outings // skagit valley tulip festival

This past weekend, we jaunted up to the Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon. It was a perfect Saturday morning filled with sunshine, finally warm weather - so we packed a picnic and thought we'd make a morning of it. It turns out that hundreds if not thousands of other people had the same splendid idea that we did, so we ended up making a full day of it, since it took us 45 minutes to drive north and 2.5 hours to get off the freeway exit and to the fields. I can say I truly enjoyed every minute of it - even being stuck in traffic, we had the windows rolled down and good times going with the kids (they amazingly did awesome considering we moved 2 feet an hour for a few hours...no dvds required! We are old fashioned and sing songs and play "look out the window and what do you see" type of games (cars, colors, letters, animals, etc.) The landscape was of course gorgeous, and because we got back so late we even went out to dinner. The only bummer was that Jacob had a TON of work to do - both for his day job and some freelance, and the traffic sure backed him up in that regard. But what can you do? We just enjoyed the moments - it's a rare treat to spend an entire Saturday just kickin' it together in fields of flowers. 

even though we've seen the tulip fields multiple times, the first step out into the millions of tulips always makes me pause - they are sooooo striking!

Aspen was quite interested in the flowers - we had to be careful she didn't pick any to take home with us :)

Sawyer, on the other hand, wasn't as intrigued with the flowers...but he did bring a car along to maneuver through the dirt and fields, which made his day.

We brought some bubbles along and found a big field to blow them in. Lately, the kids insist on blowing the bubbles themselves, which generally results in wet, sticky kids and spilled bubbles, but they really enjoy doing it all themselves (even if there are a lack of bubbles floating in the air).

There are so many different colors, too! I think my favorite are almost always the classic red tulips, though.

Photography 101 - courtesy of Daddy (who brought his own camera along for fun.) I think we may have some budding photographer's in this family!

I guess this is what I look like to my clients (not to mention my own kids who get chased by me and my huge camera probably more than they'd like) :)

Overall, a FABULOUS and BEAUTIFUL day in the fields! If you haven't been yet - there's still a few days left. I think the festival ends the end of this month. If you can go on a weekday, though, I'd advise it :) Oh, and also a good idea to bring some rainboots - we wore sandels because of the sunshine but ended up with pretty muddy feet (not to mention Sawyer's graceful slide through the muddy water which resulted in a very muddy rear end :)