Seattle

We made our trip out West pretty epic by continuing it all the way to Seattle. My sister and her husband moved there about a year ago and we decided to make it a real family vacation and go visit them. Neither Lyndon or I have ever been to Wasthington state (that we can remember. Lyndon lived there as a child for a summer when he was little. He talks about the blackberries they ate, that's all he remembers). It was exciting to check out a new part of the country and visit with my sissy. I have missed her so much.

Our first place to chekc off on our trip was Pike Place Market. It is one of the largest markets in America with all sorts of shops, mostly food, but you could pretty much find anything you wanted. We especially loved Elleno's Real Greek Yogurt. Just regular Greek yogurt that was dressed up. It was yum! We got our photo with Rachel the pig. She is the market's mascot. It was a lot of fun!

We stayed around to watch them toss the fish back and forth. You can see it flying through the air. 

The first Starbucks is located here. Seattle is coffee crazy!

We ventured down an alley to check out the "Gum Wall". It is only in Seattle where you can see something this unique. Cosette really liked it. She keep asking if she could touch it and put gum on it. 

When in Seattle check out the Space Needle. We've never been, so we had to do it.  

Family photo on top of the world in Seattle.

Me and my sweet heart. Poor little buddy had a couple of incidences where he injured his lip twice in one day. His poor little lips looked so bad. Thankfully lips heal quickly and it was completely healed by the end of our trip. This picture you can see his toddler battle scars a little bit.  Obviously he got over them quickly. He is the best cheese-r for photos. We are so grateful for his sweet happy disposition he seems to maintain (unless, heaven forbid, he is hungry or tired, then it's a different story, haha). 

Pugeot Sound. We learn that the difference between a bay and a sound is that a sound has multiple opening to the ocean, and a bay only has one.

Mount Rainier off in the distance. Apparently Mount Rainier is only visible a few days out of the year. Lucky for us we were there during that time. 

There is a camera at the top that will take your picture and email it to you, so we got a good group shot. 

There were fantastic sculptures all around the Seattle Center grounds. 

The most amazing thing we saw that day was the entire Chihuly Garden and Glass. It was absolutely incredible. All of it is done by one artist, Dale Chihuly, and all done in blown glass. We were mesmerized and so were the kids.

I really think this is what life looks like under the sea.

The next room was filled with the most exquisite chandeliers ever imagined. And Cosette gave us some nice poses. 

Bowl.

That ceiling! I really want one of those in my apartment. It would really feel like we are sleeping under the sea.

Ikebana Boats. absolutely beautiful. 

Sisters together!

The last room in the museum was the Glass House. I could live there.

Then there was the garden. Small but stunning.

Pretending to be a princess and curtsying.

We spent a little bit of time at the Pacific Science Center and again we wish we could have spent the day there. We barely saw any of it and had way to much fun.

Cosette touched a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach! Then she told the Museum Employee that we have them in our house. Oh, New York living. We haven't seen any lately, just so you know.

Shots from the butterfly garden.

Then on the grounds of the Pacific Science Center there was even more fun to have. 

And an incredible fountain area that dinosaurs, Orcas, and other sculptures dotting the different sections. 

Indulging the husband.

We went to the EMP Museum where we saw all sorts of pop culture icons. It was the coolest. I was very excited to see several of the Wizard of Oz props from the movie. 

And they brought all these costumes together to demonstrate mawage, and wuv, tru wuv.

A favorite part of the Fantasy exhibit was making our own cards. There was a computer set up where you could pick a mystical character and create a digital trading card of sorts. We had a lot of fun picking the characters and choosing some traits. Here they are. We laughed really hard at a few of them. Cosette picked out mine and Lyndon's characters, well everyone's characters. Enjoy looking at them and hopefully you will find them as humorous as we did.

This one has the absolute best caption, because we all know compared to Cosette we are only mere mortals. 

And don't you love how poorly I did at hiding when the computer snapped Henry's picture that my hair is included on his card?

So we are kicking ourselves a little bit, because the EMP was hosting Star Wars exhibit that had all the costumes from the movies!!!!! Both Lyndon and Sam are major Star Wars/Star Trek Greeks (they had a few discussions about which Star Trek series is the best. It's Deep Space Nine people) and they didn't go. It was an additional cost to the museum entry and we are all cheap. If this exhibit ever comes to NYC we have no excuses. At least we saw Boba Fett. 

The tower of stringed instruments was pretty incredible. There was a cello mixed in there along with some banjos and plenty of other stringed instruments besides guitars. I walked through the Nirvana exhibit and relived some of the jams of my youth. I knew that Nirvana was crucial to the grunge movement, but I did not know how influential. I really enjoyed learning more about this group and listening to some of the jams from my youth. 

The sound lab there was a hit. Henry loved banging on the bongos and other drums. We all wished we could have spent more time at this museum. It was the coolest.


My boy Henry rocking out.

Our next stop was the Seattle Aquarium. The touch tanks had unusal creatures, at least it was creatures I had never seen in a touch tank, making it the coolest. We got up close with sea enemiess, starfish, and some sea urchins to name a few.

Seattle's cutest couple.

The two cutest jelly fish on the West coast.

There actually was a few sea otters at the aquarium. Otters are probably the most adorable swimming mammals. One had a clam that it was trying to open. It did so by taking up to the viewing window and banging the clam against it. Made a lot of ruckus and got a big crowd going. The kids liked playing on the giant otter bench. I think they were done with looking at things. 

This is what she thought about the boat ride. It was the end of the day. I was having similar thoughts. Pregnancy is seriously catching up to me. 

A couple of scenes from our harbor cruise.

A picture of our first view of the Pacific North West on our road trip up there. I'm not going to lie, I was looking for Edward and Bella dashing through the trees as we were driving through the forests, Twilight nerd. It was so beautiful! I think I could live there because of all the green. 

Cosette and her dance partner Zamp. Zamperini is the best dog! He is still a puppy, but was so chill for a puppy. He was good to the kids, didn't bark, didn't continually jump up on us. It was great. The kids absolutely loved him. They were so eager to help take him out on walks, feed him everything and anything, play with him. If we ever move outside the city we will have to get a dog. 

These kids love cake, or any sort of treat. Henry has been getting really excited for cake lately. It's pretty adorable to hear him say "Cake! Cake! Cake!" over and over again when we tell him that is what we are going to have. 

Wish it was Sam's birthday everyday so we could feast on this delicious creation. And Private Selection ice cream. I know Leslie would love that, haha. 

We ended our trip by celebrating our host's birthday. Sam turned 27 the day after we left and he was awesome enough to let us celebrate with him. Happy Birthday Sam! 

Our trip back home was long, but we made it safe. Cosette has been asking to go back to Washington every other day. I think she liked it, and I agree Cosette! We will have to visit Washington again.