Bachelorettes and Bare Feet

Ryan got to have all the excitement Friday night, but I had lots of excitements Saturday night and Sunday morning! Saturday night I headed over to Bellevue for a little bachelorette party for my old roomie in Whidbey Island, Sarah! She's getting married next weekend, I can't wait, it's going to be so much fun! There were 10 of us ladies all dressed in our little black dresses while Sarah got to practice wearing white for the night. We started out at Black Bottle, a little tapas restaurant, with some great food and drinks to get the night started. 

After dinner we walked around the corner to a big comedy club/billiard hall/dance club. We all had tickets to the comedy show that night and when we got there there was a huge line to get in so we got a little nervous that we wouldn't get to sit together even though we had called in advance to make reservations. One of the bouncers was nice enough to get the manager who escorted us past the line into the club to a table all together. About 10 minutes later she came back to our table and said another group didn't show up so we could move to their table a little closer to the stage, so we did...oh the perks of a bachelorette party ;)

After the show we headed into the into the bar/club area and spent the night doing a little bachelorette scavenger hunt (getting random strangers to do things) and dancing the night away! It was so much fun to go out with all the girls and I can't wait to get Sarah all married up next weekend!

After getting home a little after 2 in the morning, I got about 3 hours of sleep before I had to get up again, this time to run a 10k! A few weeks ago I got my first pair of five finger shoes because I wanted to use them to run this race. Most of the people were just running in normal running shoes, but this race had a specific division just for 'barefoot' runners which included five finger shoes. The prize for winning that division was a bottle of barefoot wine. Apparently that's good motivation for me because I ran by far my fastest 10k yet and won that bottle of wine! I was the fastest female in the barefoot division. 

If you remember a few months ago I wrote a post about how excited I was to run my fastest 5k in 23:23 with a pace of 7:31/mile. Well this time in a 10k with many more hills and I ran in a time of 45:16 with an average pace of 7:18/mile. That means I had 2 back to back 5ks that were way faster than my last 5k best time! I ended up as the 11th fastest female in the race and I won my bottle of wine, so I was a happy girl. And that was after only 3 hours of sleep!

Finally, this one's for Sarah and Leigha ;) We did a little girls night this past week at Betty in downtown Queen Anne. I love living so close together that we can meet up on a random weeknight and hang out! Love these girls!

Goruck

Last night Ryan and a few of his Crossfit buddies pulled an all nighter 'for fun'. They participated in the Goruck challenge in downtown Seattle. It's an event that travels from city to city and brings a team of people together to participate in a boot camp like challenge throughout the night that goes all over the city. The big kicker is that while they're doing all this they have to be carrying around their 'Goruck' pack on their back that had 6 bricks in it along with all the food/water they needed for the night...it was heavy! They started out at the Great Wheel (the new Seattle farris wheel) which is super pretty at night as the sun sets! The event was supposed to kick off at 9pm, but the spent about the first hour filling out paperwork (death waivers) and getting organized as a team. One of the people on Ryan's team was Jack Osbourne (as in Ozzy Osbourne's son!). That was kind of awesome. I definitely would not have recognized him is Ryan didn't point it out.

The guys lining up. The first 4 guys in the front row and a few of the guys behind them are Ryan's Crossfit buddies.

Lined up in their team. Jack Osbourne is the second one to the right with the tan hat on.

Once they finally got going their leader (kind of like drill instructor without all the yelling) led them around a few blocks and headed towards a big open pier on the water. That's where all the 'fun' started.

They were at the pier for about 2-3 hours were they were made to go back and forth across it as a team doing different things like bear crawl, wheel barrow, lunges, dead man carries, and many other things. At each end they had to do things like burpees, pushups, or any other thing the leader could think of. All of this with their heavy packs on.

Bear crawling

Wheel Barrow

Smurf Jacks (jumping jacks in the squating position)

Back to Back squats

Dead Man Carries (Ryan is the one carrying in the front)

Burpees! (Ryan's in the front w/ Jack Osbourne next to him)

At this point in time (about midnight) I was pretty chilly and sleepy and a little bit bored watching them go back and forth, so I headed home to bed. Ryan got to have more fun for the next 10 hours. Apparently they trekked up to the Space Needle and did some more things there (including wrestling matches) then went all the way over to West Seattle to Alki Beach where they were lucky enough to have to go into the freezing cold water of the Puget Sound! They did all kind of exercises in the water and eventually headed back downtown to the Great Wheel where I got a call at about 10am asking to come pick them up. Needless to say Ryan is exhausted today! We went straight from the event to one of the guys house where his wife had cooked up breakfast for everyone. After a little food we headed home for some much needed nap time for Ryan!

The Guys before (the one guy just had a baby a week ago)

The Guys after...Ryan looks less than thrilled

Starting New Things

Nothing to wild and crazy going on in our lives. We've been super busy somehow though. Ryan has been working crazy hours making up for a few people who have recently left the firm, so while they're looking for new hires he's been taking the brunt of the overload of work. I've just been doing my normal work...only a few months left of it (I hope)! I haven't recieved my official release papers yet with my final separation date, so nothing's really final yet. I have also officially started crossