Reminiscing some good BNF times somewhere between Oct ’98 and ’99’ish on this page. Greg was working with Dell who moved us from Austin, TX to the Seattle, WA area to work with Microsoft in Redmond, WA.
We researched a place to live while in Austin and decided Issaquah (just east of Seattle) would be best for us because it put us in between a lab Greg was building in Kent (South) and the Microsoft offices in Redmond (North). Issaquah is also about 10-15 minutes from downtown Seattle and about 30 minutes to Snoqualmie Pass. Boating and snow skiing the same day!
Sunny still thinks her Daddy is pretty smart anyway ~ a little scary, but smart.
Course Sunny looks scared here too. Was it Mom or Kesley that scared her? She doesn’t remember.
Our Bronco is warming up Sunny’s hands on Snoqualmie pass which was East of Issaquah about 30 minutes. Getting relocated by a large company was a great experience for us. They loaded up our kickin’ Texas Bronco and Corolla on a trailer in Austin and both vehicles were waiting for us in Seattle.
Sunny’s not so scared when she’s warm. Another cool thing about getting relocated was some cash money for expenses, a moving company that even packed, loaded, and moved our trashcan (still full ~ pay attention when working with packers). Since our boat was only 18′, they loaded it into the moving trucks trailer and we ended up trading it in Seattle for an RV (water stays really cold in Washington). Relocation also paid for our dogs and cats (2 each) to fly there with us! Our crazy cat at the time, Rem, had crapped everywhere inside his kennel carrier. Very gross making for an unpopular animal carrier with baggage handling folk. They probably kicked and threw the carrier around making him crap even more. Poor cat was horrified from the whole experience.
Stephanie was one of our first friends in Issaquah where we got an apartment to start figuring the place out. The relocation package offered to get us a furnished apartment for two months ~ when we found out it was just an okay place for like $2500 / month, we chose to take the funds and wing it. Unfortunately we were still waiting for approval and apt keys when the moving company showed up. We started giving away our furniture and stuff to the moving guys to keep ’em happy while the waited.. We did end up in a pretty cool 2/2 apartment (with most our stuff) on a hillside that dropped off the parking lot and opened to a forest in the back. It was beautiful until about a month later when we realized they saw those sucker Texans coming from a mile away ~ it was a moldy forest view because the sun NEVER was able to get to our apt.
That’s Tyler (Stephanie’s brother) ~ we stayed in the complex for six months with these guys who had recently relocated from Florida. We were all prepared for Seattle weather and little sun, but this winter broke records for least days without sun, record rainfall, and there was 30 some odd feet of snow at the passes ~ 3-4 stories high where they plowed it! We loved it.
Sunny went fashion freaky from lack of sun.
We soon met the Bass Family when we dropped into a truck dealer to look at a Jeep we never got ~ that’s Travis and Kim and their daughters Hannah and Savannah that ran the place. We connected with these guys pretty quick because Kim grew up in Texas, Travis in Issaquah but Travis’ parents lived in Texas by the time we met them. Both Kim and Travis actually met at the same obscure University Greg spent two semesters at in Abilene, TX.
These pictures were taken in Eastern Washington just over Snoqualmie Pass when we visited some land Travis’ Family owns. After you drop down the eastern side of the Cascade mountain range, Washington becomes basically a treeless valley with lots of Farms and rolling hills. Very different than Western Washington.
This is also in Eastern Washington near a city called George… as in George, Washington ~ clever, huh? This is with the youth group we became a part of out of Maple Valley during a retreat to a weekend concert called Creation at ‘The Gorge in George’. BTW: that’s our wicked cool RV in the background ~ built on a Toyota pickup, it’s still one of the favorite rides we’ve had.
The Gorge is a great outdoor amphitheater that slopes down towards the Columbia River gorge where large cliffs climb up the other side ~ sunsets watching great live music with a cliff and sunset backdrop are real inspiring.
Everyone camps in a big empty field and they bring portable toilets and showers in ~ very gross with all these people, but probably grosser at a concert like Slayer or something like that ~ this was a relatively mild Christian show.
Except for the wackos we went with…
On a very different weekend where we drink late and wake un-early on the Olympic peninsula ~ Meet Leland.
And Shauna ~ some of our best friends in Issaquah. We met Shauna at the local deli where she made sandwiches for us and ended up spending lots of time with her and her boyfriend Leland.
They actually are some good – looking people.
They both grew up in the Pacific Northwest and we loved to go camping with them on the Olympic Peninsula which put us on the Pacific Ocean front in Washington.
There is massive driftwood on the beaches from the huge redwood trees that fall into the gianourmous rivers and are carried into the ocean where they are sanded thoroughly by the mondo waves and thickacious sand turning the beaches into something like nowhere else ~ you’ll be killed by the driftwood if you’re on the beach at high tide.
huh?
Killed.
dead?
Dorky dead.
Really dorky.
