Cool Pool

Today we visited the North Shore Lagoon Swimming Pool at the McMenamins Anderson School in Bothell, WA.

The McMenamins passport has stamps for visiting places but it also has stamps you can get for performing various actions or buying specific products. Once you done a few you get a gift card prize and if you play your cards right you can come out ahead.

I like the pool here a lot. A little bit of theming goes a long way in transforming a pretty standard indoor pool into a fun and unique place to hang out. I especially like the several waterfall elements that they have going.

Ernie is actually a pretty good tooth brusher.

Birthday Stuff

Ern did some walking practice with his little walker toy thing then we headed out for adventures.

We visited Kelsey Creek Farm for quite the event: sheep shearing! The Farm is owned by the city of Bellevue I think just for goofs. I'm a bit confused about what exactly they're doing here, but it's a fun place so whatever.

Later we went to Dolar Shop with our friends Kuoling and Jason to eat some fancy hot pot for my birthday.

The desserts here really stood apart. They gave you ice cream but also:

An entire dessert bar full of all sorts of exotic stuff.

It was a lot of fun.

Puts some pants on, geoducks!

We hadn't eaten quite enough desserts yet apparently because then we went home and plowed into this princess torte from Hoffman’s in Redmond.

"This is our most popular cake! Sponge cake spread with raspberry jam, filled with whipped cream and Bavarian cream, iced with whipped cream, and covered with marzipan."

Back in college a lot of people called me princess torte.

Taco Wednesday

Ern was being cutesie today.

Got a box full of good stuff in the mail from Grams.

Made a mess.

In the evening Lydia and I escaped and had dinner at Cantina Monarca in Bellevue.

We had a margarita flight.

The end.

Ern's Real Birthday

Ern had already done his big midwestern birthday bash but that happened a bit early. Now was his government birthday so we had a little celebration at home.

Nana's friends Carol and Bob gave Ern this wooden tractor. They always had the unique ability to give me gifts that weren't on my list that I still thought were cool. It was nice to see that they were still at it.

Ern had some other gifts to open.

He got this cool snail puzzle roller thing. This one has some staying power. He was just playing with it 11/16/25. Not bad at all.

We gathered round and looked at some of our photos from the day Ern was born.