Band-Aid Beach

Is Seattle just the best place in the entire world or what? Can you tell I just got back from a yummy Greek dinner and a (gasp) glass of wine?

At the very least it's a great time for Luke to be in Seattle because of his current fish obsession. Could he have thought that buying fish at the Pike Place market was as good as it got? Not after we spent half a day at Constellation Beach where the purple starfish are as big as dinner plates, the snails are bigger than grapefruit, and the crabs practically crawl up to you and ask to be cooked for dinner. At low tide, there's a long rocky stretch where you can walk out and see all of these creatures as close as you like, and/or slip on the rocks as appropriate...to the point where we had four out of five walking kids with bleeding injuries that required bandages. Joe renamed it "Band-Aid Beach." "It's like freakin' Normandy out here," he declared, surveying the casualties.

And where else but Seattle could it be not just bearable but actually pleasant to go out to dinner with eight adults and six small children? This Greek restaurant is the second place we've been where they have a special play area carved out for kids. By the end of our two-and-a-half-hour orgy of food, we had some kids busy in the play area and we had attracted some kids who weren't even our own to our table.

I'm just putting a few pictures out here to get the ball rolling. More to come as our adventures continue...