Live from Seattle

This weekend Harriosn and I are in Seattle visiting my friend and Harrison's god mother, Ilene. Ilene has 2 kids, Jake (5) and Gabby (4) and we are all having an amazing time. Yesterday I had to go to work in Seattle and Ilene watched the kids. They all had an blast. Harrison just loves playing with them. They played outside for 3 hours, they went on the jungle gym in the yard and for a walk in the neighborhood. By noon they were all pooped. When I got home from work they had just finished making cookies. The smells were wonderful. Harrison seemed extremely happy and having an great time.

THe next day we went into Seattle to the Pike Place Fish Market. We had lunch at a great seafood restaurant, Ivars. Can I just say YUM!!! We started with a cup of Clam Chowder and then I had Mussels. Harrison ate everything except his hamburger, chips, bread, cookies, juice and fruit. After lunch we strolled over to the fish market. I absolutely love it there. We looked at all the beautiful flowers and fresh food. Harrison loved watching the guys at the fish mongers throw the fish. We stayed and watched for a while. We also got to pet the police horse and we took pictures at the bronze pig.

Jake absolutely loves comic books and there is a great comic book store so we spent some time in there. But just outside of the store was a life size posterboard of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings..now if you remember Gollum...he was pretty scarry looking but not to my son. He wanted to hang out right in front of him and watch him. It even made noises and that didn't scare him either, he kept making me activate the sound.

Before we left the market I bought some fish to have shipped home, a whole 5-6 lb. salmon. We will smoke alot of it on the smoker grill this summer...YUMMM!!!

I had rented a car to get around while I worked so we all had driven in that car so when we were on our way home (did I mention that Harrison had no nap!! - he slept maybe 40 minutes on the way to Seattle) we got to utilize the DVD player that the car had in the roof. It was amazingly cool. We hit major traffic and it took 2 hours to get home so the kid were very content in the back watching the movies.

That night Ilene and I decided to have some fun and make some CD's. Ronnie had a gazillion songs on his computer...all the top 100 songs from 1950-2002 so we had alot of fun with the 1980's. We were laughing so hard at the songs we listened to back then. It brought back great memories and some memories that Ilene wouldn't let me forget.

On Saturday we all went to the zoo, Point Defiance Zoo. What a great zoo. It wasn't too big but it has great animals. My membership to the Minnesota Zoo gave us reciprocity at this zoo also. So I saved $20...I am such a saver. Harrison had fallen asleep in the car ride to the zoo so we drove around for a while so he could get about 40 minutes of sleep because I knew we weren't going to get another nap in. Our first stop was the Elephants. They were so close up. There were 3 of them standing right where we were. Harrison loved how close he got to them. He didn't want to leave. But our next animal made him forget all about the elephants, we saw the Tapir. Well you might not know abou the Tapir, but it is a great animal, it is big, black and grey and makes a very funny noise and Harrison just loves them. The one at the MN zoo isn't very active and is usually just lying around. The Tapir's we saw at Point Defiance were running after each other and were just amazingly active, they were indoors and outdoors and back indoors again. Harrison had me running all around to see them. We also saw sharks and polar bears and other animals I can't remember. Unlike myself who just always buys lunch at the zoo when I go, Ilene had packed us lunch and we had a wonderful picnic in the zoo.

After the zoo we headed out for ice cream. We went to Cold Stone Creamery. Another big YUM!!! Harrison must have really been tired or out of sorts because usually he finishes all of his ice cream no matter how big the scoop is. This time..he only ate about 1/3 of it. As we were finishing up a bride came into the store, not in her dress but in her veil and all made up and Harrison thought she was a princess and kept waiving at her and saying, Hi Princess!!! It was absolutely adorable.

That night Ilene and I were talking about her friend Tahiti who is a Medium. I got very intrigued and we had her come over to see if she could read me. Alot of what she said seemed to resonate with me. She started off by saying that there is a corner of my house that needs to be built up, now she wouldn't know that I have had water in my basement and that we do need to build up one particular corner. She also said that my foot has been hurting, and in fact I think I have plantar fascitis (sp??) So alot of what she said was really cool.

On Sunday Harrison and I had to say good bye to the Widers, the most amazing hosts ever, and make the long trip back to MN. Harrison and I can't wait until we can go and see them again!