January Trip - Home to Washington

Greetings,

As you might know, traveling during the holiday season can be expensive. Jocelyn and I have found that tickets to travel a few days into the New Year are much less expensive than closer to Christmas or New Years. Because of this, we made the trip this year on Wed January 7th.

We had to leave for the airport at 3am to get to our early morning flight. We made it on time...just to find that our plane had mechanical issues and we would need to change our plans. It was not as simple as it might have been because we had a connection in Minneapolis, but they did finally figure it out. Apparently our connecting flight was mostly full, so somehow we got to ride in first class. Needless to say, it was a very enjoyable flight compared to being cramped in regular old coach class for 3 hours. When we arrived in Seattle, Jessica picked us up and we spent the night in Seattle.

Our meals on our first class flight.

Motorcycle
The next day we drove to Monroe and Jocelyn had plans to visit some of her friends while I hung out with her younger brothers at school. In the afternoon, I picked up Jocelyn and we went over to see if I could ride my motorcycle while we were there. We had left it at the Vogt's while we were in MO. When we got there, we saw that the garage that my motorcycle was in had collapsed. There had been a huge snow storm a couple weeks before we got there and the garage did not fare well. Thankfully, the motorcycle had been taken out a week before that, so it was undamaged. However, the helmets and riding gear and KEY were in the shed still, so it was not possible to ride it while we were there. Too bad. I am very thankful that my motorcycle we not in the shed, but there were lots of other things in there, so we should remember the Vogt's in prayer along with all those who were affected by the snow and floods.

Here is the garage that my motorcycle was supposed to be in.

Floods
Speaking of floods, while we were in Washington there was some major flooding going on from all the snow finally melting. We weren't sure that we would even be able to get to Jocelyn's parent's house because of the bridge being closed, but the water went down after we got there and it went down quickly in my opinion. Victor and I were able to get some fun pictures and he even jumped into the frigid water up to his waist.

Victor running in the flood water.

Visiting Joshua
On Friday night, Jocelyn and I took Victor and Schuyler to visit Joshua and see his house that he just bought in Bremerton. We got there around 11pm, but we stayed up till 2am watching a movie and talking. It was a good time. On Saturday, Jocelyn's grandparents came over for lunch, so it was nice to see them again. Victor, Schuyler and I went on a walk to see some of the sights around Bremerton. There is a Navy Shipyard there and we almost got to see the huge aircraft carrier, but it was too far away to walk to in time.

This is a ship that we saw while we were walking around Bremerton.

Jessica and Kenneth
Tuesday night we were able to go to Seattle and visit Jessica again and spend some time with her and her boyfriend. We went out to coffee and I had some really good drinking chocolate. Before we were able to get there though, our vehicle that we were borrowing broke down in Monroe. We were driving down the road from the Fryelands over to the library when steam started to come out behind the car. Just as we were pulling into the parking lot there, a police car pulled up behind us with his lights on and asked us what was wrong with the car. I was glad that there was no other reason for him to be pulling us over. Thankfully we were right next to the Ford dealership, so I took a picture of the broken part and they told me what it was. It was a small coolant valve which lets coolant into the heater core. The old one had broken completely and was very brittle. We had to go the the car parts place across town, but 2 hours later we were on the road again.

Here is our vehicle that needed to be fixed.

Visiting friends and family
The main reason we were in Washington was to visit with our friends and family. We were able to see almost everyone during our time there. Robert and Mae Young let us stay in their guest room and also let us use their car. Jocelyn and I spent some time with Victor and Schuyler at their school. We were glad to be able to go to Church and we were able to give an update on what things are going on with us and going to Brazil and everything. On Monday night we got to go to college group and then went to Denny's with everyone and hung out there, just like this summer. It was a good time.

Us and our friends Ben and Mandy.

Traveling Home
Jocelyn's mom took us to the airport on Wednesday night. Our flight left at 12:40am. The flying was uneventful, and unfortunately we were not in first class anymore, but we enjoyed our one flight of glory. :) Neither of us slept much on the way back, so when we finally got home at 12:30pm Thursday, we took a good long nap. All in all, the trip was a great success and we really enjoyed our time.

Here are some more pictures.