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.

 Tonight after Ernie went to sleep I looked at pictures of him. I do this a lot.

I was stressed by the play place thing today. I don't really know how to deal with other kids messing with Ernie and I'm annoyed that I essentially have to become this other kid's parent while they terrorize strangers. Kids that are way older than they should be playing in baby spaces is a common and very annoying occurrence.

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

We found the maracas.

Furious Xbox Playing

In addition to squeezing in a lot of live experiences before the baby is born, I've also been trying to play every video game ever made.

Bethesda has an exciting new game being released soon, and while I waited I played one of their classic titles I missed the first time around: Dishonored.

I finished that game and moved on to Ghostwire: Tokyo. It's kind of like Japanese Ghostbusters. One thing that makes the game super fun is that it is entirely in Japanese which has been a good language lesson.

It's also set in what seems to be a pretty good model of the city so it's been fun to spot different landmarks that I recognize.

We can never finish an entire pizza box full of tacos but that doesn't mean that we won't stop trying.

Ajwa Daters and Italian Haters

Back home from our epic tour of the Middle East we settled in to eat the 50 pounds of dates we lugged back and open our mail.

Ernie the Fetus Troll likes to hang out on one side of Lydia's belly to the point that she looks all lopsided.

I bought Lydia the official 2022 White House Christmas ornament to commemorate our tour of the West Wing.

Lydia opened all of the baby shower gifts for Ernie.

One of the few gifts I got was a traffic ticket from Pisa, Italy crying about me driving down the wrong street without a permit. Maybe they should get that tower straightened out before they go around judging other people.

We were hungry so we did what anyone would do: buy a pizza box full of tacos.

West Seattle and Mt. Rainier's Return

Poor poor West Seattle. It's on a little peninsula right across from big kid Seattle but the bridge has been out since we got here.

We finally made the journey for a very important reason: a city wide garage sale.

We stopped at a well regarded Mexican food truck called Taqueria la Fondita in White Center, WA on the way back.

Most of the parts of the Seattle area that I commonly traverse have a dearth of Mexican food so this was nice.

I think we must be crazy people because after some garage sales and a nice Mexican lunch we said to ourselves "let's drive to Mt. Rainier and go hiking". Why the heck not.

We have been here once before but there was so much snow on the mountain that we couldn't really get around in order to do anything because all of the roads were blocked.

The break down of dead trees in Washington's parks fascinates me.

This fungus looked like a delicious dinner roll.