once we went on a date to washington... sort of

and Rachel came to watch Emory who screamed his special "i-don't-want-my-mama-and-daddy-to-leave" scream until we walked out the door.

thankfully Rachel is one of the kindest, most gentle and easy going people we know and Emory really does love her, even if this picture doesn't prove it
so we just laugh at his silly stranger anxiety
and then we took our little point-and-shoot camera on our date (huge photo quality difference!)
Jon told me to guess the theme and instructed me to take pictures of everywhere we went. At first all I had to work with were Nordstrom Rack, cloudy skies, and an airplane.

loving the rain so so much

I didn't really understand why we went to Costco and we had to take pictures with the car.

and then we ate at a Japanese steakhouseI racked my brain the entire time we were out, and finally guessed the theme as we walked in Starbucks to get a hot chocolate to share for dessert. I should have known! We went to Washington... really the western half of the state, which is the half we love. And though Nordstrom doesn't seemingly tie in with the rest of the theme, we've always loved to go to all the racks in the Seattle area. It was a fun little indulgence Jon treated us with, thanks to wonderful friends who will come over and watch Emory, we had a fabulous time.

and then we came home to this happy face.