Ride the Ducks

Finally! After months, it was here. The first Saturday in forever when we weren't obligated to do anything important. No job hunting, no moving, no grocery shopping, no hospitals, no house hunting, no packing or moving! It was just so beautiful! Except for the fact that it was pouring rain. But we weren't going to let "some" rain stop us from having the best Saturday we'd had in a long time. I mean, if we were going to live in Seattle for the next little while, we couldn't just stay home every single time it rained, right? Plus, I didn't want to wait too long before we did the city tour because later, we would be natives and it would be too late to go on a tour... (like how I never went to Antelope Island or any parts of the Great Salt Lake, or drove through Alpine Loop, or hiked the Y, and many other exciting things in Utah...)

After putting the kids to bed Friday night, Joe and I looked up exciting things to do for the next day. After an hour of research, we decided (or rather, I decided and Joe just said yes) that we would try visiting the children's museum and go on the Duck tour of Seattle in the afternoon.

It took us an hour longer to get everyone ready to get out the door, but we were so excited for all the fun we were going to have that day. The kids had missed going to Discovery Gateway so it was going to be a fun day for them.

The KidsQuest Children's Museum is located in Factoria Shopping Center, near where we will be moving in two weeks. It was a lot like Discovery Gateway, except for the fact that it was a lot more compact (not in Utah anymore) and was packed full when we got there. It took a while for the kids to warm up, but they spent the majority of their time at the magnetized pipe station where they built contraptions to get the ball down. Well, Alden spent most of the time building, Ellie was "cooking" with the balls, and Eli just walked around with the balls. They had a blast. Joe and I were actually quite impressed at Alden's systematic way of putting the pipes together. He would map out an outline and build a prototype and run the ball down to check the pipes one by one from beginning to the end to make sure the whole thing worked smoothly. He had us take some pictures of his creations. :)

After the museum, we were running out of time to get to the tour (we took our time getting out of the museum and walking through Pets Mart to look at the animals) so we got some KFC to eat in the car on the way. There was a construction going on on the freeway, so we decided to drive through the city to avoid the traffic and to let the kids look at the city at the same time. Bad. Idea. It just so happened that we were trying to get through the city right when a major league soccer game got out at the stadium, and we were stuck in really bad traffic. People and cars filled the downtown area, and we were not going to make it to our "non-refundable" tour at 3 pm.

We called the company, and fortunately they had some seats for the 4 pm tour, so we took our time getting to the tour. It was raining really, really hard, but we were looking forward to getting on the Duck. It is a vehicle made for the military just after WWII, and it can drive on the road and also work in water as a boat. So half of the tour was on the road and the other half on the lake.

Even though it was pouring rain, it wasn't terribly cold, and the kids were really excited to get on a weird looking car. However, once the tour started, Ellie got super tired from playing at the museum and eventually fell asleep. Alden got pretty bored too and the excitement of blowing on the quacker wore off pretty fast. Eli, however, was having a blast. He giggled and laughed every time the quacker went off, and he would dance to the music on the radio.

The tour was pretty fun, and we learned a lot of interesting facts about Seattle. Like the fact that there are over 170 Starbucks locations, they built the city one floor up (they buried the whole ground floor level and made the street go up 10 ft higher) to remedy flooding and fire problems, more than 80 percent of people have library cards, and there are twice as many dogs there as there are kids! :o

Fortunately, Alden had fun during some parts of the tour, especially when we went in the water, and Ellie woke up just in time to get in the water to look at the boats, and she had a lot of fun as well once she wasn't tired anymore. James slept through the whole thing. :D

At the end of the day, we were all super tired and swamped, and wet, but it was a fun Saturday filled with lots of adventures. We are looking forward to more adventures!