Going to Seattle, Hooray!

Malia, Kai, and the Zamboni, October, 2005, in CA






Thursday the 13th of April, 2006, we leave for Seattle to visit "the kids" and grandbabies until Tuesday the 18th. I am getting so excited! I last saw the kids in mid October- Malia was not yet walking or speaking much. Now she runs around and the other day (she is 17 months) she said "Dat boy all done wing!" when the kid on the next swing slid down and ran off. She has this Oh! So! Cute! little raspy voice to go with her big blue eyes and goldy-red curly hair.

Gramma here has been on a mad shopping spree- a pirate mega blox set for Kai, a crown and pink feather boa and magic wand for the dress-up box; lots of little plastic animals for Malia, bubbles, cute china plates-real ones, not doll sized- with loooong-eared bunnies that say "I'm all ears"; eggcups to match.....big velour daisies..plastic chicks that lay candy eggs...tiny stuffed bunnies two inches high...a little stuffed dog dressed in bunny ears and bunny feet and a cat with a ducky hat and ducky feet ....

Too much candy truth to tell, BUT! a dozen Kinder eggs for the deprived Americans! Jenn's favourite Laura Secord chocolate bars (6) and one of those huge decadent cream eggs with a "yolk" in the middle...peeps...chocolate rabbits and carrots...

Jenn asked me to get her some warm slippers and flannelette PJ bottoms for around the house; she is chilly and her feet are freezing in the Seattle rainy season after all those years in California. I gave her 1 pair of pj's at Christmas and she basically wears them all week, washes them and goes on wearing them. I went a bit overboard here- it was end of season clearance on this kind of this stuff so she should be cozy for years to come. I bought one pair of slippers and then another day I saw some I liked better so now she has two pair and, I think, 7 PJ bottoms, (heh!)

Mentioning the trip to various cello Moms produced a big bag of 18 month to 2-T sized hand-me-down-girl clothes for Malia that are gorgeous. And a 12-18 month bathing suit which was proving impossible to track down. This time we are staying at a hotel, 10 minutes from their house, near the Space Needle ,which Kai is longing to go to. We hope to do the harbour boat tour as well and the aquarium, and Pike's Market and the original Starbucks! We are booked at a hotel with an indoor pool so that is a fun way that we can spend some relaxed hanging out time with the kids, as we all like to swim. I am also doing the whole Easter bunny basket thing since we will be there on Easter Day. I have had such fun putting it together! One vital item in seventeen-month-old little girl Malia's basket is her very own Zamboni.....

One time last spring, when the kids were still in Davis (California), where they were for 5 and a half years, Jenn read Kai a book about a Zamboni and he got all obsessed for awhile and really wanted one. Try buying a matchbox Zamboni in the summer in California...or in Canada, it turned out, strangely. So I looked around for months it seemed and in the fall I finally found one at Zellers. This was sent in the mail and then when I was there a while later, Kai and I made a hockey game on the linoleum floor and "cleaned" the ice a lot. This was several months ago now. Well, even though the kids have a MILLION toys, a lot of them wooden, and Waldorf and all kinds of age appropriate stuff for both of them , Malia has decided emphatically that one toy that she REALLY NEEDS to play with is this $2.98 Zamboni (whenever Kai is playing with it, of course!)so all is sometimes Zamboni strife and tears and so Grandma must be a Grandma and get Malia her OWN Zamboni. Grandma, however, now can't remember where she ended up getting the vital item, having looked so many places at the time, but after devoting a ridiculous amount of time musing on this, I DID go to the right place and bought 3 (THREE) Zambonis, which were all they had left. Apparently, one never knows when one might need a Zamboni in this life !