CARS

I took the picture of the cars this morning because there is usually no cars parked on this street. There is a little trail that goes over to the school and people like to park here as opposed to dealing with the school parking lot. You could tell how many people were rushing to get to school on time.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL/FIRST GRADE

Yep, it's true folks, they broke up the Barkley Wood Gang. They all have different teachers. When I asked Mimi how she liked school. "Mom, it was great!!!" she cried. "We have 3 recesses! Not just one like we did in kindergarten," she added. However Keri said that Blake did not fare to well unfortunately. He was suffering from separation anxiety. In kindergarten it was not so bad because he had Mimi and Zoe by his side. This year it's a whole new ball game for everyone.

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

Almost forgot to mention that these are a couple of the sites we saw while on the tour. There was the view of downtown, the house that was used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. It is located next to the Gas Works Park. Then there was the building used for Grey's Anatomy and can't forget to mention the coffeeshop where Frazier would hang out with his friends. The coffeshop is actually Elliott's Bay Bookstore and Coffeshop in old Seattle known as Pioneer Square.

VERY FIRST GYMNASTIC TEAM PRACTICE

Mimi is an Airplane right along with Elsie.

TODAI

I love this place. As soon as we said our good-byes to Ben and his family at the Westlake shopping center, Mimi and I took a short quick walk over to the Pacific Place shopping mall and hit up Todai. It's a all you can eat buffet of sushi, seafood, salad, Japanese, Chinese, Korean cuisine. Then there is oodles of desert and not to mention the Sake. If we had more time, I would have been sucking down the Sake right along with my sushi. However we only had 30 minutes to eat and make a run for the train in order to get back into town for her first team gymnastic practice of the season. Mimi really loves her maguro sushi. She likes the ebi too.

RIDE THE DUCK

We made into downtown Seattle with 10 minutes to spare. Just enough time to hightail it over to the Duck. http://www.ridetheducksofseattle.com We heard every song from every tv show there ever was. Of course the driver had to play the theme song from Here Come The Brides for those of us who remember. Member?????

PANCAKE BREAKFAST

Yesterday morning Halliwell and her family hosted a pancake breakfast for the school kids in our neighborhood. Mimi who had been goofing around in the morning when she should have been getting ready was late. The breakfast started at 9:00 in the morning and by the time Mimi was arrived it was already 9:20 and so she had just a few minutes to eat and say hello to her friends. The night before and earlier in the morning I had discussed our plans for the day and I guess when you have a 6 year old, all of your plans gets shot to h--- in a handbasket at times. Yesterday morning was that time. I had planned to leave the house at 9:30 in order to make into downtown Seattle before noon and some time to spare. We needed to meet up with Ben and his family to "Ride the Ducks". When 9:45 rolled around I told Mimi that it was definitely time to go. She had a complete total meltdown. She thought that she was missing out on some fun while her friends were upstairs playing in Halliwell's room. She rrreeeaaallly hates to miss out on any fun. Can you blame the girl? I had to literally carry her out to car screaming !@#$% all the way. Her meltdown lasted for 45 minutes. By the time we left the house it was 10:30. By the time we made it onto the train she calmed down and we had a long, long discussion about what happened yesterday morning. By the time we made it into downtown Seattle it was 11;45 and just enough time to jam it over to catch the duck.