Wow, how do I even begin to sum up this weekend? I had a total blast, met some truly wonderful people, saw some really wonderful things, had some great conversation, ate some delicious food (okay more like devoured large amounts of delicious food including one too many gourmet cupcakes), and all around had an amazing time. It is hard to decide where to start but hey, might as well start at the beginning right? As you know, I never write the short version of anything so I broke it up so you can skip around to the parts that you are actually interested in.
Arrival
After landing with an AMAZING view of Mt. Rainer in the clouds, I arrived at the SeaTac airport around 7:30 (10:30 my time) and after some annoying hold ups with the plane and my bag I finally found Amanda who came to pick me up with her Little Buddy (who quickly told me he can actually pick up an entire airplane by himself and that he is really actually a super hero). She was so sweet off the bat and I knew we would have no trouble getting along. We got back to her place, she put a very sleepy LB to bed, and we watched the new season of The Office (which included Dwight and a Camel Back which I thought was hilarious) but I was quickly fading and new Jill and Zoe had a wonderful day planned for the next day so I headed to bed and fell asleep in about 3 seconds.
View of the peak of Mt. Rainier from the plane. Beautiful huh?
The next morning I woke up pretty darn early (body still not realized the time change) so I read for a bit and heard Amanda and LB bouncing around downstairs so I grabbed a shower and got to play with LB a bit (who decided I needed a force field around me for the rest of the day). Amanda dropped him off at school and then dropped me off into the very capable hands of Jill. Honestly, Jill is funny on her blog, but seriously this girl in person is hilarious. Her sense of humor was one of the many highlights of the trip but more on that later. We headed off to pick up Zoe and Goober and then we all headed to meet T at the airport.
Seattle
Once we had T onboard, Jill and Zoe laid out the day for us. We were first headed to the U District where we grabbed some very yummy lunch and then shopped around a bit and magically found our way to an amazing cupcake shop called Trophy. We owe Jill big for that one because they had the most amazing cupcakes! My personal favorite was the “Salted Caramel”. So amazing! This isn’t the last time you will read about cupcakes in this post =).
I love Calamari but I can't eat the ones with suckers still attached...but don't worry- the hardcore T had no problem downing them
Zoe then gave us a wonderful tour of the U of Washington campus. Wow it is such a beautiful school! This is where she graduated from so she filled us in on the history of the various building and took us into the amazing library with its gorgeous stained glass windows. They were doing a bridal photo shoot which was fun to spy on a bit and once we had seen all there was to see we headed back to the car to hit down town Seattle.
such a gorgeous campus!
repping the W
Did I mention how amazing the weather was? Mel had warned us just in case to be prepared for cold and rain but she must have arranged something because Friday was pretty sunny and beautiful temps in the mid 60’s. Perfect for walking around! After hiking up and down some pretty darn steep Seattle hills we explored the city. Seriously Jill and Zoe know Seattle! We how our own personal tour guides! They took us to the first ever Starbucks which was pretty cool (and crazy crowded) and Pike Peak. You know, the place where they throw fish? T somehow managed to get us the opportunity to kiss a fish (thanks T really didn’t want to miss out on that one). And we had a blast exploring the market. So much fun! The place was filled with fresh seafood, flowers, fruit, and oh of course…honey. Jill’s stomach doesn’t like Gu and so she has found that honey sticks do the job for her. So she grabbed a bunch of honey sticks around a huge squeeze container of honey. T joked that she needed to get a hand held strap for it. Then Jill looked down and started to pick up a 27lb bucket of honey (which cost about $80). She didn’t actually buy it but she had us laughing. Speaking of bucket of honey, Jill and Zoe got a huge kick out of the fact that T and I didn’t now that porta potties are actually called Honey Buckets in WA. While on the U Dub campus we saw porta potties reading “Honey Bucket”. At the same time, T and I said “wait what, they are actually called honey buckets??!” We thought it was just some weird name the WA bloggers used for porta potties. So that was pretty funny. So incase you were wondering, they are actually called Honey Buckets.
ick!
me and T hanging out with a bronze pig.
