Dear Cornerstone Class Room #10
Flat Stanley made his way approximately 1,150 miles to the beautiful evergreen state of Washington! He specifically stayed with his host family on the border of Renton and Maple Valley, which is about 25 miles south of Seattle. A couple of fun facts about our area are:
~our football team The Seahawks have their training facility in Renton
~Rock star legend Jimi Hendrix is buried at a local cemetery in Renton
~Boeing has their final assembly plant in Renton for the 737 plane, where they produce more than 1 plane a day!
~Maple
Valley used to be a resort town with its main attraction being Lake
Wilderness, it was not officially incorporated until 1997
Over
the last month we have enjoyed making Flat Stanley a part of our family
and he has gone on many adventures with us. Let me introduce you to
our family, Jarad is an engineer working at Blue Origin, a privately
funded American aerospace company, founded by Jeff Bezos. The mission
at Blue Origin is for human space travel on rocket ships! So basically
Stanley got to hang out with a bunch of rocket scientists and astronauts
in a rocket factory, how cool is that? Jarad also loves to mountain
bike and Stanley got to tag along for many rides on Tiger Mountain and
at a bike park in Issaquah. Erin is a stay at home mom to 2 year old
daughter Bowie and we brought him with us to our normal weekly toddler
activities, which include play dates, mommy and me groups and The Little
Gym. During our family time at home, Stanley enjoyed hanging out on
the lake we live on, Shadow Lake as well as helping us welcome Spring
and doing some gardening! He was also surprised to see that we have a
lot of wild life in our backyard. We have nesting bald eagles, deer,
foxes, owls and our neighbors have chickens and goats that like to
visit. He also got to sample farm fresh eggs from our neighbors and
said they are the best, what a treat! They are usually brown and green
eggs and have yolks so golden they look orange!
There
are a few really cool places we got to visit with Stanley that are
close by, however Washington is known to be quite rainy and Stanley
didn't hold up so well in the rain. So we were unable to take pics with
him, but are sending this small calendar to show some of these
highlights. We took him to Snoqualmie Falls a beautiful 268 foot
waterfall. It is so powerful you get wet just standing on the
observation deck. We did a lot of "rock hunting" one of Erin &
Bowie's favorite activities. We go to the Arboretum (a tree garden) in
Maple Valley and we look for painted rocks. When we find them we post
them on a group so that the artists can see them found. We also paint
and hide our own rocks and usually re-hide the rocks we find in another
location around town. Stanley also got to visit Pike Place in downtown
Seattle where they have an very well known fish stand, indoor market and
all kinds of food vendors. We got to sample some Washington apples and
Rainier cherries, two fruits that we are well known for. But our
favorite was getting some chocolate from the "Seattle Chocolate
Company." And Stanley got many opportunities to see our favorite view,
Mt. Rainier, an active volcano! We can see it from all over town, it is
the highest mountain in Washington state and the tallest mountain in
the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest! From afar it looks like a
beautiful snow capped mountain, but those are actually glaciers and it
is considered to be one of the worlds most dangerous volcanoes. Most of
these locations can be seen in the calendar, so check them out, so you
can see Stanley's travels.
We
have enjoyed showing Stanley our community in the beautiful Pacific
North West and we look forward to seeing what new adventures he goes on
next!
Thanks for visiting!
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