The Amazing Adventures of Us

faucet nose
Originally uploaded by artfulblogger.

I'm not ignoring my blog on purpose, we've just been incredibly busy.

Yesterday we had the hot tub installed (the elctrician comes on Wednesday to hook it up - YAY!), today and the next two days we are having new windows put in, and Jeff and I are hurrying up finishing the dry walling in the garage/studio so that when the inspector comes on Wednesday it's ready to be inspected.

WHEW!

But here are photos from our train trip last week to Seatlle -

The one above is this huge animated trippy faucet nosed guy. The one below is the hostess of the Grossology exhibit, she's kind of creepy.

And then just random photos from the trip -

The Grossology exhibit really wasn't worth the trip, but the Pacific Science Center is great! Being on the train was fun too (although we almost missed the connection back because we couldn't get a bus - we ended up taking a taxi back to the train station and JUST made it in time), we watched movies (Dream Girls and Stranger Than Fiction), ate breakfast going and dinner coming back, and visited with all the other homeschoolers (2 cars worth!).

It was a good day.

Seattle Space Needle
Originally uploaded by artfulblogger.

Photo heavy post - beware!

We had a great day trip on Saturday to Seattle. None of us had ever been there before (actually I think A and mom have each been there) so it was really exciting for us to see someplace new and amazing. I completely understand what draws people there. It's a gorgeous city, even in the dead of winter (and we got lucky, the sun was out and shining for us all day). It reminds me a lot of San Francisco, minus most of the hills.

We met Varla and Jim - They are blogger friends of A's. So friendly and kind. I was a little nervous about meeting them (I'm not great meeting new people) but they were lovely and helped make the day incredible.

We ate lunch -
A little greasy but it gave us the energy we needed to play as hard as we did.

We rode the monorail - scary but a lot of fun -

We rode on a horsedrawn carriage. The girls waved to everyone and most people waved back. One woman called the girls princesses - that was so nice and made the girls feel special.

We saw lots of street performers -

We also saw great architecture and beautiful art -

It was by far one of the best days we've had in a while.

Robin and Jeff stayed home and had their own adventure. They found a flying field for Jeff's rc planes, they went to the dump and got rid of so much stuff that was cluttering the back deck, they found a lake for playing at this summer, and they just had fun being together.

We are going to be signing up for the unschooling conference in Corvalis this spring. I'm so excited to be able to share other unschoolers with my kids. Unschooling is such a small group that I actually recognize most of the speakers who will be there and I'm looking forward to meeting not only parents of unschoolers (who are amazing and thoughtful people) but the unschoolers themselves!

We had another great mini vacation. This one though was hot hot hot. 111 degrees hot. I'm SO glad we have our new car with air conditioning. I don't think we would have been able to make the trip without it.

Anyway, here are pictures from the trip -

The largest hand I've ever seen. I just had to photograph it.

These trees are gorgeous and they smell so good. I used to live in a treehouse in the redwoods (before kids) and being surrounded by them again brought back so many memories.

Here we are driving through the drive through tree. Luckily we have breakaway mirrors, I swear there was only 2 inches on either side of the car.

Here we are walking the hobbit trail. It's a good thing we did this earlier in the morning, we were dripping sweat by the time we'd finished the walk (which is about a mile and has a lot of uphill). But it's still pretty cool in a kitschy sort of way.

This tree trunk was just laying there begging to be climbed in and photographed. So we complied.

We swam a lot, ate fantastic food (seriously good food), sweated, laughed, argued, slept kinda sorta in an over air conditioned room, and saw lots of silly things. Like this bear clown totem pole -

We also saw a lot of beauty -

A redwood close up.

Trees reflected in the water.

And lots of beautiful family.