Tyler and I celebrated our 8th anniversary on Tuesday. We debated trying to get away for the weekend alone, but decided to take a little family trip instead. Since Lydia had Thursday and Friday off of school and Tyler had a few days he could afford to take off at work, we escaped to Seattle last Thursday for a mini vacation. We had a great time! Here is what we did:
First stop was the Mt. St. Helen's visitor's center, where we watched the "exploding volcano" movie and all came away knowing a little more about volcanos. Luke is now obsessed with hot lava.
This picture is fairly representative of our children's personalities.
That night we went to a children's museum in Bellevue. We didn't take the camera but the kids enjoyed a semi-truck cab, water works, treehouse, etc. at the museum. After a somewhat short night's sleep, we got up the next morning to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island.
We made Ian earn his stroller time pushing the other kids while we waited for our ferry.
Lydia was really excited for Luke to see the cars driving off the ferry. They really do love each other and get along really well, despite the bruise on Lydia's cheek from a Luke head-butt the night before :)
Luke was in heaven watching the cars disembark the ferry....
...and was loving watching the working docks as we pulled away from the terminal. He couldn't be bothered with pictures when there was so much to look at outside.
It was really windy that day, so with the added speed of the ferry our trip outside the boat lasted about as long as it took to take this picture. We did get to see an orca (well, it's fin) on our ferry ride though!
When we got back, we took a stroll down the waterfront to Pike Place Market. The kids had to take a break to look in the telescopes.
They also decided that they "never ever" want to go on the ferris wheel. "Too high."
Tyler worked his magic and got Ian to sleep in the stroller, which NEVER happens! We didn't take pictures of the market--as usual, it was crowded with people so we saw the famous fish-throwing guys and left pretty quickly thereafter.
The next morning we went to the Boeing Museum of Flight. Ian loves to point out every airplane passing overhead, shouting "airpane! airpane!"so as young as he is, he really enjoyed it as well.
How many Stoddard kids can you fit in a cockpit?
Luke would have stayed in the cockpit for hours if we had let him.
Did they really think that plexiglass would keep him from touching the instrument panel?
Lady pilot Lydia
Who would hire these hooligans to fly a helicopter?
We decided on the way home that we like our little family :) It's so fun to see the kids' personalities evolving and to have time together when we're not worried about preschool, kindergarten, work, dishes, housework, etc. Vacations are good. We think we should take one every month. Luckily, for the next two months we WILL get one! We are totally ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas!!!
And yes, I have already started listening to Christmas music. Don't judge.
