*Our Grand Adventure
The second day of our trip was one of the busiest, fullest, and funnest (is that a word?) days the kids and I have ever had. We caught the ferry in Kingston in the morning and headed over to Edmonds. After a couple metro bus rides and walking for a few blocks, we reached the Seattle Center.

(Of course, it didn’t look quite like that cause we reached it at lunchtime.)
We grabbed some lunch in the Center House…

…and then headed for the Pacific Science Center.
I haven’t been to the science center since I was a kid, but I remember it being my favorite field trip in grade school. There was so much to see and do. Of course, I wanted to read all of the information plastered over every exhibit, but the kids just wanted to get their hands on everything. Once I let go of my “but you should be reading all this stuff!” expectations, we had a great time.

We started at the dinosaur exhibit, where the huge, moving, growling animatronic dinosaurs kept Josiah (my 4-year-old) plastered to my side, his hand safely in mine.
Next we headed to the Insect Village, where there were rows of glass tanks full of fun creatures like this:

Past the insect exhibit was my favorite part of the science center, the Tropical Butterfly House:

It was amazing. Thousands of butterflies fluttering all around you, the scent of tropical orchids in the moist, heavy air. It was like being in another world.




We had our shadows captured on the shadow wall. We stood in front of a green screen and watched ourselves on video doing the weather, complete with weather map. We got our hands into the tide pool and touched all kinds of creatures. We stood inside a giant guitar and felt the vibrations caused by plucking the strings. We saw naked mole rats (”Just like on Kim Possible, Mom!”) So many other things. I’ll post pictures of the kids doing some of these things as soon as my sister e-mails them to me. Unfortunately, she got hit with a stomach thing the day after we left and she hasn’t had time to do it yet.
After we had exhausted ourselves, we headed back outside and sat down to watch the fountain for a while.

The kids had fun seeing how close they could get without actually getting wet. I would’ve let them get soaked, but there were still two buses and a ferry to ride to get home.
Back in the Center House, we had ice cream (for the kids), coffee (for Deb), and Seattle’s Best Fudge (for me). Our trip home was an adventure, since the bus our metro itinerary told us to take to the ferry terminal turned out to be a train. But we made it.
Back in Kingston, we walked to the yacht club where we had parked in Debra’s in-laws spaces to avoid paying for parking in the ferry lot. We were starving and ready to head back to Deb’s for pizza. But I had left the lights of my van on all day and it wouldn’t start. Of course. Couldn’t have a day without a crisis, could we?
Fortunately, Debra’s brother-in-law lives five minutes from the yacht club and he drove over in his mud-caked jeep to jump start my van. Back at Deb’s, we pigged out on pizza and nursed our feet, which were aching from all that walking. It was a good day.