More Seattle Stuff: Tuesday Through Thursday

The next morning I announced that I was having breakfast at Streamliner Diner with anyone who wanted to join me.  My mom came along, and so did Craig, Brian, Ian, and Nolan.  I love their breakfasts so very, very much-- homemade strawberry AND raspberry jams for my biscuit.  Hot chocolate.  And an ABCT omelet (avocado, bacon, cheese, tomato-- the PERFECT combination).  We had a wonderful time and left absolutely stuffed.  It made me so happy.

The boys at the diner!

And the girls!  My poor Mom and I look SO sleepy...!  But happy!

My Dad decided that since Mom had taken some of us out for breakfast, he should take a different set out to lunch, so he headed to the 50's Diner with Leah and Natalie.  My Mom and Tracy and Rachael went to visit a friend of ours who is dying of cancer.  And all the men took all the kids to the park.  Somehow I ended up at the house all alone!  It was so very quiet.  I found a book about Lord Mountbatten and curled up in the window seat with a big fuzzy blanket and enjoyed the peace.

Here are some of the pictures from the park...

Bentley is gross

Camille and Nicole

The 7-year-old crew

Nicole LOVES shoes.  Here she is modeling mine...

Craig was super good at getting Claire to sleep

We got take-out from our favorite Thai place, Sawatdy, and then put kids to bed.  Tracy hired a babysitter to be at my parent's house so all the grownups could come to the rental house and hang out together without kids.  It was a beautiful night!  Seriously, though, it was!  We just sat around talking and laughing.  And I was so happy to see that Adam fit in with us as though he'd always been a part of our family.  It was so great.  My Mom had brought chocolate samples from all over the world, so we also had a chocolate tasting-- us Bentleys are so refined, yo!!

I love how Ian's got his head thrown back with laughter here-- that pretty much sums up our evening!

Wednesday morning my Dad popped over to our rental house and he, Craig, and Brian decided to take the older kids walking in the Grand Forest.  It was a fairly damp excursion, but they had fun!

Let's get a better feel for how tall those trees are!

Brian hung back to get this picture and then nearly got himself lost

Grandma was also good at keeping Harrison asleep!

We finally got around to dying Easter eggs (only a few days late!).  We'd been hoping for good enough weather that we could do it outside, but when it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, someone (Leah?) had the idea of taping paper bags down on the table to protect it, and that worked beautifully!

Such a sweet picture of the three youngest grandbabies!

This many kids needed a LOT of adult supervision!

Wednesday night, everyone indulged me and we ate at Isla Bonita.  I love that place.  It was nice to be back!

Thursday morning was chaos.  All the girls went and got pedicures together, and all the men seemed to want to split off into different directions without discussing who was taking which kids.  This nearly resulted in Ian taking my big kids to the aquarium when Craig was planning on taking them to the Pacific Science Center, and Nicole nearly got left all by herself.  Fortunately everything got figured out before anything bad actually happened.  Us girls did have to do some intervening texting during the pedicures to avert disaster, though.

Pretty toes!

Craig picked me up from the pedicure place and delivered a not-abandoned Nicole to Natalie.  Then we got on the ferry and headed back into the city!

Nice little back-scratching chain on the ferry

Because everything always goes smoothly with Craig around, we actually found parking pretty easily at the Science Center.  And they have some sort of reciprocity deal with the Richmond Museum of Science, so our tickets were free! 

Nothing like a giant guitar!

Ryder gets a feel for how big a dinosaur footprint really is

So then Camille has to copy him

I remember seeing these dinosaurs when I was a kid!  They, um, haven't actually aged very well.  In fact, the apatosaurus's neck is breaking off and has to be propped up, which is pretty sad.  It's probably about time they were replaced.  But my kids were still excited to see them, so I guess it's all good.

Giant chess is always a big hit

I absolutely LOVED the butterfly room. It was pure magic.

One of my favorite shots of the entire week

We went out in search of lunch, and afterwards the rain had stopped and we could enjoy shooting the water cannons for a bit.

Messing with CGI

Craig had the idea for this amazing selfie.  Unfortunately they're doing work on the Space Needle (they called a "Space Lift"! 😄) so it looks kind of stupid right now.  And then Ryder freaked out and refused to be in the picture, so he's missing...

And finally, Rachael took this amazing picture from the stairs.  What-- is there a carbon monoxide leak in here?*

Brian, Craig, Ian, and Harrison.  All asleep.

*Arrested Development quote, for all you fans out there!