Out And About

We had some really cold days late last week and into the weekend. We had clear skies with temperatures dropping in the 20's at night and highs in the mid 30's. Clearly a nice dose of Winter. Embracing the change.

We hung out in the backyard to take in some much needed vitamin D.

We stayed home all day Saturday except during the evening to go to McDonald's for some chocolate covered cones. Not sure why Jacob and the kids crave ice cream when its so cold out.
Jacob mowed and raked up leaves. I'm wondering when will the grass stop growing. When will it become dormant. It's still green and we've had cold weather for several weeks now. I just remember our grass becoming dormant in TX by mid Fall.

We drove back to Snoqualmie on Sunday. It was a clear day. This time we knew that we would be able to see the Falls ... unlike last time when there was thick fog and we couldn't see a thing.
The drive into Snoqualmie is pretty, lots and lots of pine trees.

We got to the Falls but part of the viewing area was chained up. I wasn't able to get a better picture than this one. The Falls cascades 268 feet over granite cliffs. As we were looking at the Falls Riley managed to step in a muddy puddle {this kid}. He got his right shoe all dirty. Definitely our queue to leave.

After seeing the Falls we drove to their little historic district. Came across a cute little church.

We visited the Northwest Railway Museum.

... and walked by the few stores they had.

One of the stores was a toy store and they had a bubble machine blowing bubbles outside ... well, Riley got upset because he wanted to bring the bubbles in the car with him. Oh boy.

We noticed that most of the cars were just passing through this little town and I wondered where everyone was driving to so I told Jacob to follow the cars. We drove about ten to fifteen minutes and then came across North Bend. Their downtown was a bit bigger and had more restaurants and shops than Snoqualmie historic district. We saw several restaurants that caught our eye. Mental note for our next visit. As we were driving out of North Bend we saw some outlet stores and we remembered that we had read somewhere about these North Bend outlets. They had all the kids stores I shop at and even several that me and Jacob like and guess what else they had ... OMG, a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Store. Ohmygosh! Awesome because the closest one that we were aware of is near downtown Seattle.
And yes, Jacob got me my fave .... a caramel apple. Boy, was it ever delicious!

As we were driving out of the outlets parking lot we noticed that there's a Nintendo facility. I did a little research and found out that North Bend is the main North America production facility and it has approximately 2,000 to 5,000 employees. Who knew?!