Golden Gardens

Summer in the city:)

East side Escapades

On Wednesday we enjoyed a great play date with Jamie and "The CassieLeah." We headed over to Kirkland to the rainbow playscapes showroom. This place is actually really cool and has all the super plush swing sets that you can just play on. They have open play 3 times each week, for free. It's great for a rainy (or super sunny) day and the kids loved it. We also stopped by the lovely Saint Edwards park on the way, for hiking and "sabb berries" (salmon berries). The playground and hiking trials are both fantastic and it's another great place to wear M and Z out:)

Madison Park

One of the places I like to visit with Max and Zoe is Madison Park. I usually head over there on sunny days, but as you can see by our breakfast outfits that wasn't the case on this particular day.

Madison park is a great neighborhood of Seattle that is set right next to Lake Washington. They have nice coffee shops (a must for me), an awesome bakery (no longer a must due to weight watchers) and a great park. M and Z are really into climbing all the Kopan equipment these days and they LOVE the zip line. There is also a beach that you can visit and we always take bread to feed the ducks and geese. Often we round out our morning with a trip to the Japanese garden, at the arboretum. The garden is a beautiful and tranquil place, well it is until M and Z show up. They have massive carp there to feed which is always a big hit, then it is on to the latest passion-tree climbing. I have a feeling there is an "On belay" posting in the not too distant future.

Ballard Locks

This afternoon we did a little shopping at "Me and Moms" consignment in Ballard and then decided to visit the Ballard locks. We have never been before so I thought it might be an interesting way to spend the afternoon. When we arrived we were greeted by a bunch of very drunk homeless people that invited Max and Zoe to play cribbage. Quite a few of them were having a little sleep and Zoe was very interested in why they were 'night, night'. After we got into the garden part of the locks Zoe said she wanted to play "old man night night" so here she is doing that.

Then I told them we might see some fish so they decided to play " I big shark swimming" right in the middle of the walkway.
Eventually we were all done 'swimming' and went to play in the garden.

The locks have a fish ladder and we were lucky enough to see a couple of fish.

I think the highlight for M and Z was the steep, green hill on the other side of the locks. They spent a long time hiking up and running down at great speed. We also got to play with a lovely black dog called Maddie. On the way home we stopped off a Maccy D's for happy meals and a play on the slide. We didn't get back until 7:30, but I still couldn't bring myself to skip the bath!

More fun at the farm

You may have noticed quite a few farm posts lately, well that is because Max and Zoe love farms and I do too. Last week we checked out Farrell Mcwhirter farm in Redmond to see what that had to offer. I mostly wanted to go because it was the only local place I could find that did riding lessons for 2 year olds, but it also looked like it had nice places to walk. As it happens I didn't find out anything about the riding lessons as you have to book them through the Redmond parks web-site, but we did have a lovely morning exploring the farm and creek.

About 10 minutes after we arrived M and Z ran off to the swings and I went to collect them, as I returned I was shouted by Shannon who said "A goat is having a baby right now!" We missed that baby's arrival , but got to watch as Momma goat had number 2. The goat was a twin momma too. It was actually really cool for us to see and though the kids were a bit concerned at the goats 'owee' they watched transfixed. The mom had two beautiful boys and we told the lady that she should call them Max and Miles. We'll go back in a few weeks and see if she did.

After that we checked out the other animals then took a short hike along the river. Needless to say everyone got wet and everyone had fun.

Let's go fly a kite

Ever since we saw a group of pre-school flying kites at Carkeek park Max and Zoe have wanted kites. Today was yet another rainy day, but it cleared into a blustery afternoon and I thought it would be a good day to try kites for the first time. After nap we headed to the Gasworks park kite shop and the lady there was super helpful. She picked out mini sled kites and assured me M and Z would be able to fly them solo. She was right and they had a blast. They drew quite a crowd with their flying tricks and could hardly believe they could do it. Zoe even got the hang of moving around to make her kite swoop. Great to experience another first with my Bonsai ones.

After that we went over to the old gas works machinery to climb and jump. They will jump off anything these days and are pretty fearless. We needed a fun afternoon and today we got one.