Claudette & Susan do Seattle

Claudette and Susan arrived in Seattle with a purpose.  

They wanted to visit the Sea Otters. 

The Scuba diver has arrived to feed the fish in the giant window on Washington tank.  

Each tank in the Seattle Aquarium has an upper viewing spot as well as a lower viewing window.  

Skates and Sturgeon prowling the underwater dome. 

Simone and Claudette watching the Skates and Sturgeons in the underwater dome.

In the Tuffed Puffins and Auklet house. 

The divers talk via speakers to the kids and answer questions.

We learned that the glass is about 12 inches thick.

The girls started to droop.  David can still carry both of them!

Back to the tower for dinner and to hear about the Victoria trip.

Great catching up.  

The girls were thrilled to give Susan a tour.

Susan and Claudette do the Experience Music Museum.  What a space! 

Shall we tape a music video?  Lets call ourselves "Otter Wild."

One of the fun things you can do at EMP is create a rock band and karaoke style, tape a song in front of a faux screen of an eager audience. Claudette on the keys, Simone on drums,  Susan on guitar, David as lead singer and Naomi with me on back-up.  It is set up so that you can't actually hit the wrong notes. 

Decided to "Ride the Duck" around town and into Lake Union.

After the ducky tour, Susan, Naomi and I went to see the Freemont Troll. He lives under the Aurora Bridge and holds a real Volkswagen bug in his hand.

At one point during our visit, we started talking about gardens and growing pumpkins.  I shared that we had tried for three years to grow pumpkins on our office decks with no luck.  Lots of flowers but no fruit.   It dawned on her that our decks are 7 and 22 stories up and perhaps not frequented by pollinators. She suggested that Naomi and Simone try using a paint brush to pollenate.  

Success.  We have pumpkins and squash aplenty!  

The Troll is great for climbers and geocachers.

Hurrah!

Naomi - "I'm really big. Can you see?"

Dan Lahaie and family joined us for dinner at the tower on the second night. 

Naomi, Billy, Brooke, Justin and Kristin chill on the couch 

while David, Claudette, Susan and Dan share family stories.

Simone sitting in the window with her bear watching the ferries come and go on the Sound.

Boogie All Day Long

We're in Santa Cruz visiting our good friends Kristin, Eric and Zoe.  

Naomi and Simone headed down to the beach with a boogie board. 

Learning the game.

Dolphins swam right behind Naomi and Simone and I caught one of their playful leaps.

As the Dolphins made their way up and down the shoreline, they stopped by again to visit.

Simone is on a sand crab search!  Success!

Naomi getting the hang of it!

Uh oh!  Buried by a wave.  

A mouthful of sand too!  This was the second time on this vacation that Naomi found herself chopping on grit.  About a week before, when leaping off the monstrous dunes on the Oregon Coast and rolling down the giant shifting hills, she bit the dust. 

Simone deep into the work of creating a sand castle city.  Each day we dressed the tops of our castles with sand crabs and then added seaweed to protect them from the hot sun.

Telling the ocean where to go with a tunnel system.

End of the day...

Back to the car.

Looking down at the sand castle city!

Another day lunching at Kelly's French Bakery, one of our favorite spots, with Eric, Kristen and Zoe.

Stopping by the great whale skeleton!

What a great vacation!

Monica, David, Sophie & Annabel come over.

Naomi is thrilled to see Annabel and Sophie!  

Monica and David arrive!  

Check out how we redid our room. -Simone to Sophie

Monica and I decide to take in the sunset from the globe. 

Even after twelve years, I experience a tummy flip when I look down the dizzy slope of the pyramid.  Are we spinning?

As we share our ambitions for Mad Cap, we enjoy the Puget Sound.   

Mad Cap is the name we've given the new house Monica has rented and sublet to Debbie, Catherine and I.  We are all Evergreen moms working on Internet projects and the house is a block from the school enabling us to work nearby, walk over at pick-up and then let the kids hang-out at the house while we cram in another hour or so of computer time.   The name Mad Cap came from our initials.   

The city is inspiring.  

Sweet Annabel 

The salad was particularly good. It was a mix of argula, mash and baby greens. Threw in some raspberries, spicy-sweet pecans, goat cheese and a splash of raspberry wasabi dressing.  

Even the kids liked it.

It was juicy.

Seattle Center ...our extended yard...

We love playing in the fountain! Simone in blue, me in red.

On a hot day, this fountain is our favorite.  We yell our hearts out at first trying not to get wet and then once drenched, we squeal with delight as we up the ante and try to tag the dome.  Afterwards we enjoy the hot stone benches and summer sun.  

More water to play with at the Science Museum.  

Every now and then we have waited outside for the Science Museum to open and then found ourselves some of the last folks to be ushered out at the end of the day. We actually find that much to do there.  (Of course we also clock hours at the Children's Museum, EMP and the two fountains.)  

There is a proposal for a Chihuly Museum at Seattle Center and we would LOVE that!

There are a lot of buttons to push and just like the amazing guides at the Seattle Aquarium, there are these great scientists who hang out at the Science Museum and tell stories to Naomi (and everyone else) about the exhibits.

Kinesthetic fun.

It is easy to enter but tricky to leave the hay-bale maze outside the fun house.

Naomi, "Mom, I'm a bad guy with a shooter thing charging through the forest on my super big horse." 

Where does she get this stuff?  This is at the Bamboo forest near EMP.

If you look closely you will see Naomi and her new friend on the far right hanging out talking and to the left of them is Simone directing an ad hoc performance on the great whale outside of Key Arena.