I'm Spontaneous

We're really not, usually, but everyone is allowed to be spontaneous and irresponsible every once in a while, and this weekend was it for us. Jefferson's cousin was playing in a volleyball tournament in Seattle, so we thought we would go up for the day on Saturday, catch a game or two, and see a few sites in Seattle. Well, Friday morning Jefferson called and we decided to head up that afternoon and stay the night. Sounded like fun to me!! We got an AMAZING deal on a Marriott hotel room at the Renaissance-thank you priceline! Corner king room with a separate office (for the kids to sleep in). 

We met up with his Aunt Di, Uncle Dave, and cousin Taylor when we got into town. We just walked around the pier and ate at "The Crab Pot." (we had just seen this on an episode of Man vs Food). 

They steam everything in your dish in one pot and then dump it directly on the table, give you a little board and a mallet, a roll of paper towels, and you go to town. I think I ate my weight in crab and sour dough bread that night. It was delicious!!!

After dinner we headed back to our hotel and went swimming on the 28th floor. It was such a great view of the city and our kids love the water.

Saturday morning we got up and walked down to Pike's Place Market. It was so fun to roam around and see all the fresh fish and beautiful flowers. There were lots of tasty treats that we just had to sample as well. We managed to make it back to our hotel for a short little nap for the kids before we hit up the volleyball tournament at University of Washington. The kids got a little antsy sitting there so between games we walked along the waterfront, threw rocks into the water, found a mama duck and all her babies, found turtles, scraped up our knees, and enjoyed the sunshine. We grabbed burgers at the games and then headed back to our hotel for another swim. Sometime during the day we decided to stay just one more night. We were having too much fun!

A little pre bedtime milk and snack:

Sunday brought a whole nother day of fun. We took a boat ride around the bay. The kids were so excited to go on a boat. 

After the boat we went to the Seattle Aquarium. It was a pretty good aquarium. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend quite as much time looking around, or catch as many good pictures as we would have hoped, because Carter was so busy running to the next room. He would stop and look at a display for maybe two seconds, point out the Nemo's and Dori's, and then run ahead. We still had a great time and got to see lots of fun fish, sea otters, seals, and whatnot. 

The flannel board slowed Carter down for a minute:

And we did stop to get our faces painted:

We went back to the Crab Pot for lunch, and then over to one more volleyball game before we hit the road. 

We made it home in good time and were grateful to have all of Monday to relax and play together as a family. It was kind of our first trip as just our little family. We weren't tied to anybody's schedule, we didn't have to coordinate plans, we just got to be our little family. It was a lot of fun and made us excited for future family vacations!