The Crowl Family Adventures: Ben's staycation

It is soooooooooooo nice to have Ben off for a while during the whirlwind of the holidays. This year it was a major bonus that he was off because it allowed us to have some quality time together once the kids were feeling better. We took advantage of having two of us at home and did some things that are more enjoyable with two adults around!

The day after Christmas we did our traditional holiday "downtown day." We started with hot chocolate at Delitante. yumm. We stopped at the Macy's train display, hopped on the monorail and went to look at the train display at the Seattle Center. Colter got to drive the train with the engineer, but miss Maddie was still not feeling well and letting us all know.. aka I was standing in a corner while she threw a fit. We ate some tasty lunch in the Armory and then jetted home after a carousel. I love downtown during the holidays. Everything feels so alive and warm and vibrant. I love that we can give our kids the experience of going into a big city during the holidays. It feels so normal to me to venture downtown, but I know many people don't really ever go into major cities like Seattle.

I always create a mental checklist of pictures I want to take and things I want to do during the holidays which is a very dangerous thing to do. I know while I'm making up these mental lists that I should not do it.. but without fail I always do. My sweet husband works so hard to get that list done including doing anything to get some good pics. It's really hard to get the kids to even agree to get their picture taken, let alone smile. There was bribery on multiple levels, dancing, flailing, and puppets involved BUT we got them . They are precious and totally worth it for this mama.

The other picture I realllllly wanted was them in their Christmas jammies. These are some of my favorite pics ever and we really didn't have to work too hard because their backs were to the camera and they may or may not have been eating chocolate and watching a video. HA

One day we went to skymania and had such a fun time. Colter and Maddie had a blast. Colter mainly wanted to stay in the foam pit. He loves to swim around like a sea in all the foam cubes. He also liked to make a run for it across all the trampolines. Maddie was all over the place.. throwing balls, jumping and falling. It was such a fun morning.

Another day we went up to Bellingham to visit our friend Jayna and her 3 boys. We decided last minute that I would take the kids on the amtrak and Ben would drive up and meet us at the station. It was such a fun time with my little train kids! Colter looked out the window the entire time shouting out what he say "It's a BNSF!" "Signal!" "Crossing!" Maddie got a little antsy towards the end, so I had her watch a few videos on my phone.

Once we got to Jayna's, we played a little at the house and then ventured to the Bellingham railway museum. It is volunteer run and AMAZING. What a gem. They had a HUGE model train set up in the middle, a really long play train table, and then another model train set up. Once the kids are about 5 and know what they are doing, they are allowed to run the trains themselves. Neither kid wanted to leave even though we totally blew past nap time.

Colter has been wanting to go to the rock museum for a while. We didn't realize how pricey it was, so we ended up with a year long membership. Sooo we'll be rockin it up this year! We all loved the recording studio.

We went out to look at lights twice and found a new favorite house in Kirkland. It is sports themed and was absolutely covered in lights. PLUS you can also go inside the house where the owner had a huge train display running through the whole house.. i'm talking a full on working waterfall and trains running over his kitchen counter. Wowza.