Yesterday we did our annual Ferguson family Christmas trip to Pike Place Market to obtain fish, crab, and sausages for our Christmas seafood dinner. This year, we took a bus from South Kirkland and met the Fergusons at the Sheraton, where we always see the truly astonishing gingerbread houses. This year, there was a Hogwarts castle with moving staircases and a Number 12 Grimmold Place that slid open and closed. Benji didn’t really appreciate it (how could he?), but he did like recognizing the candy.

Then we walked to Pike Place Market and looked at things. Here Benji and I had to take the obligatory picture.

That happened after we tried for a family selfie, with limited, though amusing, success.

Normally on this trip, we’re sneakily buying stocking stuffers for family while trying to act all innocent, but since this year we did it after Christmas, that duty was removed. Instead, this time, Benji determined that the chocolate pasta tasted like old socks. And, after extensive taste-testing, we did buy dried bananas (Benji’s selection), Beecher’s cheese curds (ditto), Beecher’s 4-year aged cheddar (my selection), and some bread (Ian’s selection, for dinner). Most of the time Benji just wanted to find somewhere to sit to eat his snack.

We found a spot.

Actually, we found two spots.

Before that, Benji and cousin Jane (visiting from Pennsylvania with my sister- and brother-in-law) did the obligatory Pike Place pig visit.

It didn’t take much more than about an hour for Benji to start vociferously insisting that he had had enough and was REALLY ready to go back home. Happily for us, on the walk back to Westlake tunnel to catch our bus, we went by the Macy’s Christmas display. They have a Christmas train track that they set up in a corner window every year, which Benji enjoyed last year but liked even more this year, even though a couple of the trains had, disappointingly, derailed.

One of the great things about taking a bus from Kirkland to Seattle is that many of the buses are articulated. All the 255 buses are, anyway, and that’s what we took. We sat in the articulation point both times, of course.

Benji actually had much more fun than this picture would lead you to believe. We played a game where we tried to find every letter of the alphabet in signs around us, starting while we waited for the bus and finishing on the bus. I think we didn’t find a Q, but otherwise succeeded. Good thing the bus has lots of signs with “Exit” in them.

Benji walked the entire time, with no complaining; all those times walking to and from Woodmoor pay off at last! I was proud.

We all had very good naps that afternoon; I could tell I’m not recovered from pneumonia yet because any day I do stuff, I’m utterly wiped out afterward. But I’m clearly improving, because I CAN do stuff now! Anyway, we all woke up just in time to go back over to the Ferguson’s (argh — ‘s? s’? Help!) to eat all that lovely seafood. Benji, naturally, turned his nose up at all of it, to which we all said, “Good! More crab and salmon for us!” He did not, however, turn his nose up at playing with cousin Jane, with whom he spent a long time playing some kind of marble rolling game and another balloon-throwing game. Both excellent preschool play activities.

Not surprisingly, we all slept very, very well that night, too.

Except that I keep waking up at like 4:00 am wondering about the outcome of that interview I did on Friday…