Overnight in Seattle

Dad and mom decided it would be nice to pack up the kids and spend a night in Seattle over the weekend. We got a great little room at the Edgewater Hotel that Harrison LOVED. There was a little black teddy bear on the bed when we arrived and a fireplace in the room and a big window overlooking the city.

On the drive into Seattle, I needed to call the hotel prior to our arrival. Since my car has bluetooth, he can hear the phone ringing and asks:

H: mommy who are you talking to?
Me: I'm calling the hotel.
H: that's silly, hotels cant talk!

Downstairs there is a lovely sitting room adjacent to the lobby which juts out over Elliot Bay and had board games to play. Harrison even picked out the photo of the Beatles on the wall (in the fall we stumbled upon the Beatles debuted on the Ed Sullivan show and now Harrison loves "She loves you, YAY, YAY, YAY!"). In the days and weeks after we left he would sigh and tell me "I just miss the hotel." The photo below is of their reflection in the window while playing chess with city lights and a ferry boat through the window in the darkness.

We did manage to get Harrison out of the hotel and enjoyed the evening in downtown Seattle. Harrison and dad rode the carousel in Westlake Center. We went to a steakhouse for a "fancy dinner" and Harrison behaved marvelously, in part because we told him Santa's helpers are everywhere, watching everything, and reporting back to Santa. The Sheraton houses the annual gingerbread house competition and although the line was probably 90 a minute wait we were able to walk through the lobby and peek between people as they walked by which was good enough for us.

I made the mistake of telling Harrison that we probably visit Santa downtown and when we passed the Santa that sits in the window at Nordstroms, Harrison made us stand there and watch for awhile and then begged to go see Santa and then melted down into a bit of a crying fit when we told him we couldn't because we didn't have reservation (the line was hideously long and we were seeing Santa the next week at the mall). I felt really bad about that, if we go again next year I am going to try to make that happen.

On Sunday morning we checked out and went to the new Ferris Wheel and got high views of the Bay and Downtown. Unfortunetly the weather was dreary and rainy but we enjoyed ourselves despite the gray.