Adventures of flying with kids

The boys and I have arrived in Seattle, WA.  We are staying a few days with grandma and grandpa McCarthy at their home about an hour north of Seattle.  We will stay until Friday when we'll head to Spokane (six hour drive) for the weekend for my brothers wedding.  Next week we'll spend a couple of days in Wenatchee visiting friends and then be in Ellensburg with my family and friends over the Labor Day weekend.  After that we'll spend a few more days in Wenatchee and then head on back to the McCarthy's.

Our flight Tuesday left at 7:15 am so we were up early.  We got up at 4 am to get ready, left for the airport at 5 am and arrived at 5:40 am.  At the security check point Josiah's back pack caused a little stir with the security.  His backpack was searched because a dagger shaped item was detected on the ex-ray.  They found his toy airplane.  It has a metal body (shaped like a dagger?) and rubber wings, which did not show on the scan.  Other than that, it was good.  We got checked in and waited for our boarding time at 6:45 am.  This was the first plane ride for the boys, so it was all pretty exciting (for them).  I do not like to fly, at all, period.  But I guess I just have to sometimes.  I think I held it together pretty well.  After we got seated on the plane Josiah kept asking, "are we flying yet."  Or he would say, "have we launched yet?"  When the plane started moving, and then sat for awhile Ethan started asking about fuel and stuff.  His observation was that the plane was wasting a lot of fuel by sitting there.  And then he hoped that we didn't run out of fuel before we got to Seattle.  After take off Ethan started to comment on the next worst case scenario he had thought of.  I had grown tired of hearing of all the ways we could crash (I've thought about it enough myself) that I didn't need to hear any more of his ideas.  He said, "well I guess the worst that can happen now is...."  I held up my hand and said (firmly) "STOP!"  He did.  The flight was pretty smooth, not too much turbulence at all. 

After a year in Fort Worth, TX, Seattle is more beautiful than I remembered.  I love the mountains and trees!  It is also sunny and clear, but not too hot which is wonderful!  Yesterday we picked some blackberries along the driveway.  We saw two snakes.  The first one scared me, a lot.  I hadn't seen it and probably got pretty close to pick some berries.  The boys ran over to me and then the snake slithered away...I screamed and ran the opposite direction.  A little later the boys found another sitting in the sun.  They got too close and it slithered away too.  They thought it was "cool."  After dinner the boys fed the goats.  Junior, the big boy goat, does not seem to like Josiah.  He kept butting his horns against the gate whenever Josiah came close.  Bad Junior.