Washington Fun: South

Adam had a couple of days off after the Fourth of July weekend, so we packed up our multiple suitcases, once again, and moved the family down from Everett to his parents' house in Bellevue for a few days before he had to fly back to Colorado.

The men of the family, Dan, Adam, Ryan and Zach, took advantage of the excuse that Adam was in town and that it was Ryan's birthday (not that Ryan plays golf, but he agreed to go along as long as he could drive the cart) and hit the links for an afternoon of golf. They gave Ryan an extra special "birthday handicap" and had a great time together, even if the scores weren't glorious. Here's Dan for the chip to the green!

We also had a chance to celebrate Ryan's 31st birthday all together. Family birthday gatherings are one of the things we miss about living so far away. With a big family, remember Adam's one of six kids, there's always an excuse to party and eat a lot of good food!

Adam's parents' house is newly remodeled and beautiful, but not a place for the kids to do too much running around (we don't want to be the ones to break the first brand-new piece of furniture or decorative item), so the boys spent some time up at the near-by elementary school playground (where Adam went through 5th grade, as did I for Kindergarten--however, it's been torn down and rebuilt all fancy-like since our days of attendance!). Slide races!

Josh climbing the rope pole.

Even Auntie Saucy (what the boys call Adam's sister Ashley since Zach couldn't say "Ashley" when he was a toddler) got in on some four square fun. Zach LOVED the playground and said over and over how much he wished it was his elementary school!

After we had to bid adieu to Adam, we moved once again to my parents' house in Issaquah. We were so busy visiting people and doing things, but we did get a chance to hang out a bit. Here's Josh with my parents' cat, Jax, some kind of hairless Rex that looks like it belongs in ancient Egypt.

My parents have this awesome climbing tree in their backyard. Earlier in the week my cousin and uncle built an amazing ladder up the tree, that I am sure OSHA would approve of, so the boys could get to the big fat branches that created a perfect little natural tree fort up high. My monkey boys were over the moon about the whole thing!

We also had a lot of barbecues in their green, fairy-haven of a back yard. My parents are big on pupus (appetizers) before dinner, so there was much olive/finger fun.

For my own entertainment, as well as to satisfy the curiosity of the boys, we drove past my old house, where I lived from 3 to 18. Well, at least I think it was my old house!! Since we've moved that huge peak has been added over the door, and a second story on top of the part of the house to the right of the door, well, the left in the picture as you look towards the house. And the landscaping has all been redone, it used to be grass. But all those trees in the front and back were my trees and the basic split level house it once was is still there! It's a pretty pricey area to live now, I could never move back in, so all the new homeowners have had to remodel to bring the houses up into the glam of the neighborhood. Many of the houses on the street looked different in one way or another. My room was the one with the double windows on the right. It was fun to see. I texted my sister with a picture and she barely recognized it! Many good times were had and much life was lived in and around that house. My sister and I used to make homes out of rocks and bark for the pussy willows we would pluck off the bush in the back yard. The woods around the house have been thoroughly explored. The street sled and big-wheeled and biked countless times. On that porch is where Adam and I had our first kiss! {pause while I steep in nostalgia} We got the kids out to some of the local parks. Here they are playing in the big circular water fountain in Downtown Bellevue. We hadn't planned on getting wet, so we had to head home to change before seeing the movie, Up, we were planning on (one of many movies seen on the trip), which made us too late to see it. But the kids had so much fun in the fountain, and we fit the movie in later in the week, so no harm, right?!

You will have to forgive the number of chins in this picture. And it is 3am, so be kind. My mom and I decided it would be fun to go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight on opening day. If you aren't aware already, I am a huge, to the point of dorkiness, Harry Potter fan, for so many reasons that I won't get into here, and was anxious to see the sixth film. Part of the fun of going on opening night is seeing all the people in their Harry-mania dress-ups, and there were plenty! Unfortunately, my Harry t-shirt doesn't fit right now. It was a packed house, and we had to sit on the right-side, two rows from the front, so our necks were craned uncomfortably the whole viewing. It's a long movie and were up very late, or should I say early?! It took me four days to recover, but it was so worth it! A fun night, a great flick!

One of our warmer days there, I called up Jen and Beth and they drove down so we could take the kids to a little swim beach right down the hill from my parents house. Here's Madison and Zach, again!

And Josh and Zachary.

And Ben and Hannah. The kids spent most of the time swimming in the lake......except for Ben who dug ditches and canals almost the entire time.

My mom and I also decided to take a drive even further South to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. We had heard such great things, and knew the kids would have a great time. Jen and Hannah were able to join us for the day too, which added to the fun! We stopped for lunch on the way there, and amazingly, across the street was a florist's shop with a surprising sign in the window (so, of course, we had to go in!). Isn't that a fun coincidence? Ben was very pleased with his rose (even after it got all wilty sitting in the hot car while we were at the zoo).
Here are all the kids outside of the zoo. It is located near the Tacoma waterfront in a huge park, so the views from the hilly zoo are beautiful!
It wasn't as good as our zoo here, or we went at the wrong time of day, because there were a lot of empty habitats. It was also much smaller than I thought it would be. But there were some exhibits that didn't disappoint! We arrived at the polar bear right when he decided to take a swim, right up along the glass viewing areas. Wow, that's a big bear. Zach's there in the front in the blue t-shirt.
Luke loved the playful water animals like this seal!

Josh, Hannah, Ben and Zach being eaten by a shark. I love the various faces, Josh just smiling for the camera, Hannah looking like she's really done having pictures taken, Ben looking like he's holding the shark's mouth open with all his six-year-old might, and Zach's grimace of pain as the shark bites down.

Does anyone else think that it's gross to have these dress-up sea animal costumes? I am still waiting for the lice infestation to appear! But sometimes I have to relax, take a deep breath about things that I think are gross, and just let the boys be boys! In other words, they were really stoked about the costumes, so how could I say no? Here's Zach as an otter.

In the aquarium section they had a huge tank of sharks that were a definite crowd pleaser. Luke picked a little stuffed shark as a souvenir in the gift shop because he loved them so. In one part there were four or five of them all laying on the tank floor all huddled together. It was very odd. It made me wonder if all the sharks in the tank were robotic and we accidentally stumbled upon the docking station. Have you ever seen that before? Is it normal for sharks to do that?

The aquarium had a couple of touch tanks with some northwest sea creatures. All the boys got in on the touching, even Luke, but here's Ben going for some odd spideresque crab.The elephant enclosure was also a favorite exhibit. They were up close and personal. Very fun to watch! Luke was so excited to watch them eating that he had to shout, "Eating!!" over and over.

There didn't seem to be a spare moment the entire trip...just wait until our Seattle adventures! But it was all so fun, the exhaustion at the end of the day was worth all the exciting activities!