Road Trip!!

We took ourselves a road trip to Steve's parents' house this weekend and had a marvelous time.  We left immediately after church on Sunday (taking a detour through Carl's Jr. for lunch) and arrived in the late afternoon.  There was plenty of time for visiting, playing with bubbles and snacking on chips and salsa before we decided we were ready for dinner.

Madison, of course, had to blow bubbles directly onto Grandma's arm, eventually resulting in a soapy film on her elbow.  Sorry, Grandma.
Judy had asked what our menu requests for the evening were and Steve told her we wanted London Broil, potato salad, corn on the cob, brownies, and chocolate cream pie.  Judy gave him everything he asked for :)  Don't bother counting the candles on the brownies; they wouldn't add up to any particular number since Judy just filled the platter and then Madison proceeded to put a candle in EACH brownie.  By the way, since Steve, Madison and I all have birthdays this month and are in the picture, Kellen took this photo for us!
I think I got a little muddled on my layout of the pictures, because I'm almost certain that the presents came BEFORE the dessert, but Grandma and Papa give both kids presents at birthdays so Kellen got a new model plane that Papa helped him put together and Madison got a new Barbie, a book (containing 6 Dr. Seuss stories) and a new outfit.
And no trip to Grandma and Papa's house would be complete without playing in all of the Disney toys in the spare bedroom!
The next morning was Destination: Seattle!

Our first stop was at the Ballard Locks, where we got to watch all the boats being brought in and out.  Kellen thought it was pretty cool to see the different boats and to watch them being raised and lowered in the locks.  Madison: less interested.  Oh, well.

She loved the fish ladder, though.  The Ballard Locks has a fish ladder off to one side and, obviously, even has a viewing area where you can watch the fish that are swimming up stream.  I think that Madison's favorite part was following the fish depicted in brass circles along the sidewalks that led you to the fish ladder.

I know, this is miraculous, but I am actually IN the picture!!  This doesn't happen often, of course.  I was taking a picture of the kids up here and a nice gentleman asked if we wanted to be in the picture, too.  How nice!

Then we had to stop in the museum at the locks, which had this model with functioning switches that lets the kids see exactly how the locks work to raise and lower the boats.  Cool thing: Steve played with this thing at the same museum when HE was a kid!
After the Ballard Locks, we made our way into downtown Seattle and the wharf.  Lunch was held at Ivar's (an absolute must!) and shared with the local seagulls, since the signage was so permissive.
Madison and I staked out a table while Steve and Kellen ordered and brought our lunch out.  
Half the fun, of course, is throwing your fries to the seagulls when you're done and seeing them catch them, sometimes in mid-air if you throw it far enough out and up.
Lunch at Ivar's was followed by a walk down the wharf to Pike's Place Market.  Wow!  That was amazing.  There was so much to see.  We bought some cherries and peaches (so much better quality than you see in the supermarkets, really.  And, since we had come prepared with a cooler of ice, we also bought some salmon, tuna, and clams.  The one thing I didn't have Steve take a picture of was Madison towards the end of this walk.  She doesn't stay put so we were taking turns carrying her on shoulders or piggy-back and, since she hadn't had a nap at that point, she finally fell asleep on my back!  She was SOOOO tired.

Then we drove the car back down onto the wharf and got in line so that we could ride the ferry to Bremerton.  The kids had a blast being out on the front and rear of the ferry feeling the wind blow.  Madison played 'airplane' while Kellen kept trying to jump and see if the combination of the wind and ferry made him land somewhere other than where he jumped from.

Once in Bremerton, we headed south towards home, finally.  In Tacoma, we stopped at The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner.  Madison was a bit cranky (still tired) but the food was really good.  Steve and I used to go to the Spokane one occasionally when we were newlyweds, and again in Oakland, but the last time we went was about two years ago and that was without the kids.
It was a long day, but we had LOTS of fun and really enjoyed the opportunity to visit with Steve's parents :)  We didn't get home until about 1130pm, so the kids went straight to bed and no one was up before 830am today (that's sleeping in, for my kids) and we've made it a pretty lazy day today.

The video that I have here is of the kids rolling down the small hill in Bob and Judy's back yard, which I think Madison had more fun doing than Kellen did; she talked him into doing it with her.