Spring Break - Seattle Style

We headed north this year for Spring Break. My older brother David and family live in the Seattle suburbs and we decided to go for a visit. Despite having reservations about the 15 hour drive, we got on our way with a poor little minivan bursting at the seams. We splurged a bit and bought some car portable DVD players since our bare-bones van did not come with that luxury. They were a life saver in the car and we had a relatively uneventful, quiet trip. Each child with headphones, Greg and I could actually talk to each other in peace.



We arrived Saturday evening just as my brother Dave was returning home from London at the same time. He works for Microsoft in the XBOX department and writes software and games for the new Kinect. He then travels all over the world working with other companies who also want to make Kinect games. This guy is quite the world traveler.
He took us to his office and took us on a tour of Microsoft and XBOX. Pretty cool.




Dave's wife, Kate had also been in London with him and had left their kids with her parents. She wasn't home yet because she was in Idaho picking up the kids. We met up with her and the cousins a day later.
Monday we did very Seattle touristy things. We first went to the downtown city center where the Space Needle and things are. We totally scored on planning our trip because what to our wonderment did we find, but a traveling Star Wars exhibit that was at the Science Center. We actually knew it was there for a very brief time and were so happy to be able to plan our trip at the right time. Being the parent of three boys, all of whom eat, breathe, live Star Wars this made the whole trip worthwhile for the kids. The exhibit included all the original costumes of main characters from all 6 Star Wars movies. Darth Vader, Luke, Leah, Han, etc. It also had the real R2-D2, C3PO, Storm troopers, Wookies, and so on. Original light sabers, too. The only disappointment, as far as my kids were concerned, was that the ships weren't life sized. I tried to explain to Andrew, in particular, that every shot of a space ship you see in the movie was just a model suspended by strings and being filmed. So they had all the actual models for the Millenium Falcon, X Wing fighters, AT-ATs. But he was expecting a real actual life sized ship. We need to discuss the "fake-ness" of movies a bit more. This kid really believes in Jedis. Anyway, we were all totally geeking out.












We then walked over to the Space Needle where we had lunch reservations. We rode the over priced elevator up to the over priced revolving restaurant and ate a delicious meal with an incomparable view. I think this was actually Greg's favorite part of the whole trip. It was so cool.





The next day, Tuesday, we got up and went to the Seattle Aquarium. I must say, and don't be offended any of you that may know and love this aquarium, I was a little disappointed. I would have thought being right on the sound and close to the ocean, it would have been a bit more impressive with more variety of cool fish. It was a smallish aquarium. But I have been to places like the Monterrey Aquarium and the Shark exhibit in Vegas at the Mandalay Bay and was expecting similar grandeur. But it was fun for the kids to touch star fish and sea cucumbers and anemones.





After the Aquarium, we wandered around the famous Pikes Market and saw the fish (blegh) shops aplenty. We then headed back to Dave's and gathered up everyone to take a ride on the ferry across one of the little Sound Finger things over to Kingston.





Wednesday we devoted to Major League Baseball. Greg is a born and raised Dodgers Fan and while we lived in LA we took in as many Dodger games as we could. So his thoughts tend to drift towards baseball in the spring. And no vacation would be complete, in his mind, without the opportunity to see some MLB. So we checked to see if the Mariners were in town and went off to a game. Even though we didn't particularly care about either team (Mariners v. Toronto Blue Jays) it was still a fun opportunity to see some pro ball. And a chance to see the famous ICHIRO. Too bad the Mariners lost pretty bad on account of crummy pitching.




Thursday we took it easy and hung out at home (Dave's house) played the Kinect, watched movies, took a quick drive into Seattle to check out the famous Gas Works Park. It was cold and rainy so we didn't stay long. There were some homeless people sleeping in sleeping bags on the playground area. Also, a very disturbing guy who was hanging dead body dummies from trees around the park. I'm not sure what he was doing, but he hung up each very lifelike bloody corpse by a noose around the neck and strung them up in a circle of trees. We got a bad vibe and decided to leave. Ah well, no big city is perfect...

Friday we got up early, packed, grabbed breakfast and hit the road for home. We stopped over night at my parents house in Idaho and made it home to Utah Saturday afternoon. We're unpacked, laundry done, everything put away, and back to routine in a remarkably quick time. Pretty fun Spring Break.