Seriously though, dead. Imagine the gianourmous waves slamming this tree around ~ back and forth and back and forth and back and forth ~ then imagine thousands of these stacked on each other like pick up stix for Giants. The noise they make sounds really cool though when they are actually bouncing off each other ~ from a safe distance away of course.
Dead? Really? Are there trees that big out of Texas? I thought everything in Texas was bigger… Not the trees Jaimon. Texas has small trees compared to Washington. That’s also Jenn with her Uncle Davids daughter Kathryn.
These pictures were taken at Boo-Boo’s b-day in San Antonio, Texas during our first visit back to Texas after moving.
Our Boo-Boo is Sunny. She got a kickin’ band and awesome party on Granny’s land for her 3rd b-day ~ This is Jon Barry of The Jon Barry Project out of Austin, TX.
That’s crazy Will behind them that took us on a tour of High End Systems years later.
And there’s Uncle Ernie.
And Uncle Dave.
And all the really cool kids. Notice how big Jenn’s brother Adam is (left in picture).
And Dad’s really long hair.
Sunny’s b-day ~ not Kes.
Britney (Jb’s daughter ~ guitar player above), Cameron (Angie’s son ~ Greg Hudgins wife ~ Greg H. played sax with JB, Greg BNF worked with Greg H. at Dell), Austin, Jake (Jenn’s brother from the freaky story in our vintage Austin pages), Dustin (nephew), Thomas (Uncle Dave and Aunt Linda’s son), and Mike (fashion guy from early Austin page).
Dustin and Austin. Love.
Back in Washington, we found a great house on Tiger Mountain in Issaquah. Took all weekend to clean and do the lawn.
With a hot tub on a huge deck just behind the girls. This is the house that we learned that we would never have a hot tub again. Didn’t use it much after the first month and it was high maintenance. This house reminds us why we prefer to clean and maintain an RV.
We really liked Washington and spent a lot of time exploring.
Thinking this is from our trip to La Push which is and Indian Reservation and the farthest Northwest community in the United States ~ this picture (if we’re right) was taken on a boardwalk near La Push on the land that actually is cut by the channel between the U.S. and Canada with the Pacific Ocean on the other side. La Push was in a dispute at the time over whaling rights and the only road in and out was closed down right after we left ~ we actually passed the picketers on our way out, they were eating La Mcdonalds which seemed ironic to us…
But we got to take a La Pooh before we left.
Greg’s Mom and Grandpa Perry came to see us ~ the ferries were another adventure we took advantage of as often as we could.
This was on yet another of our ‘local’ trips to Victoria, Canada on Vancouver Island.
Sunny rode her Harley there…
And Austin tried to steal one but couldn’t get it started (or off the kickstand).
Melissa and her son Jason from San Antonio came to see us while we lived in Washington.
We went to Whistler in British Columbia, Canada with them. On the way is this really cool suspension bridge just out of the city of Vancouver. A year or so after we visited here ~ a woman threw her baby off the bridge where he landed in the river on rocks some 1000 feet below and lived, with only bumps and bruises!
Big tree.
Goofy shorts. Really goofy look going on here. Why does Greg keep allowing these pictures on the internet? Because his son is in this one.
Whistler ~ in the summer! This is a really great ski resort town. When we got there, we drove around the city and thought it was really lame until we learned you have to park and walk into the city. There are no cars inside the city ~ it’s like a really big outdoor mall.
We took the gondola to the top, thinking it was around 10k feet up? Maybe 5k. It was cold, and snowy. There was no snow in the city below.
And the Asians managed to find us and take pictures with the kids. So we did what we always do when they want pictures, return the favor and get pictures with them.
Jason was really missing out on this trip. Kid had never left Texas and the whole time he was giving us heartache for something. We know he was having fun, he just didn’t realize it. Maybe he does now?
We love to tell the story about how he wanted to go snow boarding really bad and we didn’t have the time or money or something so we decided not to. That’s when he started in on the ‘I feel like I’m missing out’. Then a bird crapped on his head. Seriously.
Then he was worried about his hair being wet from washing the poo out, so he wet his entire head to throw the suspicious off, then he just knew that people would know a bird crapped on his head and we couldn’t convince him otherwise. Now that the story is here, people will know that a bird crapped on your head. We love you Jason. Tough lesson in life about humility and gratitude. Kesley still admires you.
At the end of ’99 (Oct ’99) ~ we closed on our downtown Issaquah home. Just two blocks off Front St, we were able to walk everywhere.
We were settling in. We were involved with the church. Greg helped setup, operate, and tear down the sound system for the church activities and Jenn was involved deep with the youth group. She organized a fall play with the group and Greg made smoothies when they would come to the house. One of the most rewarding memories was when Greg left a quarterly executive meeting of Dell and Microsoft people to come make smoothies. The youth group was very impressed that making smoothies was more important, it’s this kind of memory we like to leave.
On the other side of the church thing (life balance, you know) we did our own Halloween thing in town while the church board was trying to figure out what to do about this ‘Halloween thing’.
Some of our church friends were also into Halloween and joined us for some trick or treating. Can anyone guess which Family is trick and which is treat? (he he…).