The Tulip Festival

My parents came to visit last weekend so we could make our annual excursion to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Did you know that most of the country's tulips are grown an hour north of Seattle? The display gardens are such a spectacular sight! Adam is onto the part-time portion of his paternity leave, so he worked early Friday morning and we left when he got home at 11:00. We stopped for lunch at Cafe Rio on the way and arrived mid-afternoon. Usually Seattle in the spring is quite gray and rainy, but we lucked out with sunny, seventy degree weather. The fields weren't even muddy, which is highly unusual.

I had a little trouble narrowing down my favorites. It's just so incredibly beautiful, despite the crowds! On the way home, we stopped at Snow Goose Produce, the cutest farm stand in existence, for huge scoops of ice cream in homemade waffle cones.



On Saturday, we had a picnic lunch on the grounds of a local winery, Chateau Ste. Michelle. That evening, my parents generously watched all three of our daughters - the first time we went out completely by ourselves since Betsy arrived. We had dinner at Dough Zone, a new dumpling place in town we'd heard was exactly like Din Tai Fung, except cheaper and less crowded. Even though they didn't have our favorite garlic green beans, it definitely lived up to the hype. We spent the rest of our date leisurely browsing at Half Price Books because we had a gift card we'd been meaning to spend for nearly a year. It was such a delightful night!