A N D E R S E N: Seattle and Farm

My beautiful talented cousin, Kelty (of the Weaver House) celebrated 10 years with her handsome farmer boy, Justin (of Working Theory Farm) by having the most amazing outdoorsy affair on their farm in Orchards, WA (just north of Portland, OR). I was determined to not miss this event since I had to miss her sister's wedding 3 years ago because I had little newborn Gina. I was so happy that Skippy was just as excited to go as I was! Using 5 YEARS worth of American Express points, we got 5 plane tickets to Portland and a rental car. We decided to go up a week early and have a little family vacation. We drove to Seattle and stayed for 4 days and did all the fun touristy stuff with the kids. We had a blast and completely wore ourselves out everyday. One morning, as we were leaving breakfast, I was already so so tired and thought... "how did my mom do this with 5 kids??" When I was in 5th grade, my entire family went to Eaurope for 3 weeks and I can't imagine how my mom lasted that long caring for and toting around all 5 of us! We made it back to Portland and got to visit the farm pre-party and help with some flower arranging and other odds and ends of the set-up. We also spent some time in the hospital during our trip because my Aunt became gravely ill during the week with a massive horrible bacterial infection and is still currently in the ICU slowly recovering. This kinda flipped the trip upside down but it was such a miracle that all her family was there to help her and support her in her time of need. Anyhow, Here are some pics from Seattle and a few from the party on the farm.. . My camera is broken and only works part of the time.. so most of my pics were taken with my horrible camera phone. ALL of the pics posted here of the party were taken by Kelty's professional photographer friends. If you are interested, I think she has some pics of the happenings on her blog also. (On a side note, we now have a working camera- thanks Jilly!!)