July Favorites

Surprisingly, I actually did a decent job of posting pictures this month so I didn't have a ton of extra to choose my favorites from, but I found a few good ones that you haven't seen yet. At least not here anyway.

 

One of Kyle's favorite cereals is Lucky Charms because of the marshmallows. That's his favorite part and he always picks them out first. His other favorite is Froot Loops, so you can imagine his absolute glee when he discovered a combination of his two favorites.

This is a great picture of the boys, but what makes it even better is seeing Tyler with his Great Wolf Lodge wolf ears. He spent the entire month of July anxiously awaiting our trip and wore the ears almost every day.

I smile when I look at this picture because it speaks so much about the two things that were utterly consuming Tyler's brain for the entire month of July: collecting/playing Pokémon cards and looking forward to the Great Wolf Lodge trip.

 

Milk moustache. My post-workout protein drink in delicious...just ask Kyle. Vanilla protein powder, almond milk, half a frozen banana and sometimes a scoop of chocolate PB2.

A new set of babies for the month of July. They moved out of the nest while we were away on vacation. Now it's super quiet outside the kitchen window.

 

Cheese! Kyle thinks it's funny to give me extreme faces when I'm trying to take a picture of him.

I don't know who had it worse. Kyle got completely soaked with water balloons, while Tyler hardly got wet at all, but it was over 100 degrees outside that day, so perhaps it was a greater torture staying dry.

 

I love how excited Tyler was about getting shaved ice, but he picked out the strangest flavors. It was root beer float and pink lemonade or something crazy.

 

Selfie success.

Lessons Learned

Pearls of wisdom gained from our family vacation:

 

When using Groupon to book a hotel, actually call the hotel and make sure that Groupon has faxed over the information and that the reservation is indeed confirmed. Otherwise you'll show up at the hotel at 10:00 at night with no room, as they are already completely, 100% full.

If you're using the "freezer" section of a tiny hotel refrigerator to store ice cream....um, make sure you check that the temperature control isn't set to the warmest setting or you will have nothing but melty goop to serve to the poor child trying to celebrate his 3rd birthday, who by the way prefers ice cream over cake as a birthday treat.

It's true what they say: never take your retainer out of your mouth and wrap it in a napkin and leave it sitting on the restaurant table because you will forget about it, mistake it for garbage and leave it behind. I lost my retainer at the Great Wolf Lodge and I'm not going to say it's the most expensive mistake I've ever made, but I can certainly find better things to do with the $300 it'll cost for a replacement.

Priceline sucks. The end. Only use them if you have no standards for your hotel room, otherwise you might end up with a smoking room with only one bed. I'm sorry, but in what decade do we live in that smoking hotel rooms even exist!?! We spent 2 nights in a room that smelled like the inside of an ash tray, with our eyes burning and half of the family sleeping on the floor.

Olympia, WA

On the final leg of our trip, we stayed in Tumwater right outside of Olympia. We had planned to spend two full days in the area and to go to the Children's Museum, the State Capitol, and maybe Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, but in the end we had to cut the trip short and come home early. We didn't make it to the zoo or get to tour the capitol.

Hands On Children's Museum

We spent the bulk of our day on Saturday at the children's museum and actually I think it's my favorite out of all the children's museums we visited in the past. It's better than Seattle, Portland and Spokane...in my mind anyway.

 

The Puget Sound exhibit alone was enough to keep the boys occupied for the entire time. We literally had to keep pulling them away to look at other parts of the museum, but they just kept wandering back to the water. Kyle loved putting balls into the vacuum tubes that led to the water vortex and Tyler loved the steaming water volcano.

Included in the Puget Sound exhibit was the water table where you could build and float your own boat. This kept Tyler occupied for a LONG time.

They also had a really cool treehouse  that the kids could use to climb up to the second floor of the museum and then use the slide to get back down to the first floor or climb even higher to the eagle's nest. So fun!

 

Upstairs the boys made flying machines and sent them up the wind tunnels.

The Move It exhibit was a circular room, actually the inside of a water tower with a wall of windows that looked out over the city. You could see the capitol building from there. In this room the boys kept busy with the air maze, sending yarn balls and scarves through the different chutes.

In the same room we used the giant pin wall to make impressions of our hands and faces. How cute is Kyle's little face?

