Adventures Afar(ish)

 Now that January is over half over, I'm ready to write about Christmastime! 

Zeb and I went to Washington on Christmas Eve to spend time with his family, and stayed with his parents for about a week afterwards. At some point on our trip, Zeb told me I had to write a blog post about it. 

I could write about the beautiful scenery, about meeting people, about my experimental eggnog pie...

I could write about how well Bailey traveled, or how it felt to be in Zeb's hometown, or what it was like getting to know his parents.

But what Zeb wants me to tell you about... are our adventures at Leavenworth.

So here begins a tale of cold feet, animal smuggling, and breaking and entering.

We headed to Leavenworth sometime between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Apparently this is a busy time of year over there! We circled the main street area a few times with no luck, and ended up finding parking in a residential area a few blocks away. Everything was covered in either snow, slush, or water. I had only brought one pair of shoes, some beat-up old suede boots. They quickly absorbed as much moisture as possible and kept my feet nice and cool the entire afternoon. They also have absolutely no tread, and made walking on packed snow/ice and slush very exciting!

Zeb fared quite a bit better with his footwear choices, and therefore had to purposely walk as slowly as possible while I slipped and slid my way down the hill a few blocks, and tried to dodge the giant puddles at all the crosswalks and intersections. This remained a theme for the rest of the day. I did everything very slowly and loudly, from carefully walking through snow and giving the occasional discreet shriek when I slipped, to smelling every candle in every store that had candles, and excitedly beckoning Zeb over to join me.

We had brought Bailey with us, and decided to keep her in Zeb's messenger bag for the afternoon. Once we finally made it to the actual part of town that everyone goes to Leavenworth for, we were already wet, tired, and getting hungry. The restaurants we were interested in had crazy wait times, and one of them immediately informed us of their anti-pet policy as soon as we poked our heads in the door, it seemed.

This was all mildly discouraging, and my blood sugar was starting to crash. We started walking towards McDonald's as an emergency measure. There were two problems with this plan. Number one, it was on the other end of town. Number two, Zeb hates McDonald's. But I needed food, and McDonald's was not likely to have a multiple-hour wait. Luckily I spotted a Starbucks and made the executive decision to change course. The Starbucks was super crowded, but at least it was warm and there was no rain or snow happening inside. I ordered a bunch of different foods and a drink for us to share, and snagged a tiny table in a corner. 

Bailey trying to dry off inside Starbucks

The coffee wasn't great, of course. But it was warm, and so was the food, and we were greatly comforted. So with blood sugar stabilized and misery abated, we braved the cold and rain once more. The wait for Andreas Keller's restaurant was 3+ hours, I think? So we had some time to kill.

Once I got over my cold feet and decided to have fun, it really was a lovely time. All the Christmas lights were still up, and the stores were pleasantly bustling with other touristy people. Zeb was also having a good time, so much so that he even agreed to take some selfies with me, trying to angle things juuust right so the Christmas lights would show in the background.

We wandered through so many shops. We got some very expensive fudge, found our last names in a genealogy book, and Zeb got Bailey a ridiculously priced Seahawks hoodie at a little pet store. 

And then, as we were wandering, I saw a sign. 

"Museum"

"Can we please go? I know you hate museums, but I wanna see what it is!"

Zeb kindly acquiesced, and we climbed the staircase to the Leavenworth Historical Museum.

There was no one at the desk. Here is where the breaking and entering comes in, although I confess I may have exaggerated it a bit. I did not want to enter the museum without paying the $5 per person fee, but what were we to do? We waited awkwardly, with no sign of help. I looked around considered our options, and got an idea. What if I just check out our tickets myself? How hard could it be? So I reached over the counter and pulled the little checkout computer thing to where I could see it, selected two adult tickets, and paid for them. I saved the receipt to prove that we had indeed bought our tickets, and as soon as I completed my daring mission, the museum employee whose job I had just taken over, approached us and offered her assistance. "No thank you, we already got our tickets! See, I have the receipt, we already paid."

Luckily, she was fine with all of this, and very enthusiastically answered a couple of questions and then some! I think she was just excited that someone was obviously so passionate to go through the museum. 

After all that buildup, we went through the whole museum in about 15 minutes. 😅 There was a lot of interesting info all over, and a lot of care and passion obvious in all the details. But I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the little checkout computer. That was probably just because of the adrenaline rush, though.

Soon after this escapade, our turn on the restaurant wait-list came up. I'm pretty sure they let us make the reservation because Bailey was in a bag and also below the little check-in podium/counter thing, so no employees saw her. We were determined to keep it that way when we went back to actually eat. 

Bailey had been a perfect angel all day. She nestled quietly in her blanket nest in Zeb's bag, and gladly let us put the flap over her to keep her head dry. 

However. 

As soon as we sat down she decided that now was her time to make a move. We looked over our menus while Zeb tried to keep her tucked under his arm and out of sight. Whenever a server came by, I would hold my menu up to divert attention away from Zeb's mild struggling, and he would lean forward and try to hide Bailey behind his arm, and we successfully ordered food without being caught. When it came, of course Bailey was very interested. Zeb did his best to keep her contained, and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. I think laughing at Bailey's antics enhanced the experience, overall.

Bailey subtly requesting a bite of schnitzel.

With our meal finished, Zeb subtly maneuvered Bailey back into the bag, and we headed out, thoroughly pleased with our accomplishment.

We wandered through more shops until evening, and enjoyed the caramelly smells from a kettle corn stand. My favorite shop was a spices and tea store that had everything you could possibly want, in bulk. There was a full wall with jars of spices, and another full wall with jars of tea. It was glorious. I want to take Hannah there sometime.

The absolute decadence!

As dusk fell, we bid Leavenworth farewell. Zeb walked with Bailey back up the hill to his truck, while I waited at a pedestrian pick-up area and admired the view.

We drove back to Zeb's parents' house, content with our adventures. 

Honestly, I'm really proud of myself. When the day started, it seemed like things would be somewhat miserable the whole way through. We drove in circles looking for parking, we walked through snow, in the rain, and got wet feet. We were hungry and cold. 

And I decided to just ... not be miserable. We had set out to have fun and enjoy ourselves. When we were sitting in Starbucks, I checked in with Zeb. He was tired and cold and slightly discouraged. 

"I'm trying to picture a scenario where, in a couple of hours, we're having a good time. I can't quite get there, but I'm trying."

I asked him to look for a scenario in which he was having a good time, because I was already enjoying myself. 

He seemed kinda surprised, but I think maybe it took some pressure off of him to make things perfect.

And sure enough, a couple hours later we were having a pretty great time. 

I'm really glad I was able to choose to have fun. And I'm so relieved and slightly surprised that it actually worked! There are so many times where I can't quite tip the scales of the day, away from misery or discontentment. Often Zeb has to be the one to say, "No, we're not going to have a bad day. Things don't have to be perfect for us to enjoy them." And that day in Leavenworth, it was my turn to change our course and choose to embrace whatever the day would look like. It looked like adventures, laughter, and cold wet feet. And that was perfect.

-Dolly