Our December Activities

This is our first year staying home for the holidays in, ever. We are pretty excited to see what Seattle has to offer for folks with little ones this time of year. And are looking forward to creating some of our own traditions that resonate with this little family.

A couple of activities we would love to share with you. We enjoyed a hay ride around Seward Park this past weekend that was coordinated by the Seattle Audobon Center in Seward Park. The Park is only a few blocks from our house and truely a treasure, one of the many reasons we are so smitten with our little place in the world. I had dreams of a hay ride pulled by horses around the lower trail, alas it was a city parks dept vehicle towing a large trailer full of hay, but was so much fun! We arrived at the park to find that there was also a girls running event, Girls on the Run a totally cool girl power-full event. Everyone running around with the bib number "1." Very awesome! It meant the hay ride was a little delayed, so we checked out the Audobon Center, one of Pera and Tobias' favorite haunts. During the week they have a lovely reading hour about particular animals that live in the park and then they hike out and try and spy said wildlife. Right up Pera's alley. They also have a great library and a resident tortoise wandering around named Lumpy. This morning they had set up ornament making in the large room downstairs, hot cocoa and hand warmers for the trip around the park.

After making some of our first ornaments together, we loaded into the trailer with an Audobon naturalist or two and got a very sweet little tour around the park. Binoculars were handed out and we even got to cross the finish line of the race!!

When we returned to the Center we had a little play time in the library all Pera could say was, "I want to do that again!!!" No better review than that.

One other event we totally loved this year was going to the Nordic Heritage Museum and making our own gingerbread house. Loved it! Dad did the rock wall, Pera made the gummy fish walls and Pera and Mama did the gum drop roof, with plenty of tastes had by all of the architects throughout the process.

A couple of trolls followed us home!

We are so looking forward to seeing this year's display of Gingerbread houses downtown. We might even check out the chocolate buffet at the Four Seasons downtown.. Oh that may be just too much decadence.. Maybe we will see YOU there!

P.S. Trying out this new camera app on iphone, ShakeItPhoto by Nick Campbell and loving it. It takes polaroids. After the click of the camera  the little polaroid comes down all grey and smudgey you shake the polaroid until it develops into a sweet brightly colored picture, with out all the chemicals. Got to love it! And great with toddlers too who love to shake it til the photo shows up! Alas the closeups of photos are not as clear as they are on the ole point and shoot so may be back to documenting with a regular camera soon.