Saturday

We had brought breakfast type foods with us so we ate in our hotel room. We hung out in the hotel room until Ivan woke up from his morning nap. We headed over around 10:30 am.  

The hotel staff were putting up the Christmas decorations when we arrived yesterday.  They are all up now.  Looks very festive.

Ivan and Nathan

The plan was to go to the Cougar Mountain Zoo.  Madeline was not feeling well so she stayed home.  "Small zoo focusing on endangered species, especially big cats & exotic birds, and with a sculpture forest."

Cougars

Lemurs

Sculpture garden

Feeding the Alpacas with apple chunks, which Nathan had bought. 

This one looked almost scary

Ed and George

Roman and Ivan

Crowned Crane

Wallabies

Emu

Macaws, I am surprised that they didn't fly away.  They cage them at night, but here they are not caged.

Sleeping wolf

Pacing wolf

Tigers

Ed and Dorothy

The youngest, he will play Rudolf at the festival.

Great zoo.  It was small but laid out well.  They have a big reindeer festival starting Dec 1.  We will miss that.  It was also a perfect day to go.  It was a little misty but not raining.  Very few people were there.

The house in back is owned by the family who used to own the land of the zoo.  They donated the property for the zoo.   They have a great view of the valley.

Once we got back to the apartment we fixed left-overs for lunch.  It was time for Ivan's nap, so we headed back to the hotel.  George and Dorothy went to get a few grocery items.

Dorothy came to our room for a visit.  We hung out, relaxed, and played some games. Dorothy and Ed treated us all to dinner.  We ordered Indian food from the Taj Palace.  It was very close.  It was hard to make a decision of what to order.

We went to pick up the food on our way over to Madeline and Roman's.  

Quite a spread.  It was delicious.

Madeline was not feeling much better.

Ivan and Dorothy

Once Roman and Madeline took Ivan back for bath and bed, the rest of us played "Marrying Mr. Darcy".  Well, I guess we could not talk Ed into joining us.  It is a fun game based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Nathan won.  

Thanksgiving in Seattle

George, Nathan and I left the house around 8:30 am Friday, Nov 26th to head up to Bellevue.  We had given the neighbors the instruction for cat care while we were gone.  We got to the hotel in Bellevue around noon.  We met Dorothy and Ed there.  We went out to lunch.

It was a soup and sandwich kind of a place.  

We went back to the hotel to wait for Madeline and Roman to be ready for us to come over.  They were waiting for Ivan to wake up from his nap.  

The hotel is very close to their apartment but because we had a lot of food stuff to carry we drove over.

Dorothy, Ivan and Nathan

Ed, George, Ivan, Dorothy and Nathan

Ivan and Roman

We all had fun playing with Ivan.  Madeline was busy cooking.  We had a our second Thanksgiving dinner.  But I was not good about taking pictures.  We had duck, and Thai coconut salmon, sweet potato casserole, Nathan's stuffing, buckwheat, cranberry sauce, salad and wine.  Then later we had Nathan pumpkin pecan pie and what was left of the pumpkin cheesecake.  What a meal.

Ivan

He likes to put things in his mouth, chew them and then spit them out. Hasn't caught on to the whole swallowing thing.  It doesn't mean that he doesn't like it.

Madeline, Ivan and Roman

We looked at the pictures from Madeline and Roman's trip to the Ukraine to visit Roman's family. 

We played a game of Scattegories while Roman and Madeline were trying to get Ivan to sleep.

Rebecca continues to hang out at the San Francisco airport, baggage claim.  She is using her reloading Starbucks card for meals.

Rebecca's trip to India

 Rebecca felt like it was time to try to go back to India to visit her "children".  The borders were opening up.  The one snafu was that India had changed the rules about visas.  She had a 10-year visa and because of Covid they were not accepting those.  She needed to apply for a new tourist visa.  She had tried to do that but because her passport was to expire in May 2022 they would not issue her a new visa.  She decided to try anyway.  She left Portland Monday, November 15th at Oh-dark-thirty.  They looked at her passport and visa but let her through.  She got as far as San Francisco where they did not let her continue on her way.  She got her luggage, just one roller bag, and backpack, and decided to wait for another opportunity to try again.