Seattle

We went to Seattle a couple of weekends ago for my sister's "wedding." It was supposed to be a wedding but they decided to elope in Costa Rica instead. Apparantly the families are too meddling, hard to imagine meddling parents I know. They had a really nice reception at a bath house on Lake Washington. We had Indian food and sandwiches for the wusses (aka my family). I'd never tried Indian food, it was so good. Pretty sure I'll have to save that for a girls' night out though.
connor busting a move at the reception. Connor and Hailey were breaking all the rules. They were dancing and moving their feet! Paulitz's do not move their feet when they dance. We have masterd the art of dancing like complete nerds while not moving our feet one inch. Its extremely cool.

Another successful internet hookup! Chris and her new hubby Evan telling their dating and elopement story. I'm pretty sure they were getting tired of retelling everyone about their elopement and felt a group storytelling would be less annoying. Evans a really nice guy, and dorky enough to fit in well in our family. His families really nice and have some equally dorky elements. I think the bigger nerd you are the better you get along with the Paulitz's.

The view of Lake Washington from the reception site.

Since we didn't take a vacation this year, we decided to come early to the wedding and have some fun with the kids.

We took the kids to Alki beach on the west side of Seattle. We hadn't been there before and had heard it was a nice beach. It would be a good beach for playing in the water, but this time of year the kids were more interested in seashells. I think next time we'll go back to Gig Harbor. The kids always hit the mother lode of shells there and they like making the Gooey Ducks spit.

We took the kids to the Point Defiance Zoo by Tacoma. We hadn't been to any of the zoos in Seattle, this one won out because there was an aquarium. Connor enjoying Kenzie's nacho cheese straight out of the container. We bought the kids a bunch of over priced junk for lunch and Con went straight for the cup of cheese. Such a strange child.

The girls were fascinated with the polar bears. They were pretty fun to watch. They kept swimming right up against the glass and the kids like to "touch" them. Greggers really enjoyed it when they rubbed their butts on the glass. Of course he would.

Greg's walrus face. He thought the walrus's were great. He kept turning to me saying "they look like this... with whiskers!" And they were super fat which was of course amusing.

Kenzie with her budgie buddy. They had this bird atrium full of little parakeets or budgies. You could buy a colored popsicle stick with bird seed glued on. The birds would come land on your stick and eat. It was really cute, the kids loved it. They thought it was so neat to hold a bird.

The first night in Seattle we went to Ikea. Kenzie had been sick earlier, so we didn't drop her at the play area. She hated it. It was kind of funny because I always look forward to going to Ikea when we're over there and here's my daughter, everytime we turned a corner and she realized it just kept going she'd groan "I hate Ikea!" And no she wasn't feeling sick she just thought it was "almost the boringest place I've ever been. All there is is house stuff." Welcome to childhood kid. I spent all my Satudays at the hardware store looking at cabinets my parents wouldn't buy until I moved out, you can survive 2 hours at Ikea.