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Anchors away. Watch out Victoria, here we come! (L and H)

Having felt a bit house-bound for the last two summers, I decided that  now that the girls are a bit older and more portable we are going to get out this year and enjoy all the awesome things about living in the beautiful PNW.  We kicked off the summer season with a trip to Victoria, BC and by the end of the trip, my ambitions for a summer full of adventure quickly dissipated (or at least reset to day-trips). 

Lydia loves Elmo!

On Saturday, we hopped aboard the Victoria Clipper (a high speed passenger ferry) for a 2-1/2 hour trip to Victoria.  The suprise bonus is that we discovered that the girls are finally old enough to be zombified by DVDs!  Yes, I feel a bit guilty about being so happy about this, but in my defense we don’t watch TV at home and only use DVDs for emergencies (aka long trips where we are trying to keep fellow passengers from throttling us or consuming enormous amounts of alcohol).  I don’t know who came up with Elmo (he wasn’t hanging around Sesame Street when I was a kid), but whoever it was is a genius.  That little red muppet is the closest thing to baby crack that I’ve ever seen.  Whenever Elmo went off screen, Hadley would worriedly scream “Elmo?!, Elmo?!” until he came back on (so much for giving our fellow passengers a peaceful trip). 

Allan and the girls in front of Parliment

Allan and Lydia playing on a big anchor

We arrived into Victoria that evening, and after going through customs where the only thing we had to declare was two screaming toddlers who were not amused by the queing process, got settled in our hotel.  The next morning, we went for a nice run on a bike path along the river and then quickly got ready for a tour of Buchart Gardens.  Victoria is known for these gardens (as well as for high tea at the Empress hotel, which we were not foolish enough to even consider), so I thought we should check them out while we were there.  We boarded the bus, were told that it would be a 4 hour tour, and quickly got off the bus.  So we spent the rest of the morning walking around Victoria. 

Pier fish taco stand

We had lunch at a great fish taco stand on a pier and watched a bike race through town (the race was 75 laps around a few blocks — why anyone would want to do that is beyond me).  Lydia and Hadley had a great time climbing on benches and chasing each other around fire-hydrants.  That is until Lydia fell into one.  After lots of blood (a mouth cut — she’s fine, which I verified with our awesome pediatric dentist this morning), we retired to the hotel for a long nap and some pool time.  The girls were initially very suspicious of the pool, but had a blast once we coaxed them in.  There was an enormous first step which was perfect for them to hang out and splash.  Since I usually try to cram too much into every day, we went back to the pool the next morning which was great until we left and had to rush to pack and make our boat.  The girls were not impressed that their pool time was cut short and made sure we knew that as we were packing.  We made the boat, stuck Elmo in the DVD players, got out stickers and arrived relatively unscathed into Seattle. Both girls were asleep within 10 seconds of being put in their stroller for a walk to our car.

Lydia, me, and Hadley eating lunch on the pier

All in all, a fun weekend but a good reality check on my ambitious summer schedule.