Welcome to the 90's

A few weekends ago, some of our friends from the squadron hosted a 90's party.  It was SO.MUCH.FUN.  Almost everyone dressed up and channeled their favorite 90's TV star, look, sporting outfit, etc.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves ... 

Kelly Capowski (Saved by the Bell) and Six (Blossom)

CK13 - 90's skier!

J. and Mr. S.

I am not sure what is up with the lighting in these next couple of pictures ... we need to figure out what is going on with the camera!  I noticed some of our pictures from Seattle didn't turn out very well this past weekend either :(

In focus, but weird lighting ...

90's bride, three 90's skiers,  Kelly Capowski, Six, a 90's school teacher and Brandi!

Better lighting but blurry ...

Me and J.

Take 2

Mr. S. getting ready for his Olympic Trials

Stretching

Getting in position ...

And he won!

Awesome!

The cute little 90's family!

Noah looks intimidated by the 90's

And it wouldn't have been the 90's without slap bracelets.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of mine, but it's tucked away safely in my costume box for the next 90's bash.

Moral of this story?  Theme parties are fun.  

October - December, 2011

Thanks for all the lovely comments on my previous post :)

So I realize I have sucked at blogging over the past few months.  And I am definitely trying to do better :)  And I hate to drag you all back to October 2011, but the last recap I did was of my trip to Yakima which was the very first weekend of October.  And I am Type A and can't feel good about moving on to 2012 until I finish writing about 2011.  So bear with me.

In October ...

R., M.C. and I watched the UW v. Colorado game at Duchess Tavern.  It was lots of fun, but we felt OLD.  Yikes.  Apparently we can't hang with the college kids anymore.  And we were rooting for Colorado (R.'s alma mater) so we were slightly out of place. 

I had dinner with an old friend from law school at my favorite restaurant, Phoenecia, in West Seattle.  If I lived closer to this place, I would be fat and my bank account would be empty.  It's a must go in my opinion!

I visited my mom and sister in Chicago.

My sister and our friend Joe took me out to one of their favorite restaurants, Sunda.

I met my sister for lunch and got some yummy cupcakes from Crumbs:

We went for dinner at Quartino ... another delicious restaurant!

I had brunch with Face at The Breakfast Club:

Went shopping for an afternoon and enjoyed the beautiful weather and scenery:

And watched my grandfather play the cello in the Evanston Symphony!

Isn't he adorable in his bowtie?

After Chicago, we celebrated Halloween at R.'s:

as the trio from Alice and Wonderland!

In November ... 

I had a spa afternoon at The Chyrsalis in Bellingham, compliments of J.  It was awesome and if I ever strike it rich, I am definitely going to be treating myself to spa afternoons more often!

I got my first speeding ticket in 10 years.  Thank you Island County.

The squadron Wives Club started preparing for the homecoming. 

And I spent a week in Houston for Thanksgiving! 

In December ... 

I saw The Nutcracker at the Pacific Northwest Ballet ...

J. came home from his four month deployment:

Mr. K13 met baby Noah for the first time and the whole hangar was teary eyed.  Meg and Aaron from Evantide Photography captured the moment beautifully.

We got engaged ... which you can read all about here.

And then we went home for two weeks!

It was a great way to end 2011.  

Thanks for sticking with me through my blogging rut ... I hope you all have a wonderful MLK weekend!

Remember September?

I decided to do a September recap post instead of blogging about each event individually ... otherwise it would probably be November before you heard about all the fun things I did and I'd never catch up!  I will post separately about my trip to San Francisco so I don't overload you with pictures right now :)

September was a fun month around here!  It started with a weekend in Seattle with R.  We went to Bumbershoot, a music and arts festival that takes place at the Seattle Center over Labor Day Weekend.  It's a three day festival and we chose to go Saturday.  

We saw The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Trombone Shorty & Ray LaMontagne.  We also looked at lots of cool concert posters in the Flatstock exhibit, enjoyed some delicious food and had a beer or two in the beer garden.

View from the beer garden

Space Needle

R. and our brick of fries :)

The next day we got sandwiches from Royal Grinders in Fremont, which I had been dying to try, wandered around the shops and market in Fremont, and then headed over to Gas Works Park.  Check it off the Seattle Bucket List!  It was a gorgeous day and a great way to spend the afternoon!

View from Gas Works Park

Sitting in Gas Works sparked an idea ... we wanted to go kayaking!  We couldn't go that afternoon, but the following Thursday we headed down to Agua Verde Cafe & Paddle Club and paddled around Lake Union for a few hours!  Sadly, we have no pictures.  We were afraid we might tip so we chose not to bring our phones or cameras.  But we had a great time, it was reasonably priced and we didn't have to wait for a kayak (probably because we went during the week).  We had gorgeous weather and afterwards, we had delicious tacos!  