GIANT lobster tail with Jill's hand for comparison
they had the most beautiful fresh flowers. I wish I could have brought some home
Zoe had scoped out some fun tours so we headed to the sight of the “Under Ground Tour”. Unfortunately we had missed the last tour by 5 mins and the next one didn’t leave until 4:30. The tour was about an hour and a half and we were meeting Mel for dinner at 6 so we all decided it would be cutting it to close but had fun stalking the end of the previous tour that Jill had found.
You really can’t go to Seattle without visiting the Space Needle right? So although T and I have a bit of a fear of heights, we all decided we wanted to go up to the observation deck at the Needle. We took the monorail over with Zoe while Jill waited around for Mel who was coming from work. I’m not going to lie, the elevator up was a bit unnerving but the view from the top was really amazing! I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on that. Yet again tour guide Zoe pointed out all the different surroundings and it was really cool to get a beautiful view of the mountain.
The needle from a distance
We then headed back down and met up with Jill and Mel and we were off to dinner! More food. Lots of it. We discussed plenty of new ideas for apps that Zoe’s company should make. Jill came up with the ever clever dog renting app (rent a dog while you run) which somehow evolved into a child renting app (ok don’t take me too seriously here none of us would actually condone and form of child renting) but Jill had us all laughing so hard it was difficult to stop long enough to eat! It was just a wonderful night with seriously wonderful new friends.
The Slumber Party
After dinner Jill, Zoe, T, Mel and I headed back to Mel’s for an old fashioned sleepover. Amanda wanted to join in but she had LB and didn’t think he would have fun at an all girls sleepover (Mel’s Little Studs were out of town with her Muscle Man for the weekend). We missed Amanda! What do a bunch of running friends do at a sleepover? Devour a billion cupcakes and fall asleep watching Ultra Marathon Man of course! As I’m sure you all know, T is a bit of a cupcake expert and had actually brought cupcakes from back in Richmond. We had of course stocked up on cupcakes and Trophy earlier that day and so of course we had to taste test every single one (okay maybe taste test every single one about 100 times) to determine a winner. Pretty sure we never picked an overall winner (my personal fave was still the Salted Caramel) but we did manage you fall into a cupcake-induced coma because none of us made it through Ultra Marathon Man. It was fun while it lasted. The next morning my body woke me up yet again at 4am still thinking it was on East Coast time and I couldn’t fall back asleep so I gave up and read a few chapters of Mockingjay (seriously if you like to read, pick up the Hunger Games series). I faded back to sleep around 6:30 and before I knew it Mel was waking me up because everyone else had been up and was hungry. Oops! I had passed back out till 9am. My bad =) They held no grudges though and Mel took us to a nice little brunch bistro. We had a nice mix of omelets, pancakes, French Toast, and Hot Chocolate (which I managed to scold my mouth on but hey it distracted me from the gaping wound…aka world’s biggest ulcer on the roof of my mouth). Yet again we had great times remember the jokes from the night before and planning out the day.
the aftermath. and know we didn't have Chinese food as well. T's cupcakes came in those containers
Tacoma
We went back to Mel’s and gathered our selves and things and headed to Tacoma for the packet pickup (I refuse to call it an expo when there are only 3 vendors). We got our bags, numbers, and chips, walked around a few local running stores, popped in the U of Dub store, and then met up with Amanda for lunch. Yep, more food. It was around 3 by the time we had lunch meaning we would be eating dinner in a mere few hours but hey its vacation (at least it was for me and T) so we went with it. After lunch Jill had the idea to cross over this gorgeous bridge decorated with blown glass sculptures. It is called the Chihuly Bridge of Glass named for the artist who has blown all the glass sculptures. Of course we snapped a few photos and then headed back to Amanda’s to get ready for the Bloggy Meet Up!
the whole ceiling looks like this!
Ok so that’s more than enough info for one sitting, I’ll be back soon with the rest of the weekend’s recap including the super fun Bloggy Dinner/ Meet up, Zoe’s impromptu Baby Shower, meeting up with the Seattle chapter of TNT, oh and of course the race!
