Congratulations, Rex & Tori!

This weekend Eric's uncle Rex got married, so Eric's parents, his three brothers' families, and Eric, Courtney and I, all caravanned up to Seattle for the wedding. On the way up, Jordan, Shawnee, and Courtney rode with us in our car. We left Friday after work and rolled into Seattle at about 6:15 a.m., however when we got there, no one remembered how to get to Rex's. When I pulled out my trusty iPhone to Google-map it, Eric realized that he'd forgotten the address at home on the table. 

We didn't really want to awaken the house at that hour, so Eric and Jordan decided that they could just wing-it and get us there. We got off on an exit and drove to a masculine chorus of "oh yeah, I totally recognize that--his house is just up there. . ." We got quite a nice tour of Seattle's suburbs, but unfortunately, none of the houses that "looked just like Rex's" were actually Rex's.

My favorite part happened as we were searching a random subdivision and Eric announced, "Okay, I think we're going to come to a stop sign up here and then we're either going to go left or we're going to go right." Brilliant deductive reasoning at work. After we did arrive at a stop sign and turned either left or right, my second-favorite moment happened when Jordan exclaimed, "Look--there's the cemetery next to Rex's house!" and Shawnee's tired voice sounded from the back seat, "Uh, Jordan, that's a preschool." Cemeteries/preschools, same diff, right?

Eventually, about an hour later, Courtney (the unmarried one who maybe isn't accustomed to male navigational ego) finally lost it and called Rex. Within 15 minutes we were at his doorstep and racing to see who could be first to the shower.

Eric's darling Grandma Vendla asked us to take a photo of all nine of her children together, and she was very specific in her request for faces only. So, here are all of the faces of Eric's maternal family.  

After the wedding, Rex treated us all to a beautiful reception and dinner on the harbor. It was spectacular. That night we stayed up late playing a game with the family. It works like this: you play in teams of two, another player draws a card, reads a theme, counts to three, and the two teammates say the first thing that comes to mind. If both teammates say the same thing, they earn a point.

For instance, the card reader would say, "An internet search engine: 1, 2, 3," and if both partners simultaneously respond "Google," they get a point. The same team reads three cards, and then the next team begins their turn. We had a really fun time and laughed till we cried, mostly at poor sleepy Scott's expense. Keep in mind, we were playing at midnight after driving through the previous night. 

Tyler: "A white meat: 1, 2, 3."

Kiera (Scott's partner): "Chicken!"

Scott: "Oat!"

All the other players: "Scott, did you say goat?", "Scott, oats are not meat.", "Seriously?"

Tyler: "A sport played on horses: 1, 2, 3." 

Kiera: "Polo!" 

Scott: ". . ." (blank stare)

Tyler: "Scott, Kiera has a Polo teeshirt on. You're looking right at her. It spells out the word POLO in huge block letters across the front. Uh, polo maybe? Okay, last one. A tree that bears small fruit: 1, 2, 3." 

Kiera: "Cherry!" 

Scott: "Raspberry!"

Tyler: "Scott, a tree. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of a tree. They have trunks. Often times they contain the word tree in their name, such as: cherry tree, apple tree, apricot tree."

It was a fun evening, and Ty & Steph won the game.  (They beat Eric and me by a single point.  Lame!)  The next morning we got up early, ate brunch at Iver's, and toured Pike's Market. After which Tyler, Stephanie, and Nathan evicted our previous traveling companions, and we headed for home.

Even with a four-month-old infant, the drive home wasn't nearly as eventful as the drive there, aside from Tyler and Stephanie's heated debate over whether or not some vegetation we passed was actually trees or vines. Tyler didn't take well to my suggestion that maybe they'd been looking at different things. He vehemently maintained that they had, in fact, been looking at the same things, and that those things were definitely vines, not trees as Stephanie had proposed. So much for peacemaking with this clan. . .

Thank you, Rex, for letting this bunch of hooligans come ransack your house for a few days. We really had a fantastic time. We're so happy for you and your beautiful new wife Tori!