“Giving time and space is the best recipe for a working long-term relationship to work.”

-Someone

 

If you work hard, chances are you rest hard as well.

Our school schedule is packed this year, and we are working our tails off…which means, when we are exhausted, we need some space.

Off to the aquarium/volcano we go!

So, before we hit the aquarium we walked around Seattle a little (getting my 10,000 steps in, one Seattle hill at a time). We hit the Seattle Public Library, which was a) the biggest library I have ever been in, with 10 floors to it, b) the most modern/hipster/kinda weird vibe library I have ever been in. The escalators were neon green/yellow and it looked like we were being loaded into some futuristic anime movie.

Then I took the kids to the Columbia Tower for some coffee and hot chocolate, which is one of my favorite places to have coffee in town. The Columbia Tower is something like 70 stories tall, and the Starbucks is on the 43rd floor. The view is simply delightful, and there is no hustle and bustle up there. It is a relaxing, tranquil spot overlooking the troubles of the world.

How can you not love this.

We also found Air!

Not entirely sure what’s going on with that one.

We got to watch the otters have lunch, the seals do perimeter checks, our favorite puffins be all puffiny, and Nova found a wolf eel swimming around!

That was one day, but the next day we drove up to see Mt.Rainier, which led to finding some CRAZY waterfalls!

Don’t squint. Don’t squint. Don’t squint.

I definitely got my 10,000 steps in that day with all the hiking to get to the waterfalls.

Now, here’s the thing.

In the next two pictures, we were standing on Mt. Rainier. The volcano was literally right behind us.

But the only thing we could see was clouds.

So, here we are just going to use our imaginations and pretend that the incredible volcano is right there, and being majestic and stuff.

To make up for this gigantic bummer, I had some Rainier beer in front of Rainier clouds.

I figure this is compensation for now.