Foto Phriday - 9/21/12

This is my eighty-second Foto Phriday post. The pictures today are from Remlinger Farms and Juliana's first day of preschool. Full set with all 77 photos can be viewed here.

I bought a Groupon a little while ago for two tickets to Remlinger Farms in Carnation, WA. A few folks had recommended that I take Julie there someday and so I jumped on the chance to get in for half the price.

Remlinger Farms is like an amusement park for kids under 5 or 6. All of the rides and attractions that they have are geared towards the little ones. Here is Julie in front of the miniature train.

Had I known that Remlinger Farms was more for little kids, I would have taken Julie sooner. It's possible that she will be too tall for some of the rides in the next year or so.

I imagine that Knott's Berry Farm started out a little like this. A couple easy rides, and then expanded like crazy. It was pretty busy at Remlinger Farms. They have to be making some decent money from the guests, as well as the produce that they sell in the store.

I know they want to keep a classic feel to the park, but I think they should add a couple adult rides like a drop tower or roller coaster or log flume. They could really become a big competition for the tired-looking Wild Waves and Enchanted Village.

They had pony rides there and it was actually Julie's first time riding one. She enjoyed it, especially because we've been watching a lot of My Little Pony on TV.

Remlinger Farms could also improve by adding more animals. The only things that had were some various birds, pigs, and alpacas. Pretty sure Old McDonald had a few more animals in his song.

Overall, it was a great time! If you have 3-4 year olds in the greater Seattle area, this is a MUST family event. My only other complaint besides the lack of expansion is the attitude of the ride operators. Not bad attitudes, but not very friendly. Looked depressed to be there. And trust me, I know it's not always fun. I used to be a ride operator at Wild Waves/Enchanted Village. But people are paying good money to have a good experience and you are a part of that. Smile every once in a while. That being said, the train conductors had the right spirit.

We put Julie in Bethany's wedding dress the other day and took a few pictures. Bethany saw this idea on Pinterest and is hoping that Juliana will use this photo when she gets married one day.

We hit a big milestone for Juliana last week. Last week was her first day of preschool. Until now, we've never left her with people not in our family, so this was sort of a big deal.

The rest of these preschool pictures were taken by Bethany with our LX3. Here is Julie with her teacher, Mrs. Tolonen. Bethany and I got to meet her at parents' night and I was overwhelmed with how nice and friendly she is. Happy to have her teaching my daughter.

Juliana is hardly ever the shy one, so she was making friends right away.

Here is her class. One of the reasons we chose this place is the small class sizes. Others Bethany looked at sometimes had 20-30 students per class, which is just insane.

Parents stayed with their kids on the first day. Since I had a big project at work, I could not attend, but Bethany got some good pics. The activity was making fruit salad and then they got to eat it as a snack afterwards.

Back to my work though... I had the craziest and busiest week ever since I started at Microsoft nearly five years ago. We have a major project going on in my building that I am helping on. Plus we had a big event and a super important system go down in the same week. I worked almost 60 hours. It was insane and I hope to never repeat it. But here's a picture of me putting a special PCI Express card in a server. This is how I usually roll when I know that I'm going to have to work in there for a long period of time.

Coral recently had her four month doctor's appointment and we were given the go ahead to introduce solid foods to her. Her first experience with rice cereal was not very successful, as you can see. Follow-up attempts with sweet potatoes and bananas have been great though. Guess she just needs some flavor.

Here's a photo idea that Bethany got from a friend. Coral is talking more and more, which is really a bunch of loud intakes of air. Super cute. Can't wait for more of that personality to shine through. To see more pictures of her, Julie's preschool and Remlinger Farms, view the full set.