Seattle

In April, Isaac had a conference in Seattle, and the kids and I decided to come along. We were all very excited about our mini vacation, and it wasn't until the day before we left that I realized I probably could have left the kids with my parents and really lived it up in the city. I imagined sleeping in, lounging around in the hotel room, reading or watching whatever garbage on TV that I felt like, and wandering the city at will while Isaac was in his meetings all day. Once he was done, we could have gone to dinner together and enjoyed conversation without interruption. By that point, however, it was too late to change our plans. Oh well. The kids had a great time, and I would have missed them. Here are somethings we did. 

Of course, we had to jump on the beds, first thing.  

and admire the view from our 17th floor room. (Isaac's work paid for the hotel, so we were right in the middle of downtown, only a couple of blocks from Pike's Public Market.)

We had to check out the Space Needle. Barak took one look at it, and said, "I'm not going up there." So we  admired it from the ground.

I told the kids they could pick one thing to do while we were there: The children's museum, the zoo, or the aquarium. The vote for the children's museum was unanimous. I have now been to a children's museum in Seattle, Portland, Salem, Baltimore, and Lafayette, CO. They have all been different, but they've all been a lot of fun.

There was a lot of dressing up and running around. I lost Sebastian about seven times while we there there, but in the end I left with all the kids I came with.

Instead of walking back to the hotel, we decided to take the monorail. It was too bad that Sebastian fell asleep before he could even see it; he would have loved it. Maybe if he had done less running away from me throughout the day, he would have had some energy left . . .

The next day we spent walking around in the rain We spent a couple of hours at the downtown library, which was awesome. We might have been able to spend all day there, but it was lunchtime, so we set off to find a park I had read about that had a waterfall in it. Despite the map which I consulted repeatedly, I managed to walk past the park and continue in the opposite direction for 15 or 20 minutes. The kids were really starting to get annoyed, hungry, tired, and miserable, when we finally found it.

I'm honestly not sure it was worth it, but it made a fun adventure, and we met a couple of cool firemen along the way.

Friday night has become Movie Night at our house, and Barak insisted we do it in Seattle, too. Ice cream and a Winnie the Pooh movie. Life is good.

Walking along the waterfront with these three (Sebastian was stuck in the stroller, and a little annoyed) was a great deal of fun. 

On one of our walks, Barak suddenly demanded the camera. He wanted to take a picture of this building, for some reason. 

Not to be outdone, Lizzy had to take a picture, too. She decided on some flowers and her brother. 

One thing I did not take pictures of was the afternoon we spent at the beach. It rained on us, but the kids were so happy to dig in the sand and Isaac and I enjoyed watching all the sailboats. Sebastian has been asking to go to the beach nearly every day since then. 

On our last day, we were lucky enough to spend time with some of Isaac's best friends from college days. Our kids made instant friends, and we had a very pleasant time laughing at old stories and pictures and eating weird college food. (You don't want to know.) All in all, it was a very wonderful trip. I'd be happy to do it all again next year. With or without the kids!