For postcard perfect views, we headed to Alki Beach. Yes, that really is Seattle back there. While talking to someone, a Seattle native, about their hometown, they simply said that Seattle sparkles. From these pictures anyone can see that yes, Seattle sparkles. We really loved visiting the area and hopefully we will be chaning our WV for WA in the next few years. Or less.
Steller's jay
We thought we would drive as far as we could up Mount Rainier and then hike around. We were so unprepared! It snows all year round up there (it had snowed the day before...). We dressed as warmly as we could (I pretty much wore all the clothes I had packed), but hiking required snow shoes. The road driving up was lined on both sides by super huge snow drifts. We enjoyed the visitor's center at the top as well as the amazing views. Someday we will go back and make it to the top! All 14,411 feet of it.
We found this snow covered trailed and hiked on a couple of feet of snow in some places.
And we found the bridge!
It crossed over this neat waterfall. Our favorite hike we were able to do in all the snow at Mount Rainier
Located in Longmire was a short trail through the mountain plain. The area has mineral hot springs and great views. Longmire settled the area and turned the mineral water into a resort. Now the deer enjoy the baths that remain. 
We walked the short Twin Firs Trail in Mount Rainer. The trail is through an old growth forest with gigantic fir trees covered in moss.
Baby salmon aka my future meals.
They had an entire section where you could touch everything. We had a great time petting anemones, starfish, sea urchans, sea cucumbers, and other strange creations. Here is Dj petting some starfish.
Me and some anemones. They kind of pulled on your finger when you touched them.
I just think this is really pretty. Coral?
Standing in front of the main aquarium. 
Jellyfish! These guys just floated around and around all day.
The North Pacific Giant Octopus is the world's largest species of octopus and is only found in, you guessed it, the North Pacific. The Seattle aquarium had one on display, Olive Oyl. We saw her in the morning moving around for a minute before she settled into to the corner to sleep for the rest of the day (they are nocturnal). Later, we came back for Olive Oyl to wake up and get fed. 
They fed her some squid, but her favorite food is clams. She enjoyed playing with the employee who fed her, and tried to pull her down into the tank by grabbing onto the long stick used and not letting go. The worker had to keep spinning the stick or Olive Oyl would have taken her down--really strong! They have an arm span of 14-30 feet, and can fit though a hole the size of their beak. Olive Oyl gets to go back into the wild this year to lay her 100,000 eggs--on average only two of them will survive to adulthood. Oh, and they also change color according to their mood. The top pictures must be "sleepy" and the bottoms "hungry"?
We headed to North Bend for a hike on the Little Si Trail. It was raining and muddy, but it just added to the walk. We wanted to do a geocache here and spent forever looking for the cache. Dj finally found it hiding under some moss and blending right in. It was a really pretty trail, and we were surprisingly not the only ones to be hiking in the rain.
We started talking to some locals for suggestions on where to visit. The Ballard Dam came up, so we headed over there. We watched a ship enter the lock and the water rise and fall to let the boat pass. The dam was designed to let the migrating salmon pass without dying. The white tubes in the picture is for the young salmon to make their way back to the ocean, which happens around the end of May. Along the side of the dam they have a ladder to help the adult salmon reach their breeding ground in the fall. A beautiful little park surrounds the dam.
We love our chocolate, so when I found out about a local chocolate company, I signed us up. Theo chocolates buyes their beans and turns them into chocolate, something that very few companies do anymore. It is 100% fair trade and organic. Their bars are 45-91% cocoa--very rich chocolate. Dark chocolate is usually only 40% cocoa. And it tastes a little bit like chalk. For $4 a bar? We ate a lot of free samples. We are standing next to bags of cocoa mulch, for those gardeners who what their garden to smell like chocolate when it rains. This is actually a really good picture to see what the average neighborhoods are like in Seattle--neat, clean, nicely paved, very pleasant, all the nice things a person would like in an area...
Theo chocolates is located in Fremont, home of the troll. He is kind of a cute guy with an appetite for VW bugs and a hubcab for an eye. Fremont was a cute little Seattle neighborhood, with tons of interesting stores and a nice park along the water.
My old roommate Julie and her family live near Seattle and we were able to stop by and visit. Julie just had twins a week before, and looked amazing! She was nice enough to feed us dinner while we caught up on life. Her family was so wonderful and sweet. Brooke was super friendly and gave us a tour of all her friend's houses in the neighborhood. Josh gave us big smiles; his temper tantrums were the cutest, as they consisted of him lying on the floor until he got over whatever was bugging him. The twins, Zack and Luke, were so tiny, with long, skinny fingers. They woke up a little bit for us, and were the cutest little cuddlers. It was so cute to see them cuddle together as they shared the same baby swing. We had so much fun, we came back the next evening, and what a memorable time. We went to dinner at a place called Sushi Town and got their all you can eat special. It was beyond belief. We said "AMAZING" and least every three seconds. HMMMMM......sushi.....
Of course it wouldn't have been a true sight seeing visit if we didn't stop at the Space Needle. We bought our tickets and walked into a normal elevator. We were the last ones in so we had to stand right by the elevator doors. As we started moving upwards, it got kind of scary--520 feet up in 43 seconds! We enjoyed the view from the top as long as we could, which was harder than it sounds due to the wind. 
We were able to visit Pike Place Market not once, but twice. The first time was a weekday and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We ate all the free samples we could find and bought some amazing baklava (second only to Turkey). While there, I ate some of the best fruit I have ever tasted-fresh, juicy, sweet, delicious. 
We didn't get to see anyone throwing fish, but we did find some octopus for sale.
Vashon was such a fun island to visit. It has about 10,000 people and is 13 miles long by 8 miles wide. It is filled with farms, orchards, and Seattle commuters. The people there take great pride in what they do; the island is well taken care of and the resturants are unbeatable. We spent as much time there as we could manage, and still were unable to see everything. Some things we were able to visit, in between stuffing our faces, walking along the many beaches or parks... 
...Point Robinson Lighthouse...
...and the Historical Museum. Dj was drawn to this dental drill..
