Afternoon Of Fun!

About a two months ago I purchased tickets to go see the Imagination Movers. The boys loved watching them on The Disney channel back when we had expanded cable. They really are fun to watch...even for the parents. Anyways I got to thinking how we could make going into the city a whole afternoon of fun. So we started off our trip by....

Taking the Link Lightrail! Owen loves the train! He wants to see it every time we go to church and MOPS. It ended up costing $10 for our round trip tickets (you don't have to pay for kids until they are 6 years old) so I feel like it wasn't so bad since we would have spent more than that for parking in Seattle and then the gas it would have taken to get up there.

Jack got to ride in the backpack the whole trip so he could see out the windows.

This little guy was in heaven. He loved it when another train would pass us. He also loved the Beacon Hill Tunnel. It was really fun, but there are a ton of stops between Tukwila and Westlake. The night before I had a terrible dream that Owen ran out at one of the stops and then the doors shut before we could get him back on the train. I remember yelling like a crazy person trying to get the train to stop so we wouldn't leave my baby. Not a good dream to have the night before! Thankfully he never made a run for the door! :)

The Imagination Movers were playing at The Moore Theater. Our seats were in the second to last row up in the balcony, but they were still good seats. We could see everything and the music and talking was loud enough you could hear it over all the little kids.

At first they played Disney Channel commercials on the big screen before the show started. I'm not sure what Owen and Jack thought we were doing at this point.

Before the show we stopped and got some hot chocolate so Mama was nice and shared it with Jack. He got a little choked up and spit a bunch of it out all over my white shirt. In the picture below he looks like a vampire with chocolate running down his face.

I think Owen was starting to realize that we were going to have a bunch of fun! The Imagination Movers is a group of 4 guys that help people solve problems by using their imagination. Their motto is "Reach high, Think big, Work hard, Have fun"!

During the show they sang this song called "Playing Catch" and the lower seats got beach balls thrown at them. Since they couldn't throw them up in the balcony they made up for by sending Rich (my favorite Imagination Mover) up to shake hands. Owen and I both got to shake his hand. I was pretty excited....I mean Owen was really excited! ;)

The show was an hour and a half, but I think Jack would have been happier if it was just an hour! He was pretty much done by this point. Thankfully it was noisy so it didn't bother anyone else that he was freaking out.

After the show were going to eat at Johnny Rockets at Pacific Place and see the snow, but the show got out at the same time it was snowing in Pacific Place so we missed it. We ended up eating at MCD's and we got to see a bunch of horse drawn carriages go by...the boys liked seeing them! Then if was off to the carousel!

Since Jack wasn't too fond of the carousel at Zoolights and Mama gets dizzy going 'round and 'round, Daddy just took Owen while Mama and Jack watched. Do you think he's just a little bit happy?

We wanted to go see the gingerbread houses, but after the carousel it was already after 7 and the train takes over a half an hour to get to Tukwila and then we still needed to drive home. So we decided to save that one for next year.

Owen got to ride in the backpack on the way home and Jack got to sit in the stroller.

Since it was dark out on our way home Owen could see his reflection in the window. He had so much fun making silly faces at himself.

After a while Jack wasn't happy being in the stroller so I took him out, but then he wanted in the backpack. He likes just hanging out in there.

This was about the end of the happy times....one stop before Tukwila the train stopped for 20 minutes because of traffic. I had brought snacks so we kept the boys happy for a while with those, but it was also past their bedtime and it had been a very overwhelmingly busy day so they were pretty spent....so was Mama!

It was a great family day and I'm sure we are going to have lots of happy memories taking our kids into the "big city" at Christmastime every year.