Going Boeing

Ezzat's birthday present this year - visiting a plane museum. And not just that, (in no particular order) he got to visit a Boeing factory, took ferry rides, spent a night at a hotel, spent some time at the hotel's swimming pool, ate a lot of sushi, watched some TV way passed his bed time and ate some junk food which he normally doesn't get to have. Probably sounds like 'ehhh' to some but for an officially seven year old boy - he thought it's awesome!

This time we took the ferry from Kingston terminal. Took us 30 minutes to cross over to Edmond instead of  Seattle. From Edmond we drove to Paine Field, where the hotel is, which is exactly next to the museum!

That's Boeing assembly building right there! This is the view from the hotel's entrance. Ezzat was literally drooling by this time.

We had sushi mushi mania that night. I love sushi but only to a certain degree. Raw salmon or tuna is fine with me but that's about it. Anything raw beyond that, no thank you. I used to think that making sushi was a mysterious art form best left in the hands of those skilled sushi chefs, with all the rolling, stuffing, and topping resulting in perfectly balanced sushi. In my case, I would usually rely on the guy behind the commissary sushi counter or any sushi place that won't cost us a giant hole in our wallet. With a family of 5, that's rarely the case. But you know what, after trying to make them, it's not as nerve-wrecking as I thought it would be. Cleaning up however, was a different story - with the aftermath of all the shaping, patting, rolling, cutting - you name it. Do some homework, watch some youtubes, get whatever ingredients you need to make them, and roll!

Fun time at the pool

 Resulting in this face

 And this

Next morning - walking towards the museum which is just next door. 

This place is called Future of Flight Aviation Center. It didn't seem like it was much to look at, very few interactive exhibits. I think it looks like a hangar turned gallery, that was given a bit of makeover, where people can stop  by and check out exhibits relating to Boeing and aviation in general before they proceed to the Boeing factory which is the main attraction. But the boys seemed to enjoy themselves. So it's probably just me.

We're not allowed to bring any electronic devices on the tour so no pictures of that. Luckily there's a cheap locker in the main building for rental so we just left everything in there. The tour cost $15 for adult and $8 for kids and the kids have to be more than 4ft tall to be on the tour and Ezzat barely made it. (We purchased our tickets from the website and booked the date and time we wanted.) The whole thing took 90 minutes, starting with a video presentation at an auditorium about Boeing's history, how it all started to it's latest projects. We're not allowed to use the restroom once the video started and that's exactly the time when Farhan told me he wanted to go there! So we waited until the video was over, thinking that we might be able to go after that while waiting for the bus to come to take us to the assembly building but nope. The bus was right on time. And we had no choice but to board the bus and the poor boy had to hold during the entire 90 minutes since there's no potty breaks on the tour as well. By the time it was over, he said that he didn't feel like going to the restroom anymore. I made him go anyway.

So we proceeded to the factory on the bus. Our tour guide is a pretty straight forward lady, knows her facts and figures well. The tour basically showed us the manufacturing line of Boeing airplanes from start to finish.  The Everett plant here operates 24 hours 5 days a week from Monday to Friday through 3 shifts. We went  there on Saturday and it was pretty quiet so a weekday might have more action. Still it was a pretty cool experience. The scale of the buildings here has to be experienced. It can hold all of Disneyland and still there is plenty of space available for parking. We had two stops to see the 747 assembly area, and then the 777 and newer 787 area.  Basically we saw planes, parts of planes, and parts of planes becoming planes from an observation platform probably around 50 feet in the sky (The platform rail is about 4 ft high so I guess that's the reason why kids need to be higher than than). On the tarmac we saw a  super huge Dreamlifter, a modified 747 airplane. It's primary use is to transport parts of Boeing 787 Dreamliner from supplier around the world to the 787 final assembly site here in Everett. I wish I have a picture to show you guys. It's crazy huge.

At the observation deck in the main building. 

 

 The birthday boy

The hotel where we stayed at. The weather was great that day, clear blue sky all the way. After we're done with the Aviation Center, we just headed back to our car to catch the next available ferry since we've already checked out from the hotel earlier.

We did stop at this restaurant, Claire's Pantry to get some lunch. 

They're not that great.

Back on the ferry

Calmness is great

Sleeping is better

Road Trip - Part 1a

Feeling a bit under the weather today. Didn't feel like cooking or eating. But the three Beez, they're always hungry, which is good actually. Thank god for the leftovers.

So, back to the road trip. Still on the same day, July 12.

I took this a few minutes after we left the rest stop. And the sign says Richland - 25 miles and we're on a mission to find a public shower!

This sleeping in the car thing - it's not planned. We just sort of went for it as the time came to call it a night. None of us were prepared for it but that's part of the fun, errr.. for some :p. Here the boys were still sleepy, it's only around 6am anyway. 

 I love bridges

Oregon Scenic Highways. We spent a few minutes here to enjoy the splendid view albeit the strong wind.

Only these 2 boys were up. Emir was still asleep in the car.

Back on the road, in search of a place to grab a shower.

Found it!

At Oregon State Park. I would love to go back there for a camping trip. It looks like a great place to explore except that we didn't plan for it at that time. There were many RVs out there, some  are super huge and that's a new sight for me. We hardly have that in Malaysia.

 Waiting for their turn to clean up.

Summer Road Trip Part 1

I'm still not done yet with the summer pictures. Old stories but the pictures are pretty cool though, the views are aahh-mazing! So enjoy.

July 12, 2010

In the last entry about our summer travel, I mentioned about us flew to Tacoma, a tiny bit about the navy base, and the little town Poulsbo.  We also did some house hunting before we started our road trip heading to Montana to see Grammy and Poppy. After traveling for a few hours from Poulsbo, we stopped at this rest  area for the night to get some sleep. Not sure where exactly this is but probably somewhere near Portland. 

Woke up to this view. Isn't it amazing? I think it was around 4am. Couldn't sleep very well so went around the area taking pictures. The boys, including the big one were still asleep. 

I think this looks like some kind of alien spaceship or something. But still great view nevertheless.

One of my favorite architectural structures.

Still on my own at this point.

Sunrise

Remember the alien like-spaceship cloud? It changed into this white normal looking cloud now :-(

You'll see more of these in the rest of our journey. Something about the look of these makes me feel mushy.

Island Lake Park

This park to me, is awesome (mainly because of the distance from our house to the park is like 2 minutes by car!). It has a playground, a lake with gravel swim beach, paths, a couple BBQ pits with picnic tables, a picnic shelter, fishing dock, lots of  parking  space and most importantly, restrooms.

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago. Ezzat being silly with the dandelions. As long as it's not at our yard, it's fine. Man those dandelions are such nuisance in the garden.

 

Wild blackberries! There're tons of them out there. Just bring your gloves or something to protect yourself from being pricked by those nasty thorns all over the bushes. 

Found some bugs to play with

 Various views of the lake

Some of the permanent residents of the lake

At the playground

Island Lake, Silverdale - Free Slideshow Creator