This morning was an emotional morning for me. It was Melissa's first full (1/2 day) of Kindergarten, and she rode the bus there all by herself! With my previous experience raising Melissa, I completely anticipated her chickening out about riding the bus once it showed up. But to my surprise, she just hopped on, and waved goodbye out the window. My baby is growing up, and not needing me as much (which is wonderful, but sad too).
Today marked the first day of kindergarten for Melissa. It was more of an orientation, and the remaining week is a very slow entry, but next week will be the real deal. She is going 1/2 days, and to a traditional school, which as you can see requires a uniform. I've been told I will grow to appreciate this! (At this point I'm still trying to learn what is proper attire and such.)
In the spirit of discovering a new city, we took a 4 day vacation in Seattle this summer.
We visited the Seattle Children's Museum. Melissa's favorite parts were the stations they had set up in children's size. This is her in a cafe selling us foreign food... In a mini kitchen making us soup... And here she is in her favorite station, the grocery store. Don't know if I've mentioned it on here before, but Melissa has an obsession with being a cashier. Everywhere we go that has a self-checkout, she does it for me. Right down to swiping the card. Needless to say this was right up her alley, and we had to tear her away as other kids were interested in having a turn too!
And for us adults, we did the Seattle Underground Tour. It was very interesting to say the least. Educational and entertaining! (Very simply put, Seattle had a fire back in 1889, destroying the majority of the city, and they decided to build up). The tour took us into a number of the underground parts...
Here are a few interesting pics I took, a sign saying rooms 75¢, writing on an underground grocery store wall, an original "crapper", and an antique bathtub... We rode this monorail often from the Space Needle to Downtown Seattle. (those were its only 2 stops!) Our hotel had an indoor pool which we enjoyed in the evenings. Melissa made some great progress with her swimming confidence. She worked her way up to doggy paddling across the width of the pool. (she does have a slight floatation device built-in to her swimsuit) Here she is leaping into the pool... countless times! The night-time view of the Space Needle from our hotel window... Our hotel room. We loved our hotel - Hyatt Place - it was only 2 months old and had great design/function. Would highly recommend it. It was in a perfect location for being a tourist, just 2 blocks from the Space Needle. The most memorable happening of our trip was at a kitchen store we went to in Pike's Place -Sur La Table. We had a great time looking through all their ingenious gadgets.
I had been looking at this tool I had never seen before, it is designed to cut the kernels off of a corn cob, a "Corn Zipper"...
I moved along to some other gadget and was showing it to Ken, and right beside me Melissa suddenly starts wailing in panic. We noticed she was bleeding profusely from her finger tip. Ken immediately took to tending to her as I picked up the corn zipper on the floor, finding a decent sized slice of her fingertip in it. All she says she did was take the cap off of it, and as she did this it sliced her finger tip.
The staff immediately were abuzz around us, and pretty much right off the bat they were on me to fill out an accident report. We tried to get the bleeding to stop, but it just wasn't happening. After a lot of discussion on how to proceed, they decided to call an ambulance and see if they could tend to her on the spot.
So the ambulance came, sirens blazing! The medics were wonderful, and bandaged Melissa up and gave us a supply pack. Then they gave Melissa a mini-tour of the ambulance...
Seeing we were there, and Melissa was taken care of, we walked around Pike's Market for awhile. There were lots of fresh fish stands, and when someone would purchase one, they would start throwing them around! Later that afternoon, we met up with the McMillans, who were just starting their holidays in Seattle. We walked around the Olympic Sculpture Park and saw many different interpretations of "art"... Melissa was very diligent in keeping her hand at her heart, she even slept this way (with her new "Hello Kitty" stuffy)... Didn't go up it this visit, but took a pic of Melissa with the Space Needle...
About a week ago, we went for a mini-adventure to the Cascade Falls Park just past Mission.
After a 2 minute hike we were at the lookout point and enjoyed the view of the Cascade waterfall...
We walked on a little further and found this area where you could walk on the rocks. Melissa surprised us with her quick rock hopping skills. At this point in our visit, the clouds opened up and in an aggressive manner, dropping the largest raindrops. We were all pretty soaked by the time we got back to our vehicle.
On our way down, this is the walkway built to the falls...
Yesterday we had a family day at the waterslides. This was Melissa's second time there... and she has worked her way from being too afraid to go down the children's slides, to going down the big ones all by herself!
This summer Melissa has done several week long sports; soccer, swimming and t-ball. I'm pretty sure she would tell you soccer camp was her favorite. While I didn't get any pics of her at soccer camp, here are a few I took at t-ball, and a video of her in swimming lessons.
Mid summer marks the Abbotsford Agrifair, and the anticipation was high as we had watched them set up for it for days.
In the Kid Zone, which one would you trust more?
A visit with "Tork" the turtle, who was rather quick, and liked painted toenails (like mine!)
Melissa spotted Hawkey a mile away, and didn't skip a beat to go and sit next to him for her picture...
We checked out the new Safari Zone which had a great play area for kids...
We had to search all over for the baby chicks as the Safari Zone had been built where they had been the past few years. But we were able to find them, and Melissa relived her memories of wiggling her finger like a worm for them to peck...
Playing mini-golf...
So if you know Melissa at all, up to this point she has been too scared to ride carnival rides. Every year we have tried to coax her to brave it, but each year unsuccessful. This year Melissa saw this large apparatus and said she wanted to go on it. To our dismay, she didn't have any hesitations (even with this burly man guarding the gate!)...
she pushed her way through the punching bag section... crossed the moving bridge, climbed rope webs...
and came down the longest slide in the end...
all with a huge smile on her face :)
and she wanted to do it again!!!
Feeling the momentum of braveness, we got her on some of the other rides, starting with a dragon...
next she was giggling on the fish...
then piloting the helicopter.
We returned to the Kids Zone to watch "The Flying Fools" hi-diving act. Pictured here is a guy diving from 80' high into a 10' deep pool...
Melissa enjoyed going on this large inflatable slide, countless number of times. It is so nice to enjoy her enjoying the fun things for children! A very successful trip to the fair indeed.
