I got back Saturday from a week visiting family in Washington State. I had a wonderful time, of course!  I started off with an inexpensive direct flight from Mazatlán to Vancouver, BC on Westjet Airlines.  This was my first time flying Westjet, and I loved it. During the summer they fly from here to Vancouver and back once a week, on Saturdays.  During the rest of the year they have more flights.  I paid about $250 less than my usual carriers that require a plane change in Phoenix or Los Angeles, so that was nice!  Since my son and his family live in Bellingham, just a few miles South of the border, it made the whole trip easy as pie.

My son and his family live a very active life and it was fun to jump right into it!  There were volleyball tryouts every day for Erica – and I was glad I was there for the good news that she made the JV team.  She was a willing driver, too, offering to drive whenever we headed out.  Owen had his middle school orientation and of course a bit of baseball practice.  We walked their chocolate lab, Lexie, went boating on Lake Whatcom, had a shopping spree at Best Buy, and ate out a bunch.

One night Erica and I cooked dinner for everyone – snow pea, asparagus, and parmesan pasta with crunchy bread and a salad!  We walked along Bellingham Bay, visited a fabulous knitting store downtown, and bought quinoa, bulgur wheat, and basmati rice for me to bring home at Trader Joe’s.  We had plenty of time sitting in the sunshine talking, too.

Visits never seem to be long enough but I feel all cozy and happy to have enjoyed my wonderful family for a bit.  I got back Saturday afternoon, and that night we experienced one of the biggest rainstorms ever (at least for us!)  We think more than 4 inches of rain fell at our house! You might want to read MazReal’s great blog post with lots of pictures showing what it was like at his end of Centro – and during the same rainstorm just a few blocks North the oldest church in Mazatlán lost its front wall… picture below. This has been a very rainy summer here in Mazatlán, and many colonias have had huge problems due to flooding.

This morning we took a walk along the malecón with the dogs and realized that they are nearly done renovating the exterior of the Belmar Hotel.  It’s been a long haul but it is looking great. Do you remember in January 2010 the cement canopy fell down?  It was a real mess back then, but now – the only remaining project seems to be painting a new front sign.

There’s lots more going on in the Countdown to Mexico world that I’ll tell you about soon, but now – I think it’s time to get back to my knitting!