We kept Grandma Yvonne busy this week again. Marjorie took her to the Woodland park zoo, which as oos go, is one of my favorites. One of hte best exhibits there, they said, was the "bat cage", which is a dark building you walk through that is filled with bats - behind glass, of course. Some of the bats are tiny, no bigger than a sparrow, and others are almost as large as an eagle. Truly awe-inspiring.

Washington state is divided by roughly one-third by the Cascade mountain range, which is just to our east. These mountains include some of the ones we've visited earlier, such as Mount St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Tiger Mountain near our house. Just a little futher north and east of us is Mt. Hyak, which is were Christina and I took our cross-country ski lessons. This weekend we all bundled up and headed there again, this time stopping at a lake to take a few breathtaking pictures. After we spent a little time at the ski lodge (which is now closed), we continued across the mountains east over into a small town called Cle Elum, which is just on the Yakima river. We stopped for coffee at the Pioneer Roasting company, which has a great reading room with tables and some really strong coffee.

Our next stop was in Roslyn. You have probably seen it as well - it was the location for the television series called "Northern Exposure", which was set in an Alaskan town. I lived in Alaska for a while, and Roslyn looks very similar to small towns in Alaska. 

The last part of the day was a stop by Snoqualmie Falls, where all of the flowers are in bloom. It was gorgeous.

A close friend of mine from Florida was teaching at a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia (up in Canada), so he dropped by to spend the night. I showed him around Seattle a little, and then drove him out to the airport to see him off. We are fortunate to have such good friends and family! 

Grandma (Marjorie's Mother, Yvonne) flew in on Tuesday, and we've been on the go ever since. In fact, she claims we're trying to do her in by walking.  I told her just to breathe deep - there are so many coffee shops up here that you can get fully caffienated from the air!

We did let her rest (sort of) for one day, and then she and Christina and Marjorie hit Seattle and visited all the sewing shops, and then the aquarium. On Saturday we took her to the Boeing Air Museum, which has a great collection of aircraft from 1918 on. They also have the "Red Barn", which was the original shop Boeing had to create small airplanes. They were mostly built of wood, and in the depression years they even made furniture there!  I really like that part of the musuem.

So far this Sunday we've let her rest a little more. After church, the girls went upstairs and have been sewing things up there ever since. I've been staying out of the way - we don't want a needle incident!

This has been a busy week. At work, I presented during a Microsoft "TechFest", which is where certain ideas are selected for presentation to group leads and the rest of the teams. We had a lot of really great presentations and booths filled with math and computer geeks.

On Monday it snowed just north of here, and yet by Thursday it was in the high 70's and breaking records. Saturday was a little soggy, but we got a break in the rain and went "disc golfing". In this sport you have some discs that are smaller and heavier than frisbees, and you have a course laid out in a park. You throw the discs closer and closer to the "hole", which is really a standing basket with chains hanging from it. The object is to get the disc into the basket in as few throws as possible, just like regular golf. I like this sport because the course can be used for multiple purposes, and it doesn't require any fertilizer, mowing or anything else in the way of maintenance. Plus, anyone can do it, and the only expense is a few different discs that have different throwing characteristics for different flight and distance uses.

This morning (I'm writing this on Easter Sunday) we went to a sunrise service at our church. It was pouring rain last night, all the way up to 1:00AM when I went to sleep. But at 6:30 when we had the service it was clear and cold. It was a great service.

This week Marjorie's mom is coming visit for a few weeks. We can't wait!