Max's ridiculously fun day

Working in baseball, I spend quite a bit of time away from home during the summer. But during the holidays I'm fortunate enough to have this week between Christmas and New Year's Day off.  

With Elisa feeling a little under the weather and Sam literally attached to her much of the time, Max and I headed down to Seattle Center to have a daddy and dude day.   

Here's video of Max ice skating on his own with help of a little walker. I'll always remember Max squealing, "I'm skating, daddy! I'm skating!"

We ran into Max's preschool teacher Sophie on the rink, which delighted him to no end.

Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger

Max playing conductor for the Center House train

This is what put the ridiculous in a ridiculously fun day. I made a call to a friend at KOMO TV to get us up to see their chopper. 

 If you look real close, you can see Max's mind being blown.

We got a special tour from Gary the helicopter pilot, who Max peppered with questions like, "What does this do?" and "What about this thing?" and...

The grin just wouldn't go away.

Feeding our little woodland friend

Squirrel!

More boy joy

Oh hai, spider. 

And yes, it's a Christmas miracle. We found a tiny pile of snow (or ice dump) to make a tiny snowman.