I spent quite a bit of time booking up all of our three days weekends and didn't realize until the last minute that the 4th of July was an unplanned three day weekend. What to do?!? Coincidentally, I was also reading an article on JetBlue dropping their fares from Anchorage to Seattle to compete with Alaskan Airlines. It sounded like a great three day weekend, but unfortunately Matt was on call...
I decided to take Thomas on a trip! I'm taking both of the boys to Texas in October by myself, so it seemed like it would be good practice to see how traveling alone with one goes. Thomas hasn't flown since his trip up here, I figured he is going to be way more excited about it at this age! We got through security and immediately headed up to the observation deck to watch the planes and kill some time.
I didn't realize that there was a Cinnabon inside the terminal! I was always irritated that there was one outside the security gates, but not inside. But since we were wandering around, we found it! Has that always been there?!?
We also tested out the CARES harness on this flight. I can't imagine trying to wrangle two boys and car seats, so I thought we would switch to the harness. It worked pretty well and the person behind us didn't mind at all that it was underneath his tray table - he actually thought it was something the airline had put there. The only downside was that Thomas slid down in the seat a little bit since they are so slick. I wonder if I could use that grippy shelf liner for him to sit on?
First morning in Seattle! We got in pretty late and Thomas was so wound up and tired that he did not want to go to bed. I finally had to put him in bed with me before he would crash - around midnight. I was hoping we would get to sleep in, but no such luck! So we got dressed and headed down to the donut store a few blocks away. Thomas gets his donut choice from genetics, chocolate sprinkles is a favorite of both Matt and I.
But the blueberry fritter also sounded amazing that morning! The donuts were pretty good, but I still think Shipley's is better. (Maybe absence has made the heart grow fonder?) Though Top Pot coffee certainly wins. :) And you can see that Thomas has already eaten all the way around his donut in the time it took for me to get his milk and my half&half...
First stop was the Pacific Science Center - mostly because that was the first parking garage I could find! It was a pretty hands on museum, so Thomas was thrilled to press all the buttons! This particular one was broken, but he played with the buttons for about 10 minutes anyway. "/
Matt was asking Thomas if he saw the Bernoulli Principle while we were flying. Thomas just responded with "what?" - his go to answer these days if he doesn't understand the question or doesn't want to answer. But I thought it was fitting that he seemed so absorbed in the exhibit explaining the principle!
Once we left the first exhibit hall, we ended up outside in a water play area. It was so much fun! I'm not sure who was having more fun shooting the water guns at the targets... There are so many things to spin around!
Their special exhibit was Grossology - The Impolite Science of the Human Body. I figured that would be right up a little boy's alley. He certainly thinks toots are funny these days!
He really wasn't too sure about some of it though. I asked him to go stand in the giant nose for a picture and he stood there for a split second and then ran back out. When I was going in there to read the signs, he was trying to get me to leave - "it's scary mommy!" I have no idea why a giant nose scared him - it's not like it had big boogers in there...!
He liked playing with the burp exhibit though!
Then we found this Toddler Maze upstairs and he went crazy! He was crawling and running though it. He would come back to me, then yell "Obstacle course!" and go through it again. Whatever makes you happy, little man!
He even tried throwing the ball to see how fast it was. Turns out it's not calibrated down to sloooooooow speeds. He couldn't get it to read his throws. I maxed out at 20mph - it sounded impressive to me, but I am 100% sure it is not.
Then we headed over to the Space Needle to ride the elevator up! I showed him the space needle from a distance and he saw the elevators going up and down. I wasn't going to spend the money unless he seemed excited - luckily he was super excited about going up the "excavators". (We really need to work on that pronunciation...)
But we bought a CityPass - one pass to see multiple exhibits - so we had to stand in the line to use it instead of just walking up to a kiosk. He was not so thrilled with the super long line after about 15 minutes. I didn't blame him, but I wasn't so keen on him untying my shoes every 30 seconds.
So I finally gave him my phone to play his word game. That kept him happily occupied for the rest of the long wait. The older couple behind us kept looking at him and the phone. I'm just going to assume they were so proud of me for choosing such an educational game and not judging me for giving him the phone... "/
Unfortunately when we got to the counter, they told us the soonest entry they had was in another 3 hours. What?? So instead of pushing my luck on a tired and hungry little man, I opted to just get tickets for the next day. But you can probably guess what Thomas thought about the situation when we started walking away from the tower.
