Winter 2017: Adventures Part I

I took Tyler to downtown Seattle the day after Thanksgiving. Next year I'm taking the bus because parking was outrageous. We only parked twice for less than 2 hours and less than an hour and spent over $25! 

Our first stop was seeing the famous Sheraton Gingerbread houses. This year's theme was "Future Seattle." They're always neat, but I wasn't super amazed by this year's theme. I'm so sad I missed seeing it when they did Harry Potter and the Star Wars Universe.

Due to remodeling, they held it in the City Center Mall across the street instead of in the hotel lobby. Unfortunately this made things more difficult to view with the crowds, particularly for little ones like Tyler. He did like this big squid and ferris wheel, though.

The octopus and whale were pretty cool too. 

Next we headed over to the Fairmount Olympic hotel to see the life size gingerbread house. They actually had a hallway you could walk through. Tyler like the big nutcracker in the window on the other side. I liked how the bricks smelled delicious!

The giant gingerbread house was new, but they always have fancy trees for sale in the lobby to raise funds for kids in St Jude. I liked the one covered in toys and the one put on a mannequin to look like a dress. They also have an enormous real tree that gets put up each year.

From there we went to the teddy bear suite, which had a huge line. Ty was less than thrilled about it and didn't cheer up once we got in. He was a pretty grumpy gus the whole time :( It kills me when I go out of my way to give my child an exciting day and he mopes the whole time.

From there we went down to the Seattle armory to see the huge train set and winter village at Seattle Center. Tyler liked going into the conductor's station to control the trains.

There was a playground just outside the armory. He was equally happy to play there as anything else we did that day.

From there we went to Bellevue Square for the Snowflake Lane Parade. It was packed! I tried desperately to get Tyler on my shoulders, but he's extremely heavy now and I could not hoist him up there safely or explain to him how he needed to pull himself up on me. Luckily a nice man saw us over on a bench and he boosted Tyler up until I could grab his legs. Once he was up there and could see he loved the parade, and people made room for us to get a bit closer.

The next morning Ty was much cheerier when and a bit starstruck when we met Santa at the Children's Museum. It's member only time for the first hour on Saturdays, and there was no line for Santa. I wish we'd brought Allison and dressed the kids up festively. I'll have to remember it for next year. 

We also had fun carpet skating and holding snow bubbles in our hands.

They had new white snow blocks in the construction room. This is much more little kid friendly than the complicated boards they had before

Ty also liked making his own ornaments and doing wrapping paper crafts in the art studio.

Sweet kiddos in a spinning rocket ship toy at the mall. 

The kids were both sick for several days after mom arrived. Once they were healthy we took them up  to the Cedercrest golf course in Marysville for the train ride through the lights. It was a long wait just to end up doing our tour in the rain. Thank goodness we'd bundled up and they'd provided blankets and umbrellas!

After that we treated the kids to McDonald's. The one in Marysville has a great play area with an easy way for Allison to climb up high. She wanted to stay and play when I first told her to come out, but chicken nuggets got her down in the end.

Daddy and Wray Cason went up to run the Jingle Bell Run up near Anacortes and Tyler went with them to do the kids' dash (I couldn't go with them due to a big choir rehearsal, and mom needed to stay home to be with Allison). Tyler could have easily come in 2nd, but Santa was standing a few feet in front of the finish line, so he just got confused once he'd passed him. He got sad and never ended up crossing the finish line (see video. Wray was filming).

He cheered up later when he got to meet Santa. While he was jumping around he ran into a wall and bit his lip. He's was crying in this picture not because of the pain but because he wanted to tell mommy about it.

Santa just happened to be at Fred Meyer that evening when we went shopping (though they didn't have him in a traditional red suit, which confused the kids). They got some decent pictures of both kids looking at the camera and smiling (though not at the same time). I just wish I'd had them dressed up a bit more festive. Tyler didn't seem to notice or care that he'd seen two wildly different looking Santas in the same day.

On the 18th mom met up with a good friend of hers who'd recently moved to Lynnwood. The kids and I played at the Funtastic Playtorium at Alderwood Mall while the two of them hung out together at the mall. It's definitely fun, but for $13 a kid I'd never bothered to go. I don't think it's worth what it costs for my kids. They would be just as happy at a McDonald's or similar play area. An older kid might be able to play long enough to make it worth the high price tag, but my little ones were overstimulated and begging for lunch and nap after less than two hours. I'd just as soon take them to Pre-K time at Pump it Up for less than half the price of this place. We'll probably only return if they offer some sort of monthly/annual pass or if they start a Pre-K time with reduced admission costs.

Only 1 of the 5 ball guns was working, which was really disappointing for Tyler. On the plus side, it's big enough that I could go into the playtorium and climb around with them.

 Chasing after them was exhausting!

The toddler area had some fun toys. The kids spent quite a bit of time spinning each other on the little merry go round and rocking on the watermelon.

One of the first things mom mentioned doing with the kids was Chuck E Cheese. Unfortunately with kids being sick, followed by mom getting sick, followed by me doing Christmas deliveries, we didn't get around to it until lunch on her final day.

Chasing the kids around while they run in opposite directions is quite a work out! At least Allison was adorable at the "whack a frog" game. Tyler even won a big ticket jackpot on a game where you push a button to trap a spinning light. He loved seeing so many tickets come out! In the end $20 on tokens earned us a $2 slinky and a couple small pieces of candy. Good thing we're in it for the fun and not the prizes!