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Yeah, kids are fun, especially around large bodies of water, like lakes for instance. Mason Lake in particular. Hilary’s family has access to a cabin on Mason Lake and some of her fondest memories take place there. It was, therefore, a must for her to introduce Jack to the cabin on the lake.

     The history actually runs a little deeper. Hilary’s father has video evidence of Hilary, as a baby, playing on the shore by the cabin and putting rocks from the lake in her mouth. Fast forward a quarter of a century and you get this: 

That’s right. Jack playing on the same shore, and possible putting the same rocks in his mouth. Let me also draw your attention to the dark spots in the left-hand sky in the above picture. No, they aren’t UFOs. It’s just globs of lake mud Jack has pulled of the bottom and tried to throw out into the lake. You see, Jack likes to throw the rocks as well as taste them. But moving position takes a lot of work, so after you’ve thrown all the rocks that are right in front of you his opinion is keep on digging. Thus, we have and mud flung into the air. Notice that it doesn’t have much forward motion to it. In fact, for most of the day Jack had a huge drying blob of mud just above his forehead. He’s good at getting the dirt up but, not away.

     On the contrary, dirt and Jack usually stay quite close. Consider if you will, the aftermath of giving him a large piece of licorice.

We now have a fair guess of how Jack would look with a goatee. (Look, above his left eye. It’s the remnant of the lake mud he threw up there earlier. ) Before we move on to a more thorough discussion of candy on our trip, let me show you that Jack also went for his first boat ride. 

He described it as, “okay, but not something you’d want to do everyday.”

     Getting back to candy. There was a lot more candy being handed out than I would have expected. Jack tried marshmallows for the first time and instantly fell in lust with them.

 In this he was following in his cousin’s footsteps. Here we see Celia and Jack, who having found the marshmallow stash are now looking hopefully at those who give them out. Well, Jack is looking hopeful anyway. Celia is pictured riding the ring pop dragon. You can tell from the glazed look (get it?) in her eye that it’ll be a while before she needs another mallow.

     The best candy experience was without doubt the Lindor truffles in the car. One day we decided against all common sense to do some shopping at the mall. On the way we unexpectedly came into the possession of some Lindor truffles.

     Well, a wrapped piece of candy could make a fine distraction for a toddler confined to a car seat.  Unless your toddler goes all truffle vampire on you. It must have taken a fair amount of pressure to push his teeth through the wrapper, but I think Jack was willing to pay the price. He certainly didn’t want to give the thing up.

 With all that candy running around his bloodstream it’s no surprise Jack decided to take in some exercise at the mall. He decided that escalators are about the coolest thing there, but I wasn’t too keen on his climbing on them by himself. Thus it was that I escorted him onto the bottom of the down escalator in the hopes he would grow tired of its incessant backward motion. I was wrong. He took to it like a professional treadmiller (assuming there are such people) and with a determined look on his face walked on and on.

 That’s about it for the Seattle trip. Let’s end with a family pose to remind us that there are other people in the world than Jack. I see this picture as typifying the trip as a whole; the adults are seen as “normal” and the kids as “normal for children under the age of four.”