February 13 and 14th

Last weekend, I went to school to tie up loose ends before my week in Canada, and then I went to the barber shop for a haircut. I left town around 4pm and drove up to Seattle to meet with family. i drove to Sea-Tac airport and met my parenst who drove from Montana the night before. i hadn't seen my parents since I left Montana in early July. It was great to be with them again. My dad and I then rode the hotel shuttle to the airport to meet my brother, his wife, and sister who were flying from DC that day.

We met them at the gate and headed back to the hotel.
I think it started at that point: we attracted looks at our noisy laughter and good fun. This would be a reoccurring theme on transportation around the next week. We had a happy reunion as I hadn't seen my siblings since the previous Christmas.
Valentines day started with my parents, brother and sister-in-law driving to Vancouver as my sister and I drove to north Seattle to visit some of her friends. We were trying to delay our arrival in Vancouver, because we told the people we were renting from that no more than 5 people would be in the house at a time.

My sister drove to Green Lake and met an old roomate of hers.
We ate breakfast while sharing stories, and then we walked around the lake. It was a beautiful "spring" day. It was one of the first days of brilliant sunshine as well. We then walked back to the breakfast place and met another set of my sister's friends. We ate lunch and then, back around the lake we went. The park was beautiful, and there were a ton of people.

There was also lots of free hugs. We were all a little skeptical at first, but then we gave in and took hugs around the lake. Happy Valentine's day.

My sister dropped her friend off at her place and began to walk through a farmer's market. It was more of a artisans market with a bunch of vintage tee-shirts and trinkets. We also found an antique-ish shop that sold used items form the 70's in great shape. I found a couple of state maps from the 50's which had great graphics.

We then started our trek north. We made it to the border around 7pm and handed our passports to the officer at the gate. We were asked to get out, and have our car searched. My sister and I were questioned separately and after about 10 minutes, we were able to go. It might have been a good thing we stopped. In the customs office, the TV was showing men's moguls. We were able to watch Andrew Bilodeau earn Canada's first gold medal. I don't know if we would have had another opportunity (this sentence is suppose to have a sarcastic tone. For the first three days, ALL tvs had a clip of the bumpy skiing guy and his victory).

We arrived outside our beautiful rental home and we all had a great dinner. We watched some Olympics, and were preparing to wake up early, when we found out our snowboard cross tickets were canceled due to lack of snow in the viewing area. We would go downtown in the morning anyway and try and get refunds.