Downstairs in the Emergency exhibit they have a scream room that measures the decibels of your scream. The highest recorded scream for that day was 109.7 dB. Tyler measured 92.5 and Rick's highest was 101.1 dB. Close, but I'm sure the record holder was a little girl with an ear piercing shriek.

On our way out at closing time, the boys jumped into the truck at the farming exhibit and let Kyle drive. Such a fun day!

Capitol Lake Park

After the Children's Museum we drove around downtown for a little bit and ended up at Capitol Lake Park. There's a walking trail around the perimeter of the lake that's about 1.55 miles long so we took that path and enjoyed the scenic view. There is also a zig-zag path up the hill that leads to the back of the capitol building and the rest of the surrounding campus, but we skipped that part since we were hoping to do the capitol tour the next day.

 

I'd love to say we had a great time, but honestly the boys were complaining the whole time about being hot, thirsty or having tired feet. Also, in a slightly unfortunate coincidence, Olympia Hempfest  was in full swing at the park, which brought with it...let's just say "a unique crowd". The view of the capitol was nice, but the lake itself was a little stagnant looking. Apparently at one time the lake was open for recreational use, but has since been overcome by the New Zealand Mud Slug and is now permanently closed.

Olympia Farmer's Market

On our last day in Olympia we went to the Farmer's Market, which is located right off the water front in the downtown area. It's a decent sized market with both indoor and outdoor vendors offering everything from fresh dairy, meat, produce, gourmet food, baked goods and artisan crafted items.

  

All the fruit stands were so tempting, but I didn't want to buy anything perishable that would just sit in the hot car all day.

I did, however, buy several soaps from this stand: Tee Tree Mint & Oat, Chai & Biscotti and Tahitian Vanilla. And just in case you're wondering Monkey Farts smelled nice and fruity.

I also bought some nuts from JAWA Gourmet Nuts. They had a number of interesting flavors, but I settled on lavender walnuts, coconut cashews and tangerine tango (spicy) almonds. So good!

 

Then I stopped next door to the market and grabbed a latte from The Dancing Goats Espresso Bar.

Another view of the capitol from the water front next to the Farmer's Market.

Priest Point Park

It became clear early in the morning that Kyle wasn't feeling well and that we'd need to cut the trip short and go home so we stopped at a park to quickly eat lunch and were on our way.

 

 

The Capitol Building

We were so close to the capitol building though and I still hadn't gotten a picture from the front, so as we were driving out of town, Rick stopped the car, I ran out and took some quick pictures of the outside and then we headed home. Not quite the experience I was expecting, but sometimes the circumstances are simply out of my control.

 

 

 

 And as Tyler pointed out, it gives us a reason to go back when Kyle gets a little older.







Great Wolf Lodge

For Kyle's birthday we booked a 2 night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge. He's still too little to go on any of the tube rides, but he was able to play in the kiddie pool by himself or go in the wave pool or activity pool with Rick as well as participate in many of the other non-swimming activities around the lodge. Both boys had a great time!

 

On our first full day at the lodge we started out with a buffet breakfast in one of the hotel restaurants and then spent the rest of the morning in the pool.

 

For lunch we ordered a pizza from the onsite pizza place and went back to our room to eat and let Kyle open his birthday presents and have some cake and ice cream.

Happy Birthday to Kyle, Happy Birthday to you!

 The boys took a break from the pool for the afternoon and played some games in the arcade.

Tyler brought his MagiQuest wand from our previous trip and worked towards completing the quest he started last time. Kyle got a wand too, even though he wasn't really playing the game, he was still able to light up items in the quest and open treasure chests. So the boys ran around the lodge for an hour or so looking for clues, then we took another break for dinner after which we headed back to the pool where we stayed until it closed at 9:00.

Our second day at the lodge was much like the first: breakfast, swimming, lunch, arcade, MagiQuest, Great Forest Challenge, ice cream and more swimming.

The boys each had a refillable soda cup that they could fill up at various machines around the lodge. The one in the pizza restaurant was the best. It had over 100 different flavors of soda....things you've never even heard of before. Sprite grape: Yuck. Sprite peach: good. Vanilla root beer: Supreme. Strawberry, Orange and Peach Mello Yello: All Good. Raspberry cola: okay.

 

At the creation workshop Kyle got a freshly stuffed "huggy bear" that they put in a little backpack for him to carry around.

And on our way out of the lodge we made one last stop at the gift shop to get a Mike and Ike candy cup for the road.