Welcome to Washington

About a month ago the Hutchings Family moved to Bothell, a town in Washington state, about 30 minutes out of downtown Seattle. Upon graduation, Seth accepted a job offer here as an internet marketing analyst. Here are some of our adventures and observations as new residents of Washington. It is amazing how green it is here. There are trees everywhere! As you drive down the freeway, both sides are full walls of trees. There are stores and restaurants and houses off every exit, but just driving down the freeway you feel like you are in a national forest instead of a busy Seattle suburb. Here is the view from one of our windows: At the base of these trees are wild blackberry bushes that grow all over the place like weeds. You are welcome to pick them and they are delicious. We have put a bunch in our freezer and I am planning to pick some in the next day or two to make some jam. We were very blessed in the finding of our apartment. We came here with a list in our hands of apartment complexes we were interested in that we had found online. Our first choice place had filled its last apartment that morning, but we were referred to this complex. The manager of the complex use to live in this unit and had just moved out because she bought a house. We got a great deal on the apartment because a number of people had recently moved out of this building because of job transfers or buying real houses, and they needed to fill it back up. AND it was available for move in immediately. We looked at several apartments in the same price range during the rest of the afternoon and nothing came close to comparing to the quality of this place. When we were preparing to move I was praying for help finding an apartment and I asked that we could find a place that was safe, quiet, and not on the first floor. We were able to get the paper work done and move in that night. We were just going to move in the essentials then move the rest of it the next day, but we had some neighbors come home just then who helped us move everything in that night. All I have to say is that through this whole experience I know that Heavenly Father heard our family's prayers and protected us and provided for us.


There is a pond and a nature walk that starts right next to our building. One of the great things about our apartment is that we live about 3 or 4 miles from Seth's work. He has been biking to work most days.
Our first weekend here we went to Seattle. We went to Pike's Market, the place famous for throwing the fish. We were not able to get any pictures of the fish throwing because it was too crowded. As we were watching they threw one of the fish out into the crowd and it hit Kayla's stroller. Turns out it was a stuffed fish. Quite the crowd pleaser. The flowers were amazing. We had lunch at the Athenian Inn, a place where a scene from Sleepless in Seattle was filmed. We didn't know that until we got in. We picked it because it had a long line and we figured, hey, if it has a long line it must be good. We had mediocre fish and chips, but a nice view of the bay. On the way out we saw a huge sculpture of an umbrella caught in the wind. It also works as a giant weather vane showing which way the wind is blowing. More locally we spent one Saturday checking out Country Village Shops, a little place about a mile down the road from us full of little crafty shops from a quilting shop that my mom would die for to a place full of naturally made candles and soaps. You can't miss it because of the giant chicken off the side of the road.

Here we are at Country Village for the farmer's market with our friends Olga and Leon, our octogenarian neighbors that we just love.