Seattle-at Sanja and Darko's

We had a full family reunion at Sanja and Darko's place: baka, deda, deko, Nikolas and I arrived all at once to stay with Sanja, Darko and Mia.
Nikolas and Mia clicked immediately. He acted like an older brother--took toys from her, but also gave her hugs and kisses and pushed her as she rode her little truck. Mia's shyness to males disappeared when it came to Nikolas. She watched him and followed him around the house. Of course, Nikolas was interested in her just the same and the two could often be seen playing on the stairs or jumping on the couch and babbling in their own special language that no one else understood but them, which actually sounded like real sentences spoken fast.
On the second day already, when I put Nikolas down to sleep, his last word was 'Mia' before he closed his eyes, and in the morning when he woke up he stood in the crib, looked at me and pointed at the door again saying 'Mia'. Hilarious! He called her every single morning from then on, even walked out of the room by himself once and went into Mia's room before I even realized it.

Sunday, 8/10/2008, our first morning in Seattle:
Sanja with the kids:
After breakfast, Sanja and I took the kids for a walk to the park and the playground--we kept dragging the kids away from the water as the swings at the playground apparently were not as interesting as the sand, water and the ducks:
Deda, playing with Nikolas:
Sanja, reading to the kids:
A walk to downtown Kirkland:
The boys...:
And the girls:
At the marina downtown, the main attraction was water and the ducks:
Acting nice and cute on the back porch (when not throwing toys down into blackberry bushes and pebbles all over the lawn (Nikolas), and not picking leaves and going up and down the steps, giving us scares(Mia)):
Daddy has already gotten Nikolas hooked on guitar. At home we have to hide it in the closet from him, but here he discovered a kid guitar, perfect!

He already has audience!
Baka, reading to Mia:
Milk always tastes better from someone else's bottle. Nikolas wouldn't even look at his straw bottle anymore, and Mia is not opposed to swapping either:
Happy grandparents:
Happier with the grandchildren:
Nikolas and mommy....
Every morning deko went out for his early walk and returned with a bowl of freshly picked blackberries for the great-grandchildren. Once Nikolas discovered where the berries came from, he started asking to come along:

"Take me to the blackberries down there..."
Let's go pick berries!
"Yum!"
Deko, having a blast with his great-grandchildren:
We forgot our cameras when we went to the Children's Museum playground. We could spend a whole days there surrounded with kids and lots of toys to everyone's liking. The interesting thing was that Mia grabbed a doll and stayed close to Sanja, watching little toy fish in an aquarium and sometimes pushing a toy lawnmower. Nikolas, on the other hand, spent the first 15min pushing the lawnmower all around the play zone, observing kids' and parents' faces and trying to get their attention before moving on. Once he had the whole place scanned, he found the train table with trains and cars where he spent most of the time. Dolls and cars, boys and girls, it's interesting how they picked their preferred toys so early without adult intervention.

We couldn't wait for daddy to arrive to Seattle from a conference. The first day we all took a walk to the marina downtown:
Poor little ducks, it took them a long time to realize that Nikolas was throwing pebbles, not crumbs....
Love and hugs:

And a few more photos from the backyard:
The first of celebrations of deka's birthday, a few days early:
On the day of our flight back, stealing a few more moments with deka: