Travel Bug

If you follow me on Instagram, you saw that we were in Seattle this last weekend. The winter blues hit our house hard, and we needed a little time away, as well as a change in scenery.

One of my dearest friends recently got engaged! And it was such good timing that we were in the Emerald City for her engagement party. In addition to her party, we took long family walks, explored the city, went to the Seattle Aquarium, ate good food, and made a stop at Ikea.

I wish I could have taken better pictures with the "real" camera, but I had wiggly Everett in the Ergo carrier for much of the time, and my photos were less than perfect with a toddler trying to grab at the camera.

One of my favorite activities from our trip was exploring the Seattle Public Library. This is probably the most ambient building I have ever been in, and I highly recommend putting this on your Seattle Buck List. Again, the photos aren't great (darn you little boy!), but I wanted to share a few shots I took on the way up escalators/stairs.

This is called the Red Room, for obvious reasons.

This was a great photo-op, but the fussy toddler wouldn't let me reduce the aperture on the camera without a noisy fight, and to be honest, I was getting a little vertigo from being so high up!

We hardly took any photos at the aquarium because there were thousands of little people running around, and I ended up holding Ever on my shoulders for most of the time there. Jeff isn't the manual-mode camera pro in our family, and I am OCD about pictures (no flash please!), so we got a couple crummy photos and videos with our iPhones and called that good. He seemed to enjoy watching the seals and otters best.

The kid has always been pretty fascinated by starfish too.

Back at home, Spring is pretending to come. Yesterday was almost 60 degrees, so I took advantage of the nice weather and air dried some linens in the sunshine. Spring cleaning for us always involves washing the down jackets and comforters, touching up paint on the baseboards, airing out and deep cleaning the house, and planning our vegetable garden.

The indoor plants are waking from their winter dormancy.

What should I use these for?

New growth on the lemon tree after winter caused it to lose most of its leaves.

I wasn't completely sure if this amaryllis would come back, but I left it on our kitchen table for the last year just in case. I think my mother-in-law thought I was crazy. But I was so excited when I woke up one morning to this!

Then this a few days later...

Which became this...

And finally this...No filter!

Even our poinsettia is sprouting! Next year, I am going to get a white one and see how long I can keep it in alive. The white will be more neutral for when I want variety.

For now, we are enjoying the rain, the cuddles on the couch, the longer days, and the occasional visits from beautiful friends.