City Girl

Butterfly garden at the Pacific Science Center

One of Anna's grumpier moments caught on camera. Still adorable.

A couple of months ago, we went to Seattle with the kids to see the sights and get out of town. We stayed downtown in the Renaissance Hotel on Madison and walked or took the bus to get where we needed to go. We had a great time! We took a short tour around the harbor on a boat with an upper deck, we stared at sea otters at the aquarium, we spent three hours at the zoo, and we watched butterflies land on us at the Pacific Science Center.

Before we left the Tri-Cities, I got online and looked at the bus routes and wrote down which buses we would need to take and the times they arrived at each stop. We got on the right bus and got off at the right stop when we went to the aquarium the first day, and I was feeling pretty smart. Tim seemed impressed that I had planned ahead and that we didn't have to pay $12 to park downtown for a few hours.

When we left the aquarium, I looked at my little list and directed everyone towards the bus that would take us back to the hotel. We hopped on, settled in, and relaxed, thinking the ride would go up the hill, around a few blocks, and take us back to the bus stop we had been at that morning. We started visiting with a group of young kids that were at daycamp and were on a field trip, and eventually realized we had been riding for longer than expected. When we asked the daycamp chaperone about the bus route, she told us we should have gotten off many stops earlier. We pulled the bell line and climbed out of the bus to find ourselves a good twenty-five minutes away from where we needed to be. Fortunately, we were in our walking shoes and had brought Anna's stroller...and our cheerful attitudes. :) I'm pretty sure all of the calories we had consumed at lunch that day were lost on the city streets...along with my "city girl" attitude.

Here are a couple more pictures from our trip:

We had such a fun time together!