Kristine's big adventure

Thursday came and went and it seems like Kristine was only here for a minute. She was here for a little more than 2.5 days, but we did make the best of it. Our original plan was to pick her up from the airport and go kayaking on lake union, however the weather disagreed with our plan. So we dropped her stuff off at our place and went right to the Pike Place market for some lunch. It was a bit too chilly to be in a boat that afternoon. We spent some time meandering through the market and eventually got some lunch at a place that tony and i didn't even know existed-that market is HUGE! we find new stuff everytime we go.

So after lunch we walked around town and made a very neccessary pit stop at the chocolate box so Kristine could get her fix :)

She had never had gelato!!! So we got her to taste it and then to order the greatest hot ( or iced in her case) cocoa in the world- not that there was much arm twisting to get her to eat or drink some chocolate. I think sometimes, for being such a teeny thing, it leaks out of her pores :)

After all the window shopping we were in need of a rest. So we went back to our place to chill for a minute.

I can't believe that i am writing this, but the poor girl has never been to a trader joe's either. Well i guess they are not that big in Tulsa ( where she has lived for awhile, up until the recent move to Vegas.) So i can't blame her for this.

We got some snacks and went home to get to bed early. We had a big adventure planned for the next day.

We were hoping to take her to the same island that we went to with val, but we missed the ferry. So we got some brunch and took the next ferry to orcas island ( still one of the san juans, just not the one we wanted to go to).

I am glad that we went to that one thought, because the weather was on our side and there are over 30 miles of great hiking there.

We drove all over the island which was not hard to do considering it is like 28 miles total.

Once we got to the top of Mount Constitution, where Kristine was happy to see some green trees and snow, we decided to start our hike.

I thought it would be a good idea to hike to the lake, not having any idea where the lake was, other than by the signs. I know now that was a bad idea. Well, not the worst, but not leg friendly for a girl who was just murdered by the trainer the day before ( me).

We ended up descending about 2/3 of the mountain ( about 1700 feet in about 2miles). That was all fine and dandy, but what goes down, must come up ( at least when the car is parked at the top it does.) so after a grueling climb we decided to drive down the mountain and look for more trails on the island.

We found a nice trail that led to the beach. Unfortunatley we didn't get to see any whale, eagles, alpacas or camels, but we had a really great time on our hike. We did however get to the beach and see a lot of little dead crabs and some crazy looking seaweed that had washed ashore.

When we got back to the ferry tony and kristine spent some quality time discussing the draft ( football i think, who knows, my mind starts to shut down when too much of that talk goes on).

I'm sure tony was loving every minute of football talk, since we don't live near anthony anymore ( his football/drinking/video game/make fun of the wives buddy from san fran).

We got home and i took her for the infamous belltown pizza bean dip that people have become addicted to shortly after tasting it. She too agreed that it has addicting qualities to it.

Saturday Tony had some hockey to watch so Kristine and i went shopping again. I actually walked into the gap, and looked around even! We spent a good part of the afternoon wandering aimlessly through downtown until we got too hungry.

Once our bellies were crying, we went back to our place to get tony and had some lunch at Bamboo Garden ( one of my favorite vegetarian places here).

After lunch we went to Ballard, another neighborhood of seattle and did some shopping at archie mcphees ( it is a crazy store with lots of unneccessary crap, but it is amazing http://www.mcphee.com/

Once we left the store it was almost time for Kristine to catch a plane home. So we grabbed her luggage from the apartment and made one last run to the Chocolate box to get snacks and then made a mad rush to the airport.

I think that Kristine was the shortest, fastest, most adventureous visitor yet!

i don't believe you...

The very last and most exciting things i did last month, other than all the visitors ( and learning how to make a hand bound journal) was our trip to the san juan islands. They are a group of islands about 2 hours north of seattle.

The night before we went, we had out friend Val over for dinner and perhaps too much wine tasting. We did however, still get up at 6am, pick her up and get our butts on the road by 8, which was just enough time because the ferry left the dock at exactly 9:30. The ride was beautiful, a onehour ferry ride across Puget sound and the straits of san juan de fuca.

Once we got off the ferry it was 11, so we got a little lunch and then drove around the island. We visited the main island and it is only 56 miles total, so it wasn't a tough drive. Our first stop was Lime Kiln State park. We hike down a little trail that lead to the shores of san juan de fuca and found an empty picnic table. There we sat for a mere 5 minutes before we saw the Orca whales start to make their prescence known to us. They did not breach, but they did some low dives and 'spy hopping" where they push their bodies out of the water for anywhere as long as 15-30 seconds. It was so breath taking. We spent a good part of the early afternoon laying on the picnic tables watching the whale action.

