The theme for this weekend was animals…lots and lots of animals. Steve, Katherine and I have been exploring a lot of the local animal parks and discovering lots of unusual, endangered, threatened animals locally. This past Saturday we visited the Cougar Mountain Zoo with Grandma Bush. It’s a rather eclectic park that houses not only cougars, but over a dozen macaws, lemurs, reindeer and other rather interesting animals. While not large, the park is very friendly to younger children and big enough to capture their interest for a couple hours. You’ll see in the pictures that Katherine had a great time on their metal animals – pointing out the roo in the kangaroo’s pocket. She also fed some Formosa deer (extinct outside of captivity) apples and played peek-a-boo with macaws.
We decided to put our new minivan (see below) to the test and took it for an inaugural road trip to Northwest Trek. Per our previous trip, we saw lots of NW animals up close and personal – from peering into beaver, sea otter and other caves to seeing animals roam their very natural surroundings. One of the biggest surprises, picture to be loaded soon, was the family of beavers that we saw with mom, dad and 2-year old child cuddling in their cave. Unlike our other trip, we didn’t get to see many moose on the tram ride, but Katherine used the ride to wolf down her PB&J sandwich and crackers. It was a fairly long trip which warranted “Buzz and Woody” and we got a host of questions each way like “Where’s Woody’s dog?” “What happened to Woody’s arm?” “Where’s Buzz?”
Why is Madeleine in Hospital?
For those of you familiar with “Madeleine,” you know that she has appendicitis and has to have it removed. We’ve been reading this book for a couple months now. Katherine, by and large, sits with Lambey and sucks her thumb. Tonight I got a barrage of questions. They ranged from “Why is Madeleine sick?” “Why aren’t other girls in bed?” “Where is Madeleine’s mama?” and I must have spent several minutes explaining that Madeleine would get well, come home and sleep in her junior bed. ๐
Exploring Museum of Flight
One of my goals has been to take Katherine to new places and have lots of adventures before the baby is born. Two Fridays ago, Steve took the day off and we took the Bushes to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. It definitely exceeded our expectations. Unlike other museums it has hands on exhibits for kids and even a cool area for kids to play in real, small sized planes. Katherine was fearless – marching into a Blue Angels small model plane, grabbing the joystick and moving the plane around. We loved the cafeteria which was affordable and accessible from the main airplane hangar area. And, we even ran into Sid, who is a museum regular.
Biting the Bullet
Steve and I did something we swore we’d never do, which is buy a minivan. After maintaining our Volvo station wagon for 7 years, we caved and bought the next family automobile – a Honda Odyssey minivan. Aside from the ridicule from friends, it drives like a Honda (big plus) and has an amazing range of amenities. Our hope is that it lives up to its brand and has low maintenance cost and high resale value! The other benefit is that Katherine thinks the minivan is really cool. Not only does it have the entertainment option, which allows for movies on long trips, but she has her own captains chair that she climbs in and out of. She’s identified where she wants to put the baby “when Mama goes to hospital and baby comes out of tummy” and loves to strap any stuffed friend into her seat. It now takes an extra 5 minutes to leave the house just to get Katherine into her seat. To be frank though, the biggest downside is perception among other drivers. Other drivers figure that minivans are slow and conservative drivers and that they should cut us off – hmmm.
