Seattle

I didn't take any pictures while we were at my mom's house. D'oh! Since Zach & Sarah were there, it would have been a great opportunity, but instead I spent three days actually relaxing instead of running around doing things. After leaving my mom's and heading over the mountains to Olympia, we drove up to Bremerton to take the ferry to Seattle. I took a ton of Seattle pictures, so I may break them up into a couple different posts.

On the ferry, just after we left the dock in Bremerton:





Hard to get rid of backlighting when it's this bright outside! This is the rear outside deck on the second level.


Drew was really impressed with the Seattle Skyline.


After we unloaded the ferry, Zach & Sarah met us there, and we headed down the waterfront towards Pike Place. L-R: Half of Alex (nephew), Zach, Aly, Sarah, Aspen, my mom


This was almost everyone, just missing Jeff & two of my kids. L-R: Alex, Kendra, Zach, Levi, my mom, Aly, Sarah, Aspen, Jami, Isaiah, Jaden.



The aquarium windows were interesting, but we didn't go in.

Aspen & Aly were both happy to walk with Grandma. With us in Dallas and Aly in Michigan, neither gets to see Grandma enough!

Aspen really got attached to Sarah in the few days we spent with them. This was at Pike Place, the last time we'd see them, and Aspen was having a hard time smiling because she was so sad.

Sitting on Rachel, the Pike Place Market's famous pig. (Not that you can see her under my kids, though.) With that many people and the flying fish right behind us, I gave up on trying to get a shot of everyone looking the right direction!

Just outside of Westlake Center, home of the monorail, there's a waterfall fountain. The water is thick enough that when the kids walked in between the two sides, the pictures were indecipherable, so I went into the waterfall instead.

Leaving Yellowstone...finally!

I know, I know. Slowest. blogger. ever. Heavens, I have so much free time on my hands I just can't understand why I'm not finished with all of these pictures yet! :D

So without further ado, here is our last morning in Yellowstone:

On our way out, we drove to Fishing Bridge. Kind of ironic, since fishing's been prohibited for fifty years or so! If you've not been there, Fishing Bridge spans the Yellowstone River where it leaves Lake Yellowstone. This one has the kids facing the lake, the camera facing the river:

There are stairs going down from the bridge so you can walk along the riverbanks, but the water was too high while we were there. It covered the bottom three steps.

Jeff stayed on the bridge with Lily--we were a little worried she might decide to go for a swim!

We had to pry the kids off of the steps. I think they would have been happy to sit there for an hour! What were they so fascinated with? Fish! These fish were maybe 1½-2" long, not very big at all. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there were probably a hundred thousand of them--they extended up & down both banks as far as we could see.