I apparently cannot keep a schedule.  As you all know, I had intended to post about this on Thursday, but Thursday came and went.  As did Friday.  And Saturday.  And, well you get the picture.  By the time I am done writing and posting this, it will be early Monday morning.  I hope two out of three posts on time is good enough for now.

Quack!

Under the watchful gaze of Captain Stew, we prepare for spashdown

The Space Needle from the Duck

Last weekend, Amber invited her family and me to Ride the Ducks, followed by a BBQ at her place.  For those of you that don’t know and can’t be bothered to click a link, the Ducks are amphibious vehicles that tour around the streets of Seattle and eventually make their way into Lake Union.  Our craft was under the watchful command of the wacky Captain Stew, who kept us all entertained with his tales of Seattle, sound effects and crazy dancing.

We got to the tour a little late, but fortunately Amber had pre-purchased tickets for everyone so we all had seats.  And quackers.  (Amber splurged on the deluxe package.) 

Touring around Seattle in a big amphibious assault vehicle (converted for touring, of course), was a lot of fun, but the real fun was when we got to Lake Union and headed into the water.  It was a pretty warm day, and we were all looking forward to hitting the lake.  We got some pretty spectacular views from Lake Union, but we were also mindful of potential pirate attack (it was Seafair, after all).  We had water cannons armed, just in case, but we didn’t run into any marauding vessels, so they went unused, much to the dismay of the kids arming them.  I can understand their frustration.  A weapon unused is a useless weapon after all.  We tooled around Lake Union for a while, then exited via the boat ramp and headed back to the Ride the Ducks facility over by the EMP, still quacking merrily along the way.

According to Amber, if I want to post pictures of her family, I’d have to blur out their faces (maybe they are all in some sort of witness protection program that I don’t know about), so you’ll have to take it from me, everyone had fun riding the Duck.  And Amber’s nephews Luca and Mateo were incredibly cute with their quackers.

After our tour, we all headed back to Amber’s for the BBQ.  I manned her portable Coleman BBQ and prepared shrimp satay as well as a variety of Kabobs that she had marinated chicken and beef for.  I always have fun cooking, but it was especially fun getting stuff ready with Amber.  Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of the spread, but Amber went all out and everyone had a blast. 

It’s past my bedtime, so this will have to do for now.  Apparently, according to my comments, I wasn’t as complimentary to myself as I should have been in my last post, so maybe I’ll do a rewrite later this week.  I also have more pictures now from the California trip, so I’ll try to post those and wrap up tales from San Diego.