Cousin Visit..

I don't have too many cousins on the Sparks side of my family. I have 4 that I know..one of my aunts has children but I don't know anything about them. Don't even know how many there are so I just consider myself to have 4. I don't get to see them hardly ever. I think that the last time I saw them was in 2006..not really that good at keeping in touch. They all live on the east coast. Not a good excuse but it is the truth.

My cousin Heidi contacted me a couple of weeks ago and said that her work was going to be sending her my direction and we made plans to meet up for dinner. Thursday I was off of work so that was the night that I said would work the best. Thinking that we would be just meeting up for dinner I didn't really come up with any great and amazing plans. Then I got a text from her that she was finished early and she was going to have 3 more hours to hang out. I had to quickly come up with a couple quick plans to show her around Seattle.

It was a great time chatting and catching up with each other. There is a big age difference between us, her kids are closer to the age of Joel and me. She talked about a couple of pictures that she has of our dads that she is going to send to me. I actually am very excited to see them. I told her that I am really wanting to start saving up so that we can go back east and visit (possibly this summer). It is something that I have been wanting to do for a while now and I just need to do it.

Heidi told me that she has been out here several times but because she was here for work she hadn't had the chance to see anything in Seattle. I decided that we would head down town and do the normal tourist things. We were able to hit the market, gum wall, and walk down to the water front while the sun was still up. Lucky for us there wasn't any rain, it was actually perfect Seattle weather.  We were able to meet up with Brad and go out to dinner. We ate the the Pike Seattle Brewing Company at the market. I love this place..very yummy and a place where you can actually talk to each other.

These photos were done after dinner when the sun wasn't so bright.

Heidi taking "tourist" pictures..

Brad watching out so that Heidi didn't get ran over :)

Libby in a self shot..

After dinner Bradley had to go back to work for a couple of hours. We drove him back to the school and he was able to give us a tour of the print lab. It is fun to do this with people that are in town. I think that this was a first for Heidi going to an art school. Also the view from the print studio is amazing. Love that in Seattle we have the Space Needle.

One last place the I needed to take Heidi to before she had to leave was Kerry Park. This is where all the postcard photos of Seattle are taken. This place was a hit with her, she took a ton of photos with her camera. This is the go to place to get the best skyline of Seattle when people come out and visit. Once again I was happy that the weather was behaving and we didn't have to deal with rain. It wouldn't have been such a happy stop :)

This was a good night and I am very happy that she was able to take some time out of her busy schedule to come and catch up with me. Love it when people get to come out to Seattle. I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will be sent out this way again sometime very soon. Doesn't sound like it happens very often but it was awesome that there is a possibility.