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After a few moments of swearing to the fact that we all wanted the adoption to happen, and that I could be a good father, the judge signed the official documentation, and as of about an hour ago, after almost 10 years of it being the case de facto, Amy is now my daughter de jure as well. I have a daughter! Yay! The day began with intense lego concentration:
Brandy played with Bananagrams:
Amy was more educational with the letter tiles:
Alex was still all about the Lego though:
Before leaving my office, we needed to take a mugshot:
Then we finally left the office and headed for the traditional trains. Alex saw the monorail:
But first we waited for the Seattle Streecar (previously known as the South Lake Union Trolley”):
Which was ridden with varying levels of interest:
We got off the train to look at a fountain:
If you look carefully, you’ll notice we left Alex’s backpack on the train. Brandy called to make sure they knew it wasn’t a bomb. Then we made sure to catch the same train to go back, and retrieved the bag from the driver.
Then it was time to eat:
And monorail:
And running with sister at Seattle Center:
And there is the Space Needle!:
(Picture by Amy) But eventually, kicking and screaming, it is time to start heading home:
One more monorail ride first of course:
And a trip to the bookstore:
Alex of course fell asleep on the car ride home. He almost made it. But not quite. Fell asleep and was sleep eating a rice crispy treat for awhile. Then I put together my post about the 5th:
Later, once everyone was up again, Alex watched a portal walkthrough video while I got ready for my day:
A couple hours later he was still watching it. He had switched to the iPad, and hadn’t watched straight through, instead watching and re-watching parts he really liked. I’m not sure he has made it all the way through, but I know he has watched the ending a few times, and many of the parts in between. :-) He studies it very intently.
Finally, we headed out to the Apple store, because Amy’s phone had recently been acting up… and as she was getting ready to go to the Apple store for her genius appointment, she dropped the phone magnificently, and smashed its front, back and sides as bad as any smashed iPhone I’ve ever seen in person. So any chance of getting it replaced under warrantee because it was just acting odd went out the window. :-) Anyway, on the way there, Alex fell asleep in the car…
And thus I spent the last couple hours of the 6th (and another hour or so of the 7th) sitting in the car with a sleeping Alex while Brandy and Amy took care of Amy’s phone and a few other things. Can’t say I was totally thrilled by this time in the car. But I did listen to a few podcasts and read a bit of my twitter and news feeds, so I guess that was OK. Anyway, thus ended our two days of holiday fun.
(Picture by Amy) As we usually do, we went to the Bellevue Family Fourth.
This time my mom joined us.
Alex was ready for fireworks.
If only they weren’t so loud!
Pretty though.
Then after the fireworks, while driving home, Amy saw a loose dog running in the road. A 30 minute pursuit followed, first in the car, then on foot, first on big roads with plenty of traffic, then onto a small residential street. Toward the end we were joined by the people in a second car. After much skittishness and running, the dog finally climbed into Amy’s car. It had no collar or tags. We ended up taking it to a 24 hour vet recommended by the people at the non-emergency police line. They confirmed it had no chip identifying it either. For now they are keeping it, and it will be on all the appropriate lists of missing pets in the morning if the owners call in for it. We’ll check in on her too to make sure her people find her. (Roscoe would NOT have been pleased if we had brought her home. :-) )
In the morning, I assembled the weekly podcast, sometimes with Alex’s help. After that, we went out for some late breakfast, then headed to my office. The first stop was the cafe area, where Amy and Alex immediately found Lego…
This was good, because the original plan to look down from the 9th and 11th floors at construction underway didn’t work out, because apparently the construction folks had the 5th off…
The Lego building lasted a long time…
As the 5th ended, Amy and Alex were still playing with Lego. The usual adventure of train riding was still yet to come. Before: After: This is Alex’s fifth haircut. (And my umpteenth.) Brandy says they took a lot off of him. I will take her word for it, cause it looks pretty much the same to me. But Alex likes it, and that is all that matters. :-) [tube]d6F2tPVO6X0[/tube] Showed him the controls a few seconds before starting this video. Had to convince him to try himself rather than just watching me. Then seconds later he finished his first level! So proud! :-)
We were at Paine Field Aviation Day. It was fun. Alex was not very impressed by the smaller planes (or the tortoises), even when they flew fast and low (well, not the tortoise). But in between the planes that were actually part of the air show, 747’s and 787’s were taking off, landing, and doing emergency stop tests and other things… and THAT had his full attention. It wasn’t too horribly crowded, which was great, and it wasn’t hot, also great. And the mix of planes, from the historic WWII aircraft and such, to the 787’s and Cessna’s in between was just fun. As was simply being able to stand right by the runway and watch as the big planes land and take off. You can’t really do that at commercial airports any more. I remember when I was a kid my parents taking me to the observation deck at Raleigh/Durham airport in North Carolina, where we could just sit and watch the planes. You can’t really do that any more because of all the security theater, which is a shame. (All pics taken by my mom.) Edited 09:26 UTC to add photo attribution. |
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