Vacation Part 1: Seattle

Most of you were aware about our most recent adventure out west. I'm pretty sure everyone who reads our blog lives in Seattle and probably saw us, however I will update you all. To sum up: vacation was FREAKING AMAZING. Every part of it was just glorious. 

We arrived in Seattle very late Wednesday morning. Thursday was pretty relaxed. We spent some nice time separately with my parents and with Chad's parents. Friday afternoon we met up with Jeremy and had lunch at Sushi Land on lower Queen Anne. Then the rest of Friday and Saturday were taken up with Alli & Taylor's wedding. Friday was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The dinner was at a Yacht Club on Lake Union catered by Ravishing Radishes. The food was absolutely delicious. For dessert they had gotten mini doughnuts from Frost (in Mill Creek), mini cupcakes from Cupcake Royal, and mini pies from Pie (in Fremont). That was so fun! Friday night the bridesmaids spent the night with Alli at the Edgewater Hotel. Unfortunately it was so hot in the room we slept poorly and woke up very early. But the morning was actually wonderful. We lounged around, ordered room service, read a devotional with Alli's mom, and prayed over Alli together. The scariest moment of the morning was when I picked up my dress from the dress shop after it had been altered (at the last minute) and found that the zipper wouldn't close by a good 5 inches! We tried and tried - but the zipper wouldn't budge. We frantically drove to the dress shop and somehow they were able to stuff (and I do mean stuff) me into the dress. I was just thankful I didn't look like sausage in the thing, I did however have a fairly large amount of unexpected cleavage. The dress was pretty uncomfortable and by the next day I had bruises from the ribbing in the corset. However, everything else with the wedding was fabulous! We took pictures in the Olympic Sculpture Park. The actual ceremony and reception was at Sodo Park - a funky, shabby chic part barn part loft. Alli hand made the most lavish and outrageous decorations. Everything was absolutely gorgeous and 100% Alli. The wedding was loads of fun partly due to the fact that all our best friends were in the wedding party and guests. And partly to do endless amounts of scrumptious food and good (if you know Alli's parents, you know it was good) wine to be had! They had a photo booth with all these props to get dressed up and be goofy. There were two copies of the picture, one to be used in the guest book and one to take home. The photo booth and the dancing were probably to the two highlights of the reception. We sent Alli & Taylor off with ginormous sword like sparklers and somehow I made it home (I vaguely remember Chad driving??). 

  On Sunday we hosted a BBQ at Chad's parents house which had seemed like a good idea at first. I think most of us were still in a exhaustive stupor from the whole wedding weekend. The dinner was nice, but pretty low key. Monday was spent at the Chouse with my family. We had a really nice, relaxing day. Calley came and joined us later on in the afternoon, as did Gammy & Papa. The Mayers joined us for dinner to celebrate Chad and Calley's birthdays. On Tuesday, Chad's actual birthday we spent the day with his parents. We saw Pirates 4 (entertaining, but not great) and went wine tasting in Woodinville. We met Soliz at Blazing Onions for dinner and had more doughnuts from Frost for dessert. On Wednesday I got to spend some really nice quality time with my Mom. We shopped for swimming suits, had lunch at PF Changs, and got pedicures - perfect Mom/Daughter day! Then later we went down to Seattle and had dinner at the Vega's. Scott whipped up his amazing tortilla soup and guacamole (which I am totally loving now by the way) and we played Catan while enjoying a bottle of wine from Novelty Hill (which was one of the wineries we had toured on Tuesday!). Thursday we had brunch with Gammy and Papa which was lovely of course. We stayed a while and played games. Then we drove down to spend the afternoon with the Lentzs. We spent some time playing Seven Wonders at Blue Highway and then we walked around the Queen Anne farmers market. We had frozen yogurt at the new place on Queen Anne - sooooo yummy! There are so many flavors and so many toppings - and you do it all yourself. Who ever thought of this business plan is a genius! The only thing the employees do is ring you up. Thursday night we had dinner with Danielle and David at a cute Italian Restaurant in their new neighborhood of Montlake. We also got to see their new house and let me just say I'm only a little bit jealous! : ) The house is so beautiful and has so much character. It really is a lovely home. I had never really spent much time in Montlake, but it's a really nice neighborhood and so close to the other parts of the city. Friday morning I got to spend some nice quality time with my sister Calley. We spent the rest of the day doing laundry and packing for Hawaii. Steven and Stephanie came over later in the afternoon and my mom made a super tasty dinner. We all had so much fun chatting at the dinner table. My mom retold the whole story of Calley's birth and how she was in labor for 6 days! Crazy! The five of us had lots of good laughs - not about the 6 days of labor, but other stuff. Actually Stephanie and I seemed quite scared after that story. We headed over the Chad's parents house to spend the night. Stephanie's mom took us to the airport and off to Hawaii we went!

Vacation Part 2: Hawaii.... Coming Soon!