The Mother Visits the Pacific Northwest 2011 - Hiking Heather Lake

After our busy day in San Juan Island, we slept in and headed to Calico Cupboard to meet R. for breakfast.  I was excited -- we've been to Calico Cupboard several times, but never early enough to order off the breakfast menu! 

After breakfast, we headed home to pick up Addy and Lucy and headed off towards Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest for an afternoon hike.  Heather Lake is a 4.6 mile hike with an 1100 foot elevation gain.  The hike is actually 2 miles up and then a 0.6 mile loop around Heather Lake, so the elevation gain is really only spread out over 2 miles.  It was a little bit challenging, but the views of the lake were well worth it! 

Our first glimpse of the lake

Heather Lake with Mount Pilchuk and snowfields in the background

Mount Pilchuk and Heather Lake

Lucy

The mother and Lucy

Lucy thinks she is a seal

Lucy and Addy

Addy and Lucy talking about how much fun they had in the lake :)

It was another gorgeous day in the Pacific Northwest!

The Mother Visits the Pacific Northwest 2011 - Visiting San Juan Island

So I suppose it's about time that I started blogging about all the fun things we did while the mother was visiting.  I've put it off long enough!  

She flew in on a Tuesday night and after picking her up from the airport, I took her to one of my favorite restaurants in West Seattle - Phoenicia.  J. and I were introduced to this restaurant by a couple of friends and we love it.  West Seattle has a great view of the city as well, so it's a great place to take visitors :) 

The Seattle Skyline

The Space Needle (with a plane above it!)

Paddleboarders + A Ferry

The next day, I introduced the mother to Iced Coffees from Starbucks and Costco.  And she bought me my birthday present - a Dyson vacuum!  But that's a post for another day.  After our morning outing, we headed over to Anacortes to catch the afternoon ferry to Friday Harbor.

On the ferry:

Our first stop was Pelindaba Lavendar Farm.  The fields were in bloom and it was gorgeous:

After Pelindaba, we drove over to Lime Kiln State Park to see if we could spot any whales.  Lime Kiln is supposed to be one of the best places to spot whales on land in the United States.  But, not when we visited!  I've been to Lime Kiln three times now and we've only seen whales once!

After Lime Kiln, we drove up to Roche Harbor and had a drink on the harbor.  It was a lovely way to end the day before heading back down to Friday Harbor to catch the ferry home.  We had great views the whole way home:

And then stopped in Anacortes to watch the sun set over the San Juans:

Anacortes from the top of the Majestic Hotel:

Our day was filled to the brim with fun activities and gorgeous weather ... the mother really lucked out with the weather while she was here!

Seattle Bucket List Updates

It's been awhile since I posted about my bucket list updates!  Since I last posted, here is what I have accomplished:  

4.  Go camping.  I don't think I ever blogged about our trip to Shi Shi Beach on the Olympic Peninsula, but we went camping.  In the rain.  For a whole weekend.  And we had fun.  Can you believe it?  I couldn't. 

41.  Go to Victoria, Vancouver Island.  This is also on the "to-blog" list, but this past weekend my mom and I took the ferry up to Victoria.  It was gorgeous and we couldn't have asked for better weather.  More on that later this week.

42.  Visit the Olympic Peninsula.  There are still a lot of things I'd like to see on the Olympic Peninsula, but I think they will have to wait for another day (or year with the upcoming move).  However, I've been over their twice, so I feel like I can cross it off the list.

49.  Try Japonessa.  R and I went to Japonessa for dinner and drinks a few weeks ago.  We had heard that their happy hour pretty goes all night and that was almost true ... it is from 11:30 to 6:30, 6:30 to 8:00 in the bar and then from 10:00 to 11:00.  We made it during the bar happy hour and paid $22.00 for our dinner.  Total.  And we were stuffed.  It was amazing.  We then splurged on a few of their cocktails and S2 met up with us.  We had a great evening and enjoyed trying their fun cocktails.  I can't find their cocktail menu online which is depressing because they had a bunch of fun ones that I don't remember the names of now!

55.  Go to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.  Check.  And I blogged about this one already, yay!  The tulip festival was absolutely gorgeous and we picked the perfect weekend to attend.  I only wish we were going to be here next April for it!

I am working REALLY hard to try to finish up everything else on the bucket list before next March.  I will keep you posted on my progress :)

My Day in Numbers ...

1 afternoon
2 trips to Home Depot
2 bushes that were trimmed down, dug up and thrown out (good riddance!)
2 lavender bushes that were planted
6 ground cover plants that were planted
8 ornamental grasses that were planted
10 bags of mulch that were spread
14 snapdragons that were planted
1,345,543,694 old bulbs that were dug up in the various flower beds (thank you crazy bulb lady ms. georgia i.e. former owner of our home!)
COUNTLESS weeds that were pulled up and thrown out

I cannot thank my mom enough for helping me with all of this hard work today!  We literally transformed my back and side yards this afternoon.  It is definitely not something I could have done on my own (at least in an afternoon).  It also helps me feel WAY more motivated to finish the project now that we've gotten so much done and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  I hope to post before and after pictures this week along with posts about our trip to Victoria and all the other posts I had planned for this week as well :)  

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  

Happy Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday Friends!  

My mom is visiting this week, so I haven't been spending much time on the blog :)  I will return next week with posts about what we've been up to on her visit, an update on my Seattle Bucket List progress and posts from our road-trip West when we moved last year!  I hadn't started blogging yet, so I need to get those days on the road down on the blog before I forget about our big adventure!  

Until then, here's a few pictures to tide you over: 

The Seattle skyline

Pelindaba Lavender Farm

Mount Baker

Mount Baker

The sun setting over the San Juan Islands

Deployment Goals

Hello Friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

I promise I'll start posting about something other than deployment, but I wouldn't be a true Type A if I didn't sit down and write myself out a to-do list of things to accomplish during this deployment.  And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't blog about it?  I've got to stay accountable! 

Deployment Goals: 

1.  Get out of bed every day (note I did not say morning, I said day).

2.  Start going to yoga 1-2x a week. 

3.  Keep running and working out. 

4.  Keep eating healthy (totally failed on this goal so far). 

5.  Finish the office. 

6.  Paint the downstairs bathroom. 

7.  Pay off my credit card. 

8.  Pay down J.'s credit card. 

9.  Accomplish everything on my Seattle Bucket List. 

10.  Get my Washington Driver's License. 

So these are the little projects I am going to be working on over the next 4 months.  I'll definitely be blogging about all of them along the way!

Deployment Update

Have you recovered from all our news?  It was a lot to take in and now you can see why I needed so long to process it all :)  

I certainly threw a few temper tantrums when I first found out the news, but I am now happy to report that I am looking forward to this adventure.  I think the hardest part for me was that J. would be deploying right away.  My biggest fear about moving to Washington and joining this crazy lifestyle was that J. would deploy and I would be stuck in a place where I don't know anyone, without a job or anything to do while he was gone.  And that came true.  We live in a small town about an hour north of Seattle and I don't know very many people who live in our town.  All of our Navy friends live in Oak Harbor or Anacortes and my other friends live in Seattle.  I don't work full-time and now that we are moving to Japan in early 2012, I don't really have a lot of motivation or incentive to take on new clients since I may have to leave mid-case. The whole deployment thing absolutely terrified me.  I am where I am because of J.  Take him out of the picture and where does that leave me? 

It has definitely taken some getting used to and I know I will have plenty of bad days over the next few months, but I think overall I will be busy and happy.  Quite honestly, I think managing our household and our lives is going to be like having a full time job.  I've never had to manage the entire household, plus the yard, plus my life, plus J.'s before.  In a nutshell, I am managing the household, two dogs, 8 bank accounts, 4 credit cards, all of the household bills and preparing to move to a foreign country.  It's kind of a lot!

And I have some pretty great friends who have kept me busy this past week and will keep me busy in the weeks to come.  I literally have not eaten one meal at home since I returned from Texas last Wednesday!  

On Monday, R. and I went to University Place and did some shopping.  I think J. is VERY lucky that we don't live in Seattle because I've gotten my shopping bug back :)  I was good though!  Then we went to dinner at Boom Noodle, which has half-priced bottles of wine on Mondays and very delicious food.  

Tuesday night, E. and CeCe came down to MV and we had a girls night at Empire Ale House.  MV does not have a lot to offer bar and restaurant wise, but the few places they do have are very good.  Plus, we hadn't seen each other since before their big European Adventure so we had a lot to catch up on and lots of fun plans to make for September! 

Wednesday night, I ventured back down to Seattle to meet S2 and R. for happy hour at Hazelwood in Ballard.  Hazelwood was the cutest little bar, with great happy hour cocktails and we had so much fun.  Afterwards, we saw The Help at the Majestic Theater which is so cute and quaint (and had the tastiest popcorn!).  I highly recommend seeing The Help -- if you read the book and liked it, you will like the movie.  If you haven't read the book, you can still like the movie :)  After that, S2 and I ventured over to Root Table to have a proper dinner (movie theater popcorn isn't considered a proper dinner?).  They have a late night happy hour (I love this about Seattle!) and we had lots of fun tapas.

By Thursday, I was exhausted.  I came home from baby-sitting and remembered that Addy and Lucy were out of food.  Ugh.  Off I went to the store so I could feed the little girls.  And then I laid on the couch and watched  Mad Men.

I've got a lot of fun things to look forward to this weekend,
but I'll wait until next week to tell you about them!