Point Defiance Zoo

We now have less than a year left in Seattle. While this brings us great excitement because it means we're almost done with school (finally!), it creates stress if another kind - the stress of Checking things off the To-do-while-we're-in-Seattle list.
Since we had a free day on Monday with no school and the weather was nice, we headed down to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium to cross something off the list.
We almost didn't go- Ellie wasn't acting like she felt that well in the morning, and then after a dose of Motrin kicked in, she was back to her usual jumping bean self. So, probably against our better judgment, we went. We were driving around the parking lot after our 45 minute drive, trying to find a spot, when Ellie said she felt like she was going to throw up. I handed her a big Ziploc bag, and was hurriedly unbuckling my seat belt to hold it for her when her lunch contents came up all over herself and her carseat. Lovely. Luckily, we had brought a change of clothes, just in case, and after cleaning her and her carseat up as best we could and cracking open the rear windows, we went ahead. After all, we were there, and Ellie's stomach was now empty! Luckily, she was fine after that, and the car didn't smell too terribly bad when we came back thanks to the open windows. :) We had a great time, though, and if we get the time we may go back!

My kids were so fascinated with the jelly fish. Connor couldn't understand how a jelly fish could eat without a mouth or stomach, and we weren't doing to well explaining it!

And now a funny childhood story: When I was growing up, we lived next door to my grandparents. My grandpa started saying one day that he kept seeing a peacock running around the farm. Grandpa was kind of getting old, so we all thought Grandpa might be getting a little bit senile. Then the rest of us saw it. Somehow, a peacock adopted us, and it became more and more tame. It would come up on our patio. It would display its plumage and dance for the chickens. Every night, it would fly up on a telephone pole and sleep. We named him Peeper, and he stayed around for a few years. We got a peahen from the zoo, and he had a little family, until the foxes got his girl (her wings were clipped). :(. After that, we saw him less and less, until eventually he was gone. We're not sure what happened to him.
Anyway, the reason I brought that up is because they had peacocks wandering the grounds at the zoo. I couldn't help but smile - they looked just like Peeper.

Seeing the animals was great, but my kid's favorite part was the kid zone- an animal themed play area.

Mason wasn't too fond of the stroller, so him and I got in some more cuddle time. I really wished that I had remembered my sling. . . he's a heavy boy!

If you look really close, you can see Mt. Ranier by Jake's head. That's another thing to check off the 'ol list. . .