Saturday, April 16, 2011

A love as real... As real as the flowers

The one thing that worse than packing, when it comes to moving, is that time sure does get away from you and you forget to blog post about fun things.
A couple weeks before we moved, Michelle and I took Q over to the Seattle area to see the Tulip festival one more time before we left the area. I have been going to this festival since I was a kid, so it's gonna be weird to not see the rows of tulips anymore, but I have the pictures to remind me.
Since we were heading over there anyway, I thought it would be fun to check out the Point Defiance Zoo in the Tacoma area. Now I lived in the Seattle area until I was about 20, and I had never been to this zoo. Never been to Point Defiance Park at all. And this park is phenomenal. It has a zoo, a bunch of gardens, beaches that look out into the San Juan islands, and a ferry port. Just awesome.

The day we went to see the tulips was cold...like really cold. and wet. really wet, so naturally there was mud just everywhere, which meant we avoided walking in the tulip rows (something you really aren't supposed to do anyway, but we always do so we can get some awesome cheesy tulip pictures). But we had a good time anyway. Our time with the tulips was shorter than usual, but we got pictures, Q got to see many many "pretty" flowers, and we got out tulip fix.










with the late Spring, many of the tulips hadn't opened up yet, but there are so many planted that we still found plenty of gorgeous to drool over. 


Q is obsessed with flowers, and always needs to hold one if not two in her hands if they are around. The problem is, you can't exactly just pick the flowers...so I had to search out flowers that were on the ground....and then proceed to tell any person that gave me a "I can't believe you picked the tulips" look, a little nod and "it was on the ground" comment under my breath. 

We even saw this tulip growing in a tree...in a tree?



After the Tulip festival we made a quick stop at the outlet mall in Tulalip, where Q scored herself a free candy necklace, then had dinner at this delicious Hawaiian place we found on Yelp, where Q scored herself a free cupcake. (I'm hoping whatever she has that gets these free things continues, and of course that the "free" things get larger and more expensive).
Moshiko chicken...freakin delicious

I lived off of this stuff when I lived in Hawaii. Nectar of the gods.

Oxtail soup....mmmmmm


That night we stayed at my friend Liz's house, which is always the best. Liz is the most gracious host, and it was so fun to see her and hang out for awhile before I moved.

The next morning we got up bright and early and headed down to Zoo.
The weather was warmer this day, which was so nice!

The zoo is smaller than the one in Seattle, but it had some cool animals, and the layout made it easy to get close up to the animals...which Q was a super fan of.  PLus it had a little aquarium inside of it with huge polar bears...these things are gigantic!  

yep, those are reindeer..



Q was pretty stoked about seeing Nemo.




had to find her a flower to hold...







After the Zoo we drove around the Point Defiance Park, ate lunch on the beach (Liz made packed lunches for us...see what I mean about the best host ever!), drove along the water on the way back to the freeway, then headed home.  



What a great weekend! and a perfect end to my time in the Pacific Northwest. 

3 comments:

Piper said...

Looks fun! You always have the best trips! FYI- there's a tulip festival every year at Thanksgiving Point :)

Kim said...

I feel like I've totally missed out on the Point Defiance Zoo! Someday I'll get there. I sure do miss the pretty part of the Pacific Northwest!

dirty>south said...

looks fun. yeah we need to hit up defiance sometime. still have never been.