Once we were sure that they had gone further up the strait we went on a little hike around the park and then got back into the car to she what else the island had in store for us.

We were driving along when we found an alpaca farm. Our friend Valerie, even though she was born and raised in northern michigan, where there are a lot of farms, had no idea what they were. Also, she kept forgetting the names and calling them "Galacas" :)

so we pulled onto the farmer's driveway and there was a little gift shop, where the ower nearly crapped his pants when we told him that Val had never heard of alpaca. He was so nice and told us to drive into the farm a little further and try to pet them. So Tony, Val and i spent about 30 minutes trying to get them to come closer to the fence so we could do just that. Just as we were about to give up hope, the farmer let his herding dog out to help us. It was so cool!!! All the animals heads rose as the dog approached and then began to run in the direction that the dog was running, but still NOWHERE near the fence.

We played with the dog for a bit and then totally gave up hope on petting them.

We got back in the car and were on the search for the lavendar farm when Tony spotted some Bald eagles just resting in the trees. Not one or two, but at least 4 that we could see and 4 more flying so high in the sky that we couldn't get photos of them!!!

As I turned the car around so that we could park and watch the eagles for a minute, a little red fox was watching us from across the street. it ran across the road and there was another fox, a gray one i think and the two of them began to chase and play with each other! It was so cool, two foxes on the ground only about 50 feet from us and tons of eagles in the trees above. I was in awe.

Once we got our fill of that. Again we followed that road that would lead us to the farm. Suddenly i saw a giant blonde animal in a pastuer, i asked tony and val if they thought it was camel, they said i was being silly and it was probably a horse...

right across the street from the "camel" was a winery, so we alldecided it would be a good idea to go have a little taste. Once we were there, the pourer confirmed, that the animal was in fact a camel. Mona was her name, she was adopted by the farmer from a petting zoo that was closing.

We never did make it to the lavendar farm. They closed at 5 and we were no where near when the clock struck 5.

So we headed back to the dock to get the ferry. We thought that we arrived just on time, but we were an hour and half early, so the 3 of us got some tea and/or coffee and sat on the docks watching the boats. It was such an relaxing and awesome experience to see all that wildlife ( minus the camel, who was far from wild) in one day, on one very small island!

Thursday kristine comes to visit for a short little trip, and the weather is getting more hike friendly so there will be many more posts to come and i will try my hardest to get them done in a timely manner; )

all the festivals...

The weekend after mark and sarah left there was the veg-fest of washington. Tony and went with our good friend val. There were a ton of vendors and people will all kinds of new and some newish kinds of foods and teas. We went there with on empty and came home with full tummies and new ideas for dinners to come.
This weekend was the green festival. Guess where tony was??? Yup, doing homework, so i went with some friends from work. It was at the Washington conference center which is enormous. Good thing though, because there were over 300 different boothes there. This time it was all green/earth friendly vendors. I got a lot of great ideas for myself and for my parents ( even though Tony and i don't have a house yet :) )
It is so amazing to live in the top green city in the US and then to be able to see how much they are working on changing what people consider normal. For example, they are planning on banning the styrofoam that meat is sold on, stop allowing plastic bag use at grocery stores, increase composting stations throughout the city.

There were also some great exhibits on how the city and county are expanding the types of wastes that can be recycled. Even how the type of ashpault that the city uses is more earth friendly :)
It was inspiring. I really hope that one day MI can catch up with WA and the rest of the country in the greening of this country.
Anyway, it was really cool to hear what people had to say.
Don't worry about poor textbook tony though, inbetween the two festvals we went to the san juan islands and that is going to have to be a post of it's own, because it was beautiful and jaw dropping. i'll give you a sneak preview however. in one day we saw orca whales, bald eagles, alpacs, red fox, and a random camel.
that post will be coming soon. i have to get to bed.

march of the visitors...

As i said in the last post, exactly one day after scott and bridgette left, sarah and mark arrived.

Unfortunately, the next morning tony and i had to be at work at 7. So we got a quick dinner at belltown pizza and hit the sack.

While we were at work, mark and sarah explored the city alone, which is really easy to do. Well, part of it anyway, since we live 4 blocks from downtown.

Tony and i got some indian after work and got home to gorgeous flowers on the table, thanks to sarah and mark.

Once we were all home, Sarah, Mark and i went to lava lounge for a drinky poo while poor tony was at home being a good student. It was so nice to catch up live and be able to hang out with some of my favorite people in the world.

Friday morning Tony had to work, so after i dropped him off, i handed the keys over to mark so he could have an alone trip and sarah and i could have some good old fashion girl time.

We went to the gym and worked out like maniacs and then after getting showers, went for a massage!!!! LOVE IT! the place we went to was ok, not the greatest i have ever had, but def. not the worst and exactly what i needed. Afterwords, we got some dinner at In the Bowl, a really teeny vegetarian place that was on the way home.

It was getting a little chilly, so on our way home we stopped at the chocolate box to get some hot cocoa, really we didn't need an excuse to stop there :)

We went home and had some more girl time and then as mark got home, we decided that we were starving again-since we worked out like carzy and had only ate once that day-dumb!

The bean dip at belltown pizza was calling us so we went there to get some food to go.

Saturday was a gorgeous day and we drove to mt. rainer to get our fill of nature and hopefully hiking in. Alas, when we got there there was still about 6-10 feet of snow on most of the paths, so we just did some walking on the road. It was so breathtaking that i can not wait to go there when the snow melts and do some serious hiking!!!

After a long day of that we came back home, got some food at a local brewery and promptly fell asleep ( i think, it has been awhile since this all occured)

We spent sunday at the aquarium after hearing the great reviews that scott and bridgette gave it. Then spent a few hours sitting in a restaurant on the water enjoying the view and the bloody mary's- i was at least.

I had planned to take them to can-can, but when we got there, the doorman said that the show was canceled last minute. So while tony finished some more homework, Mark, Sarah, and I went to the central ( the place i mentioned in the last post that has music all year round)

Monday Tony had to work ( poor kid missed all the fun.) So, after i took him to work, the kids and i took a ferry to Bainbridge island. It is just about a 35 minute ferry ride across the sound but the ride has an amazing view of the olympic mts and the cascades.

We drove around the whole island and had some lunch. There is not a ton of things to do there and when i thought we had found a lake to hang out, after a short walk in the woods, we realized that we were walking in someone's driveway, not the path to the lake-stink.

After our little adventure we got back to our place in time for them to pack, pick up tony and bid them farewell. Although i always wish people could stay longer when they visit- i really wanted them to have a canceled flight ( it was snowing in michigan) because i am selfish and missed them so much and i really wanted to show them more of the city!

also.. i am too lazy to tranfer the photos

from the laptop to the desktop -where i am working, so all the good pictures that sarah took you will have to see when i email them out-sorry

then there were two

After my mom and dad left, Tony and I had a quick and busy work week, then scott and bridgette came for a long weekend. It seemed like i just replaced my dining room tabel ( aka the guest room area) when they were landing.

Unfortunately as i picked them up from the airport, i could feel myself getting sick, but no way was that going to stop me from showing them a good time.

We went to Pesos for lunch and then took a lil' nap afterwards...One of the best parts about Scott- he may be the oldest child of the 3, but he still remembers/needs to take naps :)

After a quick nap we visited a few of the local bars that Tony and i have wanted to check out, three of them actually. The next morning, i felt like pooh, not just from drinking but i had the worst sore throat/fever/cough combo that i have had in a long time. So, although whiskey usually helps when i get a sore thoat, it failed me this time.

I mustered up enough energy to get some brunch at the market, where we all met up with a friend of ours ( Tony and mine) from our last assignment. He was in town for the weekend and it was the only time that we would get to see him. After a little food and some catching up, i was spent and ready to go home. The day wasn't a total bust though, because Tony had homework to do and Scott and Bridgette wanted to go to the space needle, where we had just been last week. So i dropped them off and then went to bed while they did some exploring in the city. After a good long nap ( thanks again scott for the nap wisdom) i picked them up and we got take out for dinner. NO ONE wanted to see my in my sick person-jammie get up that i made my uniform that day.

I think that the kids stayed up and hung out close to home, while i went back to bed.

Sunday morning Tony had to work and i thought that i could exercise the sickness outta me, so while scott and bridgette went to the market and the aquarium, i worked out, got tired, felt worse and came back home. They met me back at the apartment and also took naps :)

i love all the naps that occured in our place over the course of a long weekend!!! After our nap, i took them to Fremont, a really creative/artsy district of the city. There are a lot of sculptures throughout the city, like this one.. the fremont troll, he lives under a bridge and has a real vw bug in his hands. people are free to climb on him, leave gifts, whatever.

