A kid free weekend...sort of

Mr. Ranch and I are both older than our siblings and we wondered for years if we would ever have nieces or nephews.  In the past three years we (finally?) have two wonderful little nephews (one from each side), the newest arriving this past May.  Mr. Ranch's sister, the wonderful Amy@ParkerHausRoles, and her husband asked us to be Godparents for their baby.  After much debate, we decided to stay with Mr. Ranch's mom, in her not so big apartment and farm out the kids for the weekend.  We had a week sans kids last summer, my folks met met in North Platte and we did a hand-off--I had 3 more days of school and a conference after they were done for the summer, but this was our first trip without the kids in tow. The Boy stayed with one of his friends from school, enjoying watching swim meets and Avenger's themed movies, while The Girl went on a rafting trip with Javier and his family, including her friend, E.   I'll try to get her to do a "guest post" on her trip....it was a once in a lifetime trip!
So Mr. Ranch and I set off for Seattle, sans kids.  The flight was uneventful--I discovered, after 20 years of flying, that the "secret" for me is a lot of decongestant and a funny movie.  "Grown Ups" fit the bill and we landed without any, um, incidents.
Keep in mind that The Girl had our good (interpret as "waterproof and shockproof") camera on her trip, so these photos are all from phones or other family members.

One of our Seattle requirements is that we eat a lot of seafood.  We are from Denver-ish...There is a story about this wooden fish, he used to be on the deck of the restaurant and was washed out to sea in a storm surge, found and returned.  Ultimately, he makes a good prop for Mr. Ranch.
We had a lovely lunch on Saturday with a couple that I went to high school with the wife and Mr. Ranch went to elementary school with the husband.  Weird coincidence, as I went to school in Indiana and the Mr in New Hampshire :)  We were able to get some snuggle time with the newest nephew, but as we were competing with all four grandparents, our snuggles were limited. 

The baptism was during mass on Sunday at the same church Mr and Mrs Parker Haus were married in almost 3 years before.  It was a lovely service (and I got to hold the baby in the narthex when he got fussy).  We did some limited sight-seeing and then returned to Denver to collect our own children.  A good, short visit.  

 Our nephew, wearing a replica heirloom gown, modeled after Mr. Ranch's family gown.  You can read all about the original and the replica over on Mrs. Parker Haus's blog. Dressed for the Blessed Occasion

 A couple years ago, Mr. Ranch became (in)famous on one of our camping trips when he decided to burn a gi stump.  I think it was really only really funny if you were there...but here is a stump that even Mr Ranch would have trouble burning (note the relative size compared to the man sitting in the stump's shade".  We had a nice walk down to the Sound and cooled our feet off.

 We did not eat at this restaurant, it was next door to where we went, but given The Boy's current obsession with all things Percy Jackson related, I had to take a picture and texted it to his "keeper" for the weekend.  He was duly impressed.

Rounding out the weekend...The Boy was asleep within 5 minutes of picking him up...a successful weekend I'd say.