And you thought my other posts were long...hee hee

We finally made it to the beautiful tulip gardens in Woodburn. It was a perfect day and not too crowded. We just got our new camera and had fun experimenting (that's why we took so many pictures). Don't look at them if you don't want to, but the gardens were pretty amazing.

Hiding in the tulips.

I am kind of proud of this picture.

Where's JP?

There he is!


Hmm... could he get any closer to my face?



So serious. JP is proud of this picture. Totally candid.

Pretty?



The cheesy belly pic.




I have to start this part of the post by saying that JP usually isn't the best when it comes to surprises. He will either tell me all about it beforehand, let it slip somehow, or just come up with a pretty lame surprise (he knows it's true). Well, he really pulled through for my birthday this year. I still cannot believe it. He told me we were going to his friend's triathlon and would do something fun after. I'm not the smartest when it comes to directions, but as we were driving through the gorge I began to realize we weren't going to the triathlon. He finally pulled out my birthday present which was a city pass to explore 6 attractions in Seattle. He cut out pictures of the different places and glued them all over the card. He knows that I've really wanted to go to Seattle since we moved here and I was extremely excited. But wait...that's not even the best part. He also got us tickets to take a ferry to the San Juan Islands and go on a WHALE WATCHING CRUISE! I thought this just wasn't going to happen because it's really early in the season for whale watching. Anyway, I will let the pictures tell the rest:

Our first attraction was the Woodland Park Zoo. This was the grand opening of the penguin exhibit.



I know you've all been to a zoo before, but I just LOVE the monkeys and gorillas.



JP LOVES the bald eagles.


Elephant Bum!




We camped at a place called Deception Point. It was unbelievable.




We went to R.E.I in Seattle (their flagship store) before our camping trip . It is basically in a forest of trees with waterfalls and mountain biking trails to test their bikes. It's 3 stories high. I never knew a store could be so cool. I realized that I should've let JP talk me into buying a comfy air mattress while we were there cause my hips were pretty sore the next day.


Near the campsite.






This is why I'm huge. JP thought it was so funny that I was eating Cheetos for some reason.

On the ferry

Hike on the Island


Waiting for Whales



Can you see the seals and sea lions?

WAHOO!!! I was REALLY skeptical and thought there was no way we would get to see any whales, but the whales and the weather pulled through just for my birthday. This was only the second sighting of the season. There were 21-23 whales in the J-pod. One of the whales was a stand in for Free Willy. There was also a baby and a grandpa whale in the group. The tour was really interesting and I got to cross one off of the bucket list.


A map of the San Juan Islands. We saw the whales near Orcas Island (I think).

So maybe we didn't take this shot, but still pretty cool?












We didn't get much sleep this weekend because we barely missed the last ferry back to Seattle until 8:00pm (we still had to take the ferry and drive home), so we got home from work on Monday and crashed at 5:00. I was sad to come back to reality, but since we didn't have time to see the sights in Seattle we get to go this weekend to finish up our tour! TO BE CONTINUED...