discovery park

i've had a little cabin fever this week and know that the beautiful weather can only hold up so long, so this morning, i loaded everyone up in the car and we all drove out to ballard for a visit to discovery park. the trip started well when we got to see the drawbridge go up on the ballard bridge. the girls thought it was pretty amazing and loved watching the huge boat go past. 

i've only been to discovery park once (that i remember) and we got lost several times when i was there, so i really didn't have an accurate idea of what the park was like. i went when i was a teenager and wasn't paying attention to whether it was easy to hike around with kids, so i didn't really know what we were in for as far as that goes, either.  i put jonathan in the wrap, randy had diane in the backpack, and madeleine walked with us.

diane would not look at the camera for randy. she was too busy taking in the scenery.

finally got her.

we took randy's phone with us to take pictures and got to try out the new panorama feature on the camera. i have to admit, i'm pretty jealous of this feature. beautiful park.  

about a third of a mile into it, madeleine started complaining about being tired, so when we came up to a huge sandy area, randy wisely suggested that we maybe just call it good there and let the girls play for a long time. he's good about having realistic expectations of what family outings consist of at this stage in our life.

i really wanted to make it down to the waterfront, so he suggested that i just take jonathan and go on by myself while he stayed with the girls. i took him up on the offer and was glad he had made that call because the trail quickly turned into steeper climbs to get down to the water that would have been pretty miserable with madeleine. she's not the biggest trooper when it comes to hiking, especially when the other kids are getting rides.

jonathan slept through the trip down to the water. this is us down on the south beach. i didn't spend a ton of time there because i wanted to get back to randy (and was super sweaty at this point, being unable to remove the layers that i had so wisely put on in the morning), but someday i want to go back, maybe just randy and me, and see the lighthouse and more of the north beach. maybe the trail down from the north parking lot is more kid friendly. i could probably find this information on the internet...

anyway, more beach pictures:

i got back up to randy and we let the girls play a little bit longer before heading back to the car.

 

 

we told madeleine smile and she quickly struck some very dramatically serious poses for us.

she finally cracked though, and randy was quick with the camera.

we were all starving, so we decided to try out some sandwiches at paseo's. we drove just down the road and ate it at the shilshore bay marina. the pulled pork was amazing, and the sandwich rolls were especially good.

it was a beautiful morning and afternoon, spent with the people i love.