After the great nap-a-thon they took me out to dinner at this fantastic Sicilian place just a few blocks away. I had this parmesean pistachio tortellini that was to die for and a great glass of sav. blanc to boot. We then went to get an after dinner cocktail at the lava lounge, a little bar near our place that has shuffleboard and pac man, not to mention nice folks and good drinks. So after i was nursing my one little beverage for about 45 minutes, it was time to pick tony up from work.

I went right to bed because i had to work at 7am and they followed suite because Monday was St.Patrick's day.

I went to work bright and early and had an average day until about noon, when everyone was talking about the new doctor that was interviewing that day. I went into the break room and there was a great friend of ours from Detroit Receiving- Melissa. As i put it, she was a baby doctor when i was a baby nurse, we "grew"up together. It was so cool to see her. So i finished my day and went home to Tony, Scott, and Bridgette who started SPD around 2ish.

I was going to meet Melissa for some sober people's dinner, but instead we all met at a bar in pioneer square that has live music 365 days a year. The kids ( scott, tony and bridgette)had been there already and made some friends with the bar staff, so Melissa and i caught up ( both with our lives and the booze)

The next day, we had a lot of things to cram in. The beginning of the day was spent at the Seattle underground tour. It was really astounding. It was basically the story of seattle then and now. The then, being based on the fact that the original city was built at sea level . Not cool when a city is planned right on top of a bay that is fed by the ocean. So we went into some rad "basements" of buildings of now, that used to be the first floor of the same buildings of then. We learned that the term "skid row" started here due to the way that the logger used to skid the trees down the hill, and the people that worked/lived in the logging town were less then desirable neighbors.

After that we raced to the cemetary where bruce and brandon lee are buried. There is a really cool memorial there built by Bruce lee's wife and daughter.

Then we took a quick drive to see the house that Kurt Cobain lived in and died in. Someone lives in the house, so we didn't actually go there or bother them, but right next to the house is a park with a bench that is full of carvings and good wishes on it.

After getting a quick bite to eat, we took them to the airport and got right to bed. The next day was going to be another busy one. Tony and i both had to work and sarah and mark were due in that night...

in like a lion...

So, I have failed again to keep up with the events in our lives :) But this month i have the greatest excuse- Things never stopped going, in a good way. I had so many visitors in a row and then did so many great things, that the last thing i wanted to do was hang out in the house and do my blog " homework."

Well, for my birthday at the beginning of March i got the best gift- VISITORS! Mom and dad came in just in time for my birthday. We did all the things that Tony and i have been holding out on until people came to visit- so that we wouldn't have to do touristy things more than once. So on my birthday I got my haircut while my dad and tony went to the sci-fi museum and the experience music museum-turns out they were both a bust. Tony and dad were completely done seeing EVERYTHING in both museums in less than an hour. So while they waited for my mom and i to meet up with them, they got some drinks.

When my haircut was finally done ( it seemed to take way too long) we met up with the boys and went to the space needle. It was a beautiful day and a perfect one to go up 600 or so feet in the air to check out the city. We had a perfect view of MT. Rainer, the cascades and the olympic mountains, not to mention Lake union and the sound. It was gorgeous.

After that we went to dinner and since both tony and i had to work the next morning, we made it an early night. Since it has been over a month, i can not remember exactly which days we did what, but man, they had a busy week here.

We did go to Leavenworth, which is a Bavarian-like city 2 hours southeast of our place. It is like Frankenmuth but with real mountains and i have to say that my mom, dad and myself all agreed it was very similar to the places in Bavaria that we visited. There they had a traditional German meal and then we tasted a few wines :) and headed back through the mountains back home. ON the way to the city and the return( we took a differant route home) the mountains were amazing and still sporting about 10 feet of snow in some parts of high elevation!

I can't remember what night, but we celebrated my birthday by going to the can-can. It is this really funky bar in a basement that has a moulin-rouge-like cabaret show. We also got lucky and were there on a night that a really cool band -vermillion lies was having their cd release party. They are a duet of sisters that play on typewriters, saws, music boxes and other oddities for instruments. I know that i took them to the Pike Place market and got the fish guys to toss a fish at my mom :) a fake one of course. What else did we do? Oh, my mom and i spent some time walking through the arboretum and I took her to see the library while Tony was doing homework and my dad was catching up on sleep :)

It was a great visit, but like everyone that ever comes to visit. i wish that they could stay longer...