I love your sushi roll, hotter than wasabi.....

Q is now a sushi fan.

Well....cucumber roll fan, but we are working on expanding her horizons. We go once a week, the girls and I, and usually Q is content with a bowl of sticky rice and hanging with the girls...but every once in a while she would beg for a bite of my roll. Since spicy mayo is usually drizzled on top of my order, I decided to finally order her a roll of her own and see how it went....and she loved it.

She's in the phase where after a few bites of a chip, chicken nugget, or really anything...she considers it damaged and won't continue eating it, and instead asks for another piece...so I had to take the scraps of her roll, re-roll it, and give it back to her as a "new piece", but she was satisfied with the roll....I love this girl.

you light up my life, you bring me joy...

Seattle Day 3

Of course our trip to Seattle in spring wouldn't be complete without a trip to Skagit Valley to see the tulips!

I was really excited to take Kimmy and Elsie up there, since Kim hadn't been to the festival since high school and I knew they would love all the pretty flowers.

The weather was absolutely fabulous (in fact it even got a little toasty and our cheeks and chests got a tad bit of color), and even though there was sooooo many people, we had a great time and saw some gorgeous tulips.

All of the main fields of tulips had been trimmed, so the only flowers to see were in Roozengaarde and Tulip Town

but those are my usual stops anyway...I just wasn't used to everyone else in the city hitting up my destination spots.

We were able to walk through all the tulips and the girls just loved it.

Elsie just kept saying how pretty they all were.

Q had a hard time grasping the concept of "soft" with the flowers, but she loved them all so much

Although these pictures of Q may not show it, she did have a good time...we are still learning how to smile when mommy isn't taking the pictures and making her laugh.

Of course we all had to take our usual pictures in the flowers....don't they always look like senior pictures?

and we couldn't leave our favorite frog alone...

After we hit up the two parks we stopped at Snow Goose Produce for some delicious homemade ice cream on waffle cones...delicious. Then back to Diane's, but first we stopped for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory...one of my favorites.

Kim's flight left the next morning at 6:40, so that meant I was up at 4:45 am to get her to the airport...so it was an early night for me....

but such a great weekend!

here are some flower shots that I took...man I love tulips

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble...

Seattle Day 2:

Saturday was going to be cloudy and most likely raining, so we postponed our tulip trip and took it easy instead. We went and ate lunch at Ivar's...delicious, made a stop at Old Navy...love it, and took the kids to the Seattle Children's Museum. Liz was able to get my name on her membership, and that came with 4 free guests, so we were able to visit the museum for free, which made it even better...although I would pay to go in there again...the girls loved it...and so did us big kids (as you will see in the pictures).

For a couple of hours the girls played and played. The Museum is very kid friendly and is really really cute.

they have a place for the small kids to play in the water.

An ode to Tinkertoys:

a kid size grocery store

(notice my little thief)

fake cars, buses, etc for kids to play in

and a display honoring Asia and Africa...that obviously Em and I couldn't get enough of.

True Story...Q had her first major, and I mean major tantrum this weekend....in public... at the children's museum, and this little fake Metro Bus was the cause.

She loved this thing, I let her play in it forever...but forever wasn't long enough. When I took her out to move onto another cool thing...she freaked out. seriously freaked out. crying, rolling around, yelling, she was sweating so bad from the tantrum. I couldn't believe it. I finally put her binky in (i know, i know, I had finally gone done to binky only at night but it was all I could think of), cradled her in my arms, and she snuggled in and calmed down....and then i was stuck holding her. she wouldn't be put down after that. It had definitely been a long day, and her sleeping and naps were completely off, so I understood the tantrum...but wow! it was a doozy.

After the Museum I treated myself to a pina colada smoothie at orange julius, and took a couple seconds to breathe. We were on our way out when we noticed the massive downfall of rain outside...but we rolled up our jeans, bundled the kids in their sweatshirts, and made the short trek to our car...gotta love Seattle!

We headed down to the Southcenter area where we grabbed a delicious dinner at the Claim Jumper (the whiskey apple pork loin was scrumptious!!!!) had some dessert (lemon bar brulee...yep it is as good as it sounds), and then headed to our second cousin's Diane's house (where we stayed the next couple of nights). It was a full day, and while we sat down in our comfy clothes to watch "princess and the frog" projected on the wall (Elsie was in heaven), Q was begging to go to bed.

I think the tantrum took it's toll.

Next up Day 3...the tulips.