Another Thanksgiving in the PNW

I waited and waited until it came - "Want to go to Thanksgiving with me in Enumclaw?"  "Do i? Yes!" David invited me to Thanksgiving with his family about 2.5hrs south of Port Townsend. Enumclaw is also very close to Mt. Rainier and on clear days, the gigantic mountain looms nearby. His older sister Linda hosted the meal and I met his mom, dad and nephew for the first time. There was some good eatin' but I did miss my mom's stuffing, red cabbage, Grandma's creamed spinach and rolls. They had waldorf salad and martini's with garlic stuffed olives - definitely new dishes to me, let alone for Thanksgiving. We went to see the new bond movie, sat around and chatted and ate pie. I made my first sweet potato pie, not bad! 

One of the days we went over to David's parents since he was in charge of cutting down a tree, we thought this would go quickly, 3 hours later...it was finally down. I spent most of the time trying to keep up with his 79 year old mother who was lopping off all the little branches from the big logs. We discovered an awesome cidery two houses down though and loaded up on Christmas gifts. It was a neat shop with all kids of special foods and the best apples I've ever had - honeycrisp! And they were crisp and sweet! 

Another day, we went to Seattle and in the pouring rain set out to a museum but got waylaid by some shopping (it was Black Friday) and we were in the U District (U= university) so it was a ghost town and the stores were nearly ours. Seattle is pretty close to Enumclaw, just an hour instead of the over two hour trek from PT. It was good to get a breather from being "on" with his family AND we went over to Ballard to use a Groupon where we discovered ginger beer and met up with my friend Julia. She was up from Portland visiting her aunt and uncle for the holiday. We set off together to walk down the street to my friend Tim's brewery. Unfortunately, he was away, but we tasted the housemade beer, yum! It was a good time to get away from PT and see something new. David even took me and his mom on a drive up the mountain, where it always feels a relief to be amongst all the tall green trees, sigh. 

The view across the street from David's parents

David and family dog Desco, in the middle of cutting down the tree, his parent's cute house in the bkgd.

Tim's brewery

We found Julia in Seattle! David is tasting Tim's only homemade brew, yum!