Not Just Another Wednesday

Mark played quite a few games of checkers while we were vacationing.  But this picture is of Spencer playing.  Now, I’m not sure if you guys are all Calvin and Hobbs fans, but Calvin often plays “Calvin Ball” where you make up the rules to whatever you’re playing while you are playing it.  And the more you get to know Spencer the better you’ll be able to picture this.  So this is Spencer playing “Calvin Checkers” with Grandpa.

Our plan for Wednesday was to take the ferry across Puget Sound to Seattle and enjoy lunch at the International Fountain at the Seattle Center.  And that’s exactly what we did!

Here we are on the front of the ferry.  Once it gets going it’s quite windy out there. (Notice Mark holding his hat so it doesn’t blow off into the ocean.) So windy that Mark got cold and went inside to warm up.

So we went to the back of the ferry for our view.  Kind of like riding in the back of a station wagon when you were a kid and you got to see where you’d been. We took our van on the ferry so we could drive back home.  We were so lucky to find a parking place 2 blocks away from the fountain!  We enjoyed our lunch there before letting the kids change into their swimming suits.

The fountain here kind of sprays in rhythm to music they have playing.  Today it was Jazz music.  When the song stops so does the fountain and it’s just a surprise when it’s going to come back on.  That’s why Mark’s looking so anxious in this picture. Now we’ve come here twice before.  The first time we happened upon the fountain by chance, so no swim suits.  Another time we forgot the suits and this time we got it all together and remembered not only swim suits but towels too.

How do you like the thumb?

The water was quite chilly, so the kids got a little wet and then came to sit in the sun frequently. Check out the action in this picture!

Spencer cracks me up.  He always finds things to keep himself busy….

A cold bunch of kids! I’m not sure exactly how it happened but I ended up testing the water in the fountain too, just to make sure the kids were telling the truth about how cold it was :-).  Actually, it looked like so much fun that I didn’t want to be left out.

OK, Abbie is cold, but I didn’t think it was too bad. Mark took this one for us with the Space Needle in the background.  Boy was he excited to use MY camera! After a day in the sun we picked a bucket of raspberries back at Grandpa’s place to eat with our ice cream.    After dinner we played a game of Yahtzee.  With all the games we play I can’t believe that we haven’t played Yahtzee with the kids.  I creamed everyone….and so Mark wasn’t so sure he really liked the game…but he played with Ken again the next morning and was the creamer and then he and Jessie decided it was their new favorite.

Here’s Jessie being silly with Ken’s glasses.  She is such an organizer that all the little boxes on the score card made her a little giddy. As Jessie was being the little organizer Spencer saw her put her pencil behind her ear and he immediately copied her.  As long as he was in the game (about half of it) he didn’t forget once to put his pencil back in it’s “proper place” behind his ear after he and Grandpa recorded their score. And I’m really sorry Ken, but this face was too good to pass up.  I guess Abbie’s roll wasn’t quite what he was hoping for.