Luckily there was a guy making balloon animals and this Balloonasaurus made Thomas feel much better. Especially when said dinosaur was attacking his momma's camera while she was trying to get photos.
But then we found the super awesome fountain! We had looked up water fountains/parks online before we came and this was the top hit. It was an awesome fountain! It is coordinated with music, so the spray comes and goes with the beat. Thomas was super into it, but we didn't have his swimsuit. I could only pry him away from it by promising to come back tomorrow.
We got a little lost heading back to the museum - the Seattle Center is so big and there are so many different parts. On the plus side, there is fun stuff everywhere - they are huge on public art, so there were giant installations everywhere.
We made it back and ate lunch with plenty of time to spare for our Imax show, so we headed over to the other side of the museum we hadn't seen yet. And we found dinosaurs!! This T-rex skull had a crank you could turn to make her open and close her mouth - pretty exciting!
Well these dinosaurs look familiar... Don't they look so much better with all of their pieces and properly lit?? ;)
But, of course, he beelined for the dinosaur skeleton with the buttons! Unfortunately, it wasn't working. I was bummed too - I wanted to see the creepy skeleton in motion!
He was pretty entranced by this globe. It was a mock up of how the Earth would look without any water. It made me want a globe in the house to see how much he played with it.
After the Imax, I decided it was way past nap time and decided to head back to the house for a nap. He, of course, fell asleep as soon as we got on the highway. So I decided to just drive around for awhile instead of going back to the house. Seattle has the same issue as Alaska when it gets hot outside - houses with no central air. I figured the car would be just as cool and I was enjoying the peppy Jetta rental car.
After a decent drive, I pulled into the zoo parking lot to let him finish his nap. Unfortunately, he woke up as soon as I stopped the car. He was pretty fussy and didn't want to go to the zoo. I figured he would perk up as soon as we saw the animals. The first exhibit was penguins and they really seemed to be putting on a show for him!
Unfortunately, that was the extent of his interest. I had casually mentioned we could get ice cream after walking around since it was so hot outside (90!) and that was all he could focus on. I finally got him to pick another animal to go see - tigers! - but he lost it about halfway there. This is a little man who is just done.
So we went and got ice cream. And of course it was a penguin - albeit a slightly misshapen one.
He did show some interest in the historical carousel when we were walking out, so I thought we would give it a whirl. Ha - a whirl... Literally! Anyhow, he was super excited and picked out a horse that would move up and down. I wasn't sure how it would go, but he was loving it!
For the first few revolutions... Then he decided he was scared, so I swapped him to a non-moving one. It's my fault, I said something along the lines of how he was such a big boy not getting scared. Why? Why do I set him up?!? Anyhow, he loved it so much he wanted to ride it again, but it wasn't a free carousel, so we decided watching other people ride was just as fun. ;)
Once we left the zoo I asked if he wanted to go to the playground next to where we had parked the car. Suddenly Mr. Grumpy was full of energy and excitement. Well if I had known that was the case I could have saved some money. Oh well, live and learn and find free play grounds!
Finally made it back to the house and decided to hang out in the back yard before dinner. Our friends, Justin and Katie moved to Seattle earlier this year with their two boys, Henry and Owen. (I finally confirmed with Justin that they really didn't care we used the same name!) Katie had already made plans to head to Texas with the boys, but didn't know Justin was going to show up at the end of the week and surprise them. He was here to meet us last night, but took off before donuts this morning. So technically, we aren't free-loading, we are house sitting! ;)
Thomas is super excited we aren;t at a hotel because Henry has all kinds of different toys that we don't have. He was especially interested in this Big Wheel - though I have to ask if Henry can actually reach the pedals - Thomas just assumed it was like his pedal bike and tried to walk around with it...
But we aren't completely alone, Bailey is hanging out with us! She is obviously used to having little boys around, so she has no problem keeping us company. Thomas can't quite say her name, so he keeps asking me if Hailey is home when we pull in the driveway. She doesn't seem to mind the name change or having us keep her company. :)