2009!

Well, it's 2009. I had a pretty long day today. It was the last day of Amaya's visit, so we decided to go up to Seattle for the day and hang out before we had to get her to the airport. Her flight wasn't until 9:00 pm, so that gave us the whole day to go sightseeing. That was the plan, anyway. The problem is, we hadn't realized that on New Year's Day, everything in Seattle is closed. I mean, everything. Even Starbucks. There were a few shops open down on the waterfront, but that was it. No Pike's Place, no nothing. Pioneer Square was dark and gloomy, and overrun with very scary-looking people who asked us for money. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. Zack wanted to take pictures of every dank and gloomy alleyway. I was seriously afraid we were going to get mugged.

Anyway, after wandering aimlessly for a while and getting very cold, we finally went back to our car and drove to the Southcenter Mall. I had never been there before. It's huge! I bought a couple of calendars on sale at the calendar booth. One Winnie the Pooh, (classic Pooh, not Disney Pooh), and one page-a-day by Thomas Kinkade, which is really pretty and has space on every page for writing notes. Amaya and I looked at lots of jewelry, scarves, and bags, Zack looked at camera equipment and electronics, we got sandwiches at Subway, and spent some time reading in the Borders Cafe. Then we took Amaya to the airport. I can't believe her visit is over already! It's been nice having her here, like having a little sister. I like having someone around to talk to, especially when Zack is at work or busy on his computer. I'm going to miss that.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks, Pongo learned to say "bye." He says it whenever we're getting ready to leave, and he sounds so sad that it makes us feel terrible for leaving him at home all alone. It's really, really cute though.

I can't believe it's 2009. This past year went by in the blink of an eye.

Haha, that rhymed.

Bye for now.