Now that I've had a few good night's sleep, I can fill in some blanks about our memorial weekend. We had our initial get-together/ash scattering at the beach, but the real fun happened at the ball game. My grandma loved the Mariners, so my mom thought it would be a good idea to celebrate her birthday at Safeco field watching them play. It just so happened it was Kid's Day with free T-shirts and the opportunity to run around the bases AND they were playing....the Angels!
I left the three youngest at home with Mark so the three oldest and I could really enjoy ourselves and not worry about any details like bottles and diapers and temper tantrums. We took the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle and left the car at home so we wouldn't have to drive or park. But it wasn't just us. We traveled with my parents and my sister and her family for the day! While we were walking to the ferry, Ian spotted a car parked on the side of the road that wasn't very tall. Now, my kids like to find little cars and make fun of how small they are compared to our Big Van. So, he pointed to it and exclaimed, "Look, Mom, isn't that car pathetic?" I looked. I saw. I said, "Ian, that's a Corvette." Hahahaha! You should have seen the look on his face.
We Downens are on super money-saving mode, so we packed all the food we would need for the day. Lunch was a picnic on the ferry. I tell you, my kids and I were having so much fun; silliness was definitely our theme for the day.
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| "Bye-bye green hat!" |
Once, when Ian was a toddler, we took the ferry when we took Ami to summer camp. Ian pulled his binky out of his mouth and threw it overboard. He said, "Bye-bye blue binky!" as we all watched in shock as it landed in the water and slowly sank. Thank goodness I had a spare in the van. This ferry ride wasn't as surprising, but it was a lot of fun. Ian and I played War with a deck of cards I brought along. The first round was the traditional what-number-is-bigger. Round two was addition war with two cards. Round three was subtraction war. Round four was multiplication war. Ian won, not because he is better at math, but because he had better cards. Haha!
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| I made Shane stay close to the safety ring, just in case. |
Mark has a fear of
losing Shane at baseball games. That was the number one reason he didn't want to go or let Shane go and the number one reason he gave me strict instructions on not letting the kids out of my sight even for one second. We've sung Shane's song enough times that he is very embarrassed about the whole getting lost thing. So I had a little fun and had the kids pose like they were lost in the crowds on the streets of Seattle:
The game itself was not very fun for us. Sorry, but it's true. We don't spend much time following professional sports, so we ended up just getting hot and bored.
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| Watching the Reader Board |
Luckily, there were lots of people to talk to, including cute little cousins that fill the Daniel hole when he isn't with us. I brought my knitting and got several inches done on a pair of wool pants for Lucky. When the sun reached our seats, my kids and I took a walk around the stadium and looked at the outrageous prices. They know a hot dog and soda at Costco costs $1.50 and whole case of bottled water is $3.25 because I always tell them. When they saw that hot dogs were closer to $8 each and one bottle of water was $4.50, they were completely happy with filling their empty water bottles from lunch at the water fountain. (One of my favorite pranks was telling my kids Safeco field had 66 water fountains and they could refill their bottles as many times as they wanted. But there are NO bathrooms, so they are going to have to hold it for the whole game until we get back to the ferry. Yeah, that was a good one!)
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| Cousins |
The Mariners won, so the baseball fans in my family were quite happy. The forty-three members of our group said our goodbyes-some took longer than others-and the kids got ready to run around the bases. My kids and my sister's kids were not interested, but my cousin's kids were. One of them was brave enough to scatter another small bag of Grandma's ashes right on home plate. She truly carries Grandma's spirit in her heart.
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| Waiting in the Shade |
After that was the hot walk back to the ferry, a quick $5 Footlong at Subway, and the ride home. Evie took 100 pictures of blurry boats and seagull wings. I got another sunburn (ouch) and was completely exhausted by the time we got home.
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| Goodbye Seattle! |
We Downens are on super money-saving mode, so we packed all the food we would need for the day. Lunch was a picnic on the ferry. I tell you, my kids and I were having so much fun; silliness was definitely our theme for the day. 
The game itself was not very fun for us. Sorry, but it's true. We don't spend much time following professional sports, so we ended up just getting hot and bored. 