The next weekend I attended my first Calendar Square Party with our new squadron.  The squadron has a huge calendar in their ready room on the boat, so each wife/fiance/girlfriend makes a 10 x 10 square for their sailor to put on the calendar each month.  It's basically like making a scrapbook page.  J. left right around the same time the September squares were due, so I didn't make him one for September.  I made him two for October to make up for it :)

One for his birthday 

and one for Halloween!

We ended the weekend with a boat tour through Deception Pass (thank you Groupon!)  It was another gorgeous Sunday and we took the sunset cruise.  I have to say that I am glad we went on the cruise, but I am also glad we went for the Groupon price.  I'm not sure I think it's worth full price.

Deception Pass

The sunset

We saw a Blue Heron and a Harbor Seal!

Love Instagram!

After that was San Francisco, but that trip really deserves its own post :) 

The next Friday, I went wine tasting in Woodinville with E. and Seattle Stevie.  We were bad bloggers and didn't take any pictures, but we had a great time and visited some great wineries.  I'll link the wineries below so you can check them out the next time you're in Woodiville!

Tefft Cellars

Januik Winery

Columbia Winery

Redhook Brewery (for lunch, no beer tasting!)

Apex Cellars

Goose Ridge Winery

Trust Cellars

Saturday was our squadron's halfway party.  We celebrated being halfway done with this deployment!  It was a fabulous evening and I can't thank Aimee and Vanesa enough for planning it!  We had dinner at The Oyster Bar on Chuckanut Drive and then went to the Terrace Wine Bar in Oak Harbor.  The views from The Oyster Bar are amazing.  We had a private dining room, but there was a balcony off the back of the restaurant with tables for two.  It would be the perfect place to go for a date and each chair had a blanket on the back of it in case you got cold.  I absolutely loved it -- if we get a warm weekend next January I want to take J.

CK13 and me in the van

Our room at The Oyster Bar

Not the best group shot, but you can kind of see the view in the background!

Our end of the table!

Group shot we sent to the boys!

I stayed the night with one of my favorite squadron wives, CK13.  CK13 was 8.5 months pregnant and started having contractions at the dinner, but played it off and told us that they were Braxton Hicks contractions.  They ended up being the real thing and the next day, baby Noah arrived!  

He is absolutely adorable.

And that was September!

It took me about an hour to write the recap so I can't imagine how long it would have taken to write about each event individually :)  Now you know why I was so bad about blogging last month!

Congrats Stevie!

Happy Monday friends!  I know it's late, but I wanted to write a quick post and say 

CONGRATULATIONS 

to Seattle Stevie!  She planned a surprise birthday party for her boyfriend this past weekend and he turned the tables on her and proposed in front of everyone!  She blogged about the night's events here.  Go read about her special night and send her some happy wishes!

I can't wait to read about your wedding planning, Stevie!  

(you are going to blog about it, right?!)

Norman Rockwell @ Tacoma Art Museum

I think I talked about First Thursdays in Seattle awhile back ... like maybe in January?  Anyways, most of the museums in Seattle offer free admission on the first Thursday of the month.  Likewise, in Tacoma, most museums offer free admission on the third Thursday of every month.  I didn't really pay much attention to the Tacoma museums because Tacoma is far away, but I read in Seattle Weekly about a Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum.  And the exhibit was huge ... so J. and I decided to jump in the car and head to Tacoma on the third Thursday in April.

I am certainly not an art critic, nor would I say I love art ... usually museums make me tired.  But, seeing these works in person was truly amazing.  Rockwell was so creative and such a great painter ... there was so much detail in every painting.  He said that he wanted people to see something new every time they looked at one of his Saturday Evening Post covers and I truly think you could look at the cover a million times and not see everything.  I would love to own some of his pieces one day.  How cool would it be to find some in your parents or grandparents attic?  Some of the covers in the the exhibit even had their mailing labels still affixed to them ... it was so neat to see where these covers came from!  New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, and even Indiana!

We couldn't take pictures in the exhibit but here are some of my favorite Rockwell works: 

J. and I decided this was the world's first creepy man ... eavesdropping on a bench with a little dog in a sweater!  We loved it:

Overheard Lovers

I also love this one ... the disheveled looking girl, the black eye, how you can just barely make out the word "Principal" on the door:

Shiner

So sweet ... and I love Rockwell's use of dogs :)

First Love

At the Vets

And, of course, the famous portrait of Ruby Bridges:

Going to the exhibit on the Third Thursday was exhausting ... there was a huge line and it took forever to get into the exhibit, but it was nice to see such an amazing collection of art for free.  The exhibit will be at the Tacoma Art Museum until May 30, 2011.  I highly recommend the exhibit!  The third Thursday in May is this coming Thursday, May 19th and Ruby Bridges will be speaking on Saturday, May 21 at the University of Washington - Tacoma campus if you are interested in seeing her!