A Very Tacoy Play Date

Today we met up with Gabby and Derek and their kids at PlayDate SEA in Seattle. It was sort of like a big McDonald's play place with a bar attached. I think the concept was nice but we were sort of meh about the execution. The staff was kind of rough around the edges. I think one of them lightly accused of us not having paid to get in.

Afterwards we headed a few doors down and had some tacos at Flair Taco Taqueria.

We found the maracas.

Swimming and Escaping

Today Ern and Lydia did a swimming lesson at Bellevue Family YMCA. We weren't really enthused about this program. The pool was too cold, the teachers weren't very good, and the teacher kept changing so they never developed any sort of relationship with the kids. I think it ended up being more of a lifeguard that was closer to you, as they didn't have much of a standard program or any sort of game plan it seemed.

Ern has fun at them though so definitely not a total loss.

Later that night we got Ern a sitter and did an escape room with our friends Sumit and Shubhra. 

I think this was my first time doing an escape room with this Locurio company. We chose The Storykeeper one this time. Man, I can't recommend this one enough. It an introduction by a live actor which is very rare and also really makes the whole thing feel much more immersive. There was some other smaller actor interactions as time went on as well. Another amazingly done thing here was the hint mechanism. Often in these rooms you can press button or have some other way of asking the staff for hints. In this one there was a fancy Kindle e-reader type of book that would "turn pages" and give you hints but in a storybook flavor. So it felt very organic and in line with the story theme. I don't recall ever really even having to ask like maybe they were watching so closely they sort of knew when you were stuck without having to signal them. It was very cool and I can't wait to try their other stuff.

This was just the waiting room. I kept it classy and didn't take any pics of the actual adventure.

Tot Lot Park

If I asked you to guess how many playgrounds are near our house you would say the wrong answer because there are infinity playgrounds. The limit does not exist.

Tot Lot Park is kind of cool because it has cars and other toys.

Somebody attacked my refrigerator magnets.

Voodoo and the Hands On Children's Museum

We had one last day of Portland and then we needed to head back to home base.

The Airbnb had some very cool artwork on the walls.

Voodoo Doughnut is usually on my Portland todo list.

We crossed over into Vancouver, WA and visited Vancouver Mall. Ernie is really fun to shop for because he's growing so fast that no item of clothing is ever that big of a commitment, so we can get silly stuff on occasion. It's also usually pretty cheap and has fun designs.. what more could you ask for? Also once you start licking the clothes I think you are obligated to buy them so that simplifies the decision making process.

There was a little mall playground we needed to scope out.

On the drive home we made a quick detour in Olympia, WA to the Hands On Children's Museum. We put our hands, feet, and probably tongues on all kinds of things there.

This was a pretty cool set of pipes with some air pressure in them. You could stick a scarf in one of the holes and watch it zip around the tubes and then get launched out somewhere.

There was a giant Lite-Brite.

There was a boat.

We figured out how to time the drives during nap time so that we had a very happy Ernie Babe.