Seattle on Saturday and settled down for a long, relaxing week of food, my family, and not WorldFest. So, of course, it was over before I could blink.

T. spent more than half of the week filming a new short. He used Jo as the star and Kel, Kai and Kait got pretty fun parts too. They enjoyed it. Kait did not enjoy the paint on her face to make her look like a ghost; it got all dried and cracked and she was probably wishing several times that day that her mom had not allowed her to skip school for this. That said, T. was totally in his element. Film is definitely his passion; he was so happy to be shooting. He gets quite bossy when he's filming, I guess that's why they call them 'directors.' But it was still annoying. At least he had fun and the greatest part was the location scouting - Washington is SO beautiful! I can't decide which side I like best, Eastern or Western WA, but this trip was perfect for reminding me that Seattle is gorgeous...

Aside from the filming, we got a lot of fun time with our family. We headed to downtown Seattle one day and visited our favorite Japanese food and book store, as well as Pike's Place Market (where our family plays a "find-the-weirdest-thing-you-can-for-less-than-five-bucks" game every year - and wow - there are WEIRD things at Pike's Place). We did a little, ok, a lot, of shopping and just had a lot of fun hanging out with the family. My sweet nephew Kel got baptized so we got to visit with the missionaries a lot too - which was awesome. So, after an incredibly long post, here's some pics of my cute, cute kids!

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he *loves*