Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

My brother, Scott, flew back to China on the Thursday before Palm Sunday. My dad arrived on Friday! Remember how I told you my parents are moving to Eastern Washington? Well, my dad started work there at the end of March. He'll go back to Shanghai for Scott's graduation and then they'll all become Washington residents. 

The plan was for Dad and Adam to work on assembling the free play structure we'd gotten from one of Adam's coworkers. He and Scott had hauled it into our backyard a couple weeks ago, when we were almost late for the ballet. Well, my Dad and Adam looked it over on Friday evening. They decided it was really just too big for our very sloped backyard. Plus, fixing it up and assembling it would have been quite an intense undertaking. Since we're renting and might only be here for two more years (we hope to stay longer but it's really up to our landlords) it didn't seem worth all the work. We rented a truck for $100 to bring it home and were able to sell it on Craig's List for $125 - we gave the extra $25 to Scott for his trouble. 

Since we no longer had a big project on the agenda, we spent Saturday at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Did you know that almost all of America's tulips are grown an hour north of Seattle? Usually the festival runs the whole month of April, but we've had such an early spring that the tulips are blooming a bit early this year.

There are two big tulip gardens - Roozengaarde and Tulip Town. We've only been to Tulip Town in the past, so this year we decided to try Roozengaarde first. They have a much bigger display garden then Tulip Town.









Maggie sniffing the flowers! Could she be any cuter?



Their fields near the display garden were just daffodils though. Pretty, but nowhere near as gorgeous as the rainbow of colors at Tulip Town. We had lunch at the Skagit River Brewery in Mount Vernon and then hit up the other farm.

The tulip fields are very, very muddy. Claire's favorite part of the day was splashing in muddy puddles, "just like Peppa Pig." We saw many children and even quite a few adults slip in the mud that day. We were definitely lucky to avoid a similar fate.  Although I don't think you can beat the amazing spectrum of colors in the Tulip Town fields, Roozengaarde's larger display garden means that kids can run free without requiring an outfit change. Pros and cons.

A trip to the tulip festival wouldn't be complete without a stop at Snow Goose Produce for huge scoops of ice cream in homemade waffle cones. Since it was such a rare warm and sunny day, the line for ice cream was forty-five minutes long, but there was plenty of space for children to roam so it didn't keep us down!

After Mass and lunch on Sunday, my dad and I took Claire to see her first move in theaters - Cinderella, of course.



She got a little worried when Cinderella had to leave the ball and got locked in the attic by her stepmother, but overall she did really well. Unsurprisingly, her favorite part was the Frozen short at the beginning. I absolutely loved it and can't wait for the live-action Beauty and the Beast next. And my dad said it was "better than he expected."