From Nintendo | Mommy and Me Monday | 352nd ed

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I mentioned it last week, but this week/weekend, my oldest two girls and I were invited to Redmond, Washington (outside of Seattle) to visit the Nintendo Headquarters of America. Which was a pretty big deal because they don’t do tours like this. And, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in like 99% of the building. But, we were there, and got to learn all about the 3DS (the girls are experts already…well, they think they are!), the Nintendo brand and meet some experts.

Our trip started in Atlanta with a 5+ hour flight to Seattle. Headphones, 3DS, iPads and screens on the back of the seats in front of us kept us entertained.

After a 45 minute Lyft ride to our hotel, we were ready for a hotel window us-ie.

Then, one more hotel mirror us-ie. Then dinner. Most importantly dinner…at 5:00pm local time because we were hun-gry! (Can we talk about their cuteness and adorable poses? Is that still okay to say with 10 and 8 year olds?)

After dinner, we wanted to walk around for a bit. Thankfully, our hotel was right by and outdoor mall, so, we got to do some window shopping and went into a See’s Candies store. Growing up, we used to do this all the time, but this was a first for the girls. They are so excited they offered us samples right when we walked in the door.

It was lights out at 7:00pm and by 7:02pm there was gentle snoring.

Of course, that also meant we were up bright and early at 3:30am with nothing to do except walk around. We killed a lot of time, and then joined our Nintendo group at 7:45 to head to the Headquarters.

It was a pretty warm welcome.

Which required more posing and more us-ies.

After we were given our super cool lanyards (Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser), we got to spend a little time with Mario and Luigi. The girls only really had experience with Mario Kart before our trip, but I think they are now BFFs.

We had some nice weather while at the HQ, and even got to check out their green roof with an amazing view of the mountains. What? Time for more pics with my girls.

With different mountain views.

We got sneak peaks of quite a few games coming out soon, too, like Super Mario Maker (coming December 2, but pre-selling now) and Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon (November 18th, but pre-selling now).

My girls have a wish list a mile long for their new Nintendo 3DSXLs and Christmas, now, too. With no gaming experience, I couldn’t believe how quickly they picked the games up and how much they loved them.

The next morning we were up ready to go nice and early. We had more time to slowly wake up and walked around some more. Then we had a tour of the Space Needle.

The weather was crazy! It was windy, colder and rainy.

Check out our video from the top of the Space Needle. Word was that winds were at least 55mph up there. And, given that it moved 1inch for every 10mph, it was swaying 5 inches in each direction. So, yeah, we ran around, enjoyed the wind and then I needed to get on solid ground.

We had some more time to explore the city before catching our flight home. We stopped along side this building when I realized we could see the Space Needle in the reflection of the pink wall. And, just as I was taking a picture of the girls, a nice lady walked by and offered to snap a group shot!

It was definitely a fun, whirlwind trip. I really like Seattle. Everything was biodegradable and every person we ran into or talked to was super friendly. I liked it until I learned that houses start at $500K and go up. And that the weather is like our last day for about 2/3rds of the year.

So, I’ll just have to plan to travel back for a longer visit and make sure to head to Pike Place and see the throwing of the fish.

Big thanks to Nintendo for hosting the three of us for three days and bringing us to a city and state that we hadn’t yet visited.

What were you up to this week?

All this to say, JUST GET IN THE PICTURE WITH YOUR KIDS! Who cares what you look like? Who cares how you appear? Who cares what you are wearing? JUST DO IT!

Since the button code stopped working many moons ago, I took it out. But, if you are adding your link to my link list, please, as a courtesy, add a link back to my site so people can explain and link up themselves if they’d like. After all, that’s the point of the link up!

It’s time again for Mommy and Me Monday. Pop out from behind that camera and capture yourself in action with your kids. Check out the inaugural Mommy and Me Monday for more information.  Need another reason to participate in Mommy and Me Monday? Read my post about why I blog with words from a friend’s husband.