we started a tradition

i love planning trips. i have a whole arsenal of places throughout the world, near and far, that i would love to explore, and my urge to investigate unfamiliar places is unrelentless. i wanted to take adah on a short end-of-the-school-year trip to celebrate the beginning of  our two months of fun together. she talks a lot about how lucky she is to have at least one teacher mom because the summer time is so dear to us. 

i planned a lil' road trip and every stop was a surprise. first stop: TREEHOUSE. 

nestled at the edge of the rainier national forest lives a place called wellspring, where anne and i celebrated our anniversary recently. they have lots of different sleeping options, and one is a treehouse. kids are technically not allowed, but we got special permission from the owner to have a slumber party that night. she was THRILLED.

 view from the treehouse. gnome town. 

 crawling into bed, eager for books and the daily journal she committedly keeps: 

we also had a cedar hot tub to ourselves where we relaxed and swam, and adah asked some hilariously specific and out of the blue questions about how babies are made.

the next morning we had breakfast in our treehouse bed, and continued on our road trip. we took some back roads to tacoma, ate lunch at a divey and delicious fish and chip shop, and then headed to seattle to explore the butterfly house at the pacific science center.
it was a bit crowded, but pretty magical, i must say, with hundreds of butterflies fluttering about.

we ended up at liz and seamus' house, where there were cupcakes and a counter full of art supplies waiting for us. oh, and a trampoline, which is at the top of adah's list of coolest things:

so much fun is exhausting. 

 what the fuck is that? a gum wall, of course. 

this wacky gum sculpture instigated a whole other layer of awe. i think we stayed for a full hour. she investigated every nook and cranny and took a few dozen photographs of the parts she liked the most. 

the equation TREEHOUSE + LIZANDSEAMUS + TRAMPOLINE + GUM WALL (oh, and SHARKS at the tacoma zoo) =

pretty simple and extraordinary fun. can't wait to plan next summer's mystery adventure.