Flip

Tara is silly. I keep forgetting to do stuff with my flip video. I have a ton of videos from Egypt too that I need to do something with at some point too!

Brandon Visits

Ryan's older brother, Brandon, came into town last Wednesday for a week. He got to be here for Ryan's birthday which was a lot of fun. This weekend we has some more fun visitor festivities! Friday night we took Brandon to our favorites little pizza place, Belltown Pizza. They have an amazing pizza with roasted red peppers and buffalo sauce on it. It is amazing! After that we joined some friends for a few rounds of bowling. I just have to point out that the last game I completely creamed everyone and got a 183...which is pretty awesome ;) I actually did pretty well all 3 games, but definitely dominated the last game, so it was a good way to end the night!

Saturday we headed out to Marymoor park to enjoy the sunshine outdoors. We mostly just walked around and explored the park. There's a huge dog park in it that I'm definitely going to have to bring Tara back to.

There also happened to be a historical reenactment going on in the park at the time. It was really funny because it was a really sad an small group of people trying to put on what seemed to be a renesaince fair. At least we got to watch some people try to sword fight. It was pretty amusing! Saturday night we went out for some delicious sushi and to the black bottle afterwards for some drinks and get a little taste of Seattle nightlife.

Sunday we met up with a friend of Brandon's that works on a cruise ship. Their ship just docked in Seattle for the day before turning around and heading back to Alaska. He said he could get us some pretty sweet discounts if we took a cruise. That sounds super tempting!! Sunday night we grilled out on the roof deck before I had to head back to Oak Harbor so I could get up bright and early Monday morning for one of my twice a year physical tests for the Navy. Not so fun so early in the morning. At least it was a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Yesterday was Ryan's 27th birthday! I baked a bunch of really delicious cupcakes. In fact, they may be the most delicious ones I've ever made! I did strawberry ones and chocolate mint ones. Since the recipes made so many, I took half to work and they got devoured within the hour. The rest of them I brought to Ryan's work and out to Ryan's birthday dinner/happy hour with his co-workers and brother. I wanted to try out a new place that had a really big outdoor patio because it was in the 70s and sunny out yesterday! It was a lot of fun with a great group of people. The service was terrible, but it almost made the experience that much more amusing. I have a feeling our server may have been high. Hopefully it made for a great birthday for Ryan!

Pics from the last couple of weeks

Since we've been traveling all over the place in the last few months, it was really nice for the last couple of weeks now to actually stay in Seattle! We did a little apartment shopping a couple of weekends ago, and may have found a winner! The Aspira is a new residential high rise in downtown Seattle. It's the first LEED Certified (environmentally friendly) high rise in Seattle. It's a big glass building that is really clean looking from the outside. It just opened a couple of months ago, so all the apartments are brand new. Unfortunately our leases aren't up until November, but hopefully at that point I'll be able to move down to Seattle, and we can get a nice new apartment! And they actually allow big dogs, so we wouldn't have to hide Tara. 

Later that weekend we went to a 50s themed party with some friends of ours. They were throwing it for all their employees of a gourmet hotdog restaurant they recently opened in Seattle. It was a fun excuse to dress up!

This past week was really nice out. I actually got to be in Seattle most of the weekend because I was attending a workshop in Everett, about 30 minutes north of Seattle. In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I made some margarita  cupcakes. They didn't turn out as cute as I was hoping, but they were still super yummy! I also made some strawberry scones for our breakfasts the rest of the week. They turned out really well. 

This past Saturday we had plans to have dinner at Leigha and Nino's new house. I got to bring the dessert, which of course I'm a big fan of making that and making other people eat it all! This time I made little chocolate peanut butter tarts. I've tried then once before and they turned out even better this time, and they're so easy! Their house is so cute, and I got to inherit all their old wedding magazines (2 bags full!) It was good to catch up and discuss wedding plans and such. Sunday morning I got to go with Leigha to pick up her wedding dress!! It was so pretty! She gave me lots of good advice for when I get to start my dress shopping too.

The whole weekend was really pretty out, so we also enjoyed walking around outside and soaking up some sun sitting in the park reading wedding magazines...let the planning begin!!