Fun in Seattle!

Since we're spoiled state workers, Andy and I get a fun "extra" holiday in October called Alaska Day.  It supposedly commemorates a VERY IMPORTANT day in Alaska history, but literally nobody else (not even schools!) get the day off, so it feels pretty made up to me.  We took advantage of the long weekend, plus a couple of days off and flew south to visit Andy's parents.  Although Olive's still a "lap child" (good luck getting her to stay in your lap!), we bought her her own seat.  BEST MONEY EVER SPENT.

She loved hanging out on the airplane.  She LOVES airplanes!

I've never seen her so focused!

And here's why the extra seat was worth every dime.  This was her for about half the flight (because she ran laps around the airport before we left):

Andy napped while I did a crossword puzzle.  Pure joy!

After we landed, grandpa Dave picked us up at the airport and we headed to the ferry to Bainbridge Island where they live.

I'm horrible at taking selfies.  This is how you know I'm old.

 Someone was nice enough to take our picture after she saw me struggle.  Olive was none too pleased.

This skyline has some new additions since my days growing up near here.  What is that big wheel thing?!

Olive LOVED the ferry ride.  On the way to Bainbridge, we saw a whole pod of porpoises! It was so cool!

When we got to grandma and grandpa's house, they pulled out their boxes of toys - which all happened to be Andy's toys from when he grew up! He and I definitely reminisced about the He-Man and Ninja Turtles figurines.  Olive loved the cars the most.

We spent most of the long weekend exploring Bainbridge Island, which has a lot to do for a little place!

We checked out an awesome toy store that Olive absolutely loved.  She got some cool new cars from grandma and grandpa to play with on the wood floors!

We also checked out the kids discovery museum (KiDiMu), which was really fun!

They had a lot of play areas - one for babies:

And a whole pretend town, complete with a store sponsored by Andy's uncle's store and is a cute mini version!

Olive found this car and WOULD NOT LEAVE IT.  All she wanted to do was get in and out.

We finally convinced her to do some shopping:

And I checked out some possible job prospects:

Upstairs they had a GIANT lite brite to play with.  Olive thought it was pretty neat.

and then we made an art project for grandma's fridge.  Fun!

We also had a great visit with Andy's uncle Larry and aunt Sandy and stopped by their store to check out the pumpkins:

So cheap compared to Anchorage!

We picked the best weather day and headed back into Seattle via the ferry to visit the zoo.  I hadn't been to the zoo since probably high school, so I was even excited to see it.  Since our zoo is very Alaska-specific (plus camels and tigers), we figured Olive would really love it since she's really into animals right now.

It was such a gorgeous morning on Puget Sound - the water was like glass.  Olive was more impressed with the ferry itself and showing off her midriff.

She refuses to look at the camera now...this is a fun stage.

Gorgeous day!!

We spent a lot of time by the hippos as we waited there for Aunty Lauren to meet up with us! It was so nice of her to leave work a little early and spend some time with us at the zoo! We love Aunty Lauren! (and sadly we didn't get a SINGLE PICTURE of or with her all day...we're horrible).

Then as we were walking around, they let the giraffes out of their house and into the field.  We got to see them so close!

The process actually took quite awhile due to the final giraffe, David, who was being kind of obstinate and refusing to walk through the path.  Silly David. 

Olive really loved the tapir, which was always one of my favorites! Kind of look like a panda/anteater/pig.

In one of the monkey habitats Olive found a bunny! I think it was her biggest thrill of the day.

We liked looking at pretty birds up close...

And the tigers were pretty cool, too (Olive was like, hey, I've seen one of these in Anchorage, tigers are NBD).

I love her pose here!

She really liked the snakes:

Now that she walks, it's all she wants to do.  The zoo had lots of great places to run!

Flamingos!

And this was her about 30 seconds after getting back into the car.  She slept the whole way home! Success!!

We had a great, but too short, trip.  There are so many people for us to visit in Seattle that we need to make a whole other visit to see them too. I'm sure it'll be soon.  Thanks for the awesome weekend, grandma and grandpa!