We had some friends in town the last few days, which means we spent the past two nights showing them the greatness that Seattle has to offer.

“Oh look at the Space Needle! Cool, isn’t it?”

“Seattle has a huge Old Navy. Yippee!”

“And a Gap!”

You know the usual touristy thing that people do while visiting Seattle. Seattle’s cool like that.

(I also said things to them like; “don’t use the bathroom at our new house. We don’t have doors on them.”)

Last night we decided to take them to one of our favorite places in Seattle. The thing that’s so great about this little local is the fact that is feels very non-Seattle.

Right, we took them to do a very un-Seattleish thing while visiting Seattle. We’re lame. The thing is, Alki Beach is awesome. It’s like a little piece of Venice, California right in the heart of Seattle. The 26 days of the year where there is sunshine in Seattle, Alki Beach is the perfect place to spend them at.

The evening started out great. First, I took Babboo to get his hair trimmed for today’s Picture Day at school. (My request to the stylist was merely “don’t make him look like a nerd!”)

Babboo was none too thrilled about the hair cut. Anytime I asked him to smile he simply said “cheese” and ignored my request to actually smile.

Thankfully the kid did not end up looking like a nerd. (Speaking of nerds, what exactly does a nerd look like?)

And then the night really took off. We packed up our gear and headed off to the beach!

The Beach!

I love the beach.

I love the sun.

I love our friends.

And I mostly love eating pizza, in the sun, at the beach with our friends.

That is until a big black billow of smoke is noticed in the background.

Nothing puts an end to a nice evening at the beach then watching someone’s house burn to the ground.

Thankfully, reports show, that nobody was injured. Our friend was up close and personal to the situation, even before the authorities arrived to put out the fire (we had parked next to where the house was burning and he wanted to get his car out of the way). He witnessed someone opening up the front door to the house and a cat escaping. That poor cat must have been scared out of his mind.

We stayed at our place in the sand and watched while every.single.person at the beach moved towards the fire! Didn’t their mom’s teach them to head away from danger? Apparently not.

Minutes later the fire trucks arrived. And then more and more followed. Babboo and our friend’s kids got excited about the commotion. They sat on the beach, facing the street, and waved at the passing firemen. (Thankfully the firemen[women] didn’t slow down to wave back.)

The house fire was quickly put out and we enjoyed the rest of our time together at the beach, ignoring our hacking and whizzing from all the smoke in the air.

Eventually Babboo managed to swallow every piece of sand on the entire beach and it was decided that we might as well call it a night.

From here on our, if anyone comes to visit us in Seattle I can assure you the following things will happen:

• My son will not look like a nerd.
• You will get a bladder infection from lack of restroom use.
• My child will throw exuberant amounts of sand on your child.
• He’ll probably throw some at you too.
• You will eat pizza.
• You might even eat tacos.
• I won’t pay attention to you like I should since I’ll be too busy taking self-portraits with the kid:

• We’ll show you a good time.
• That I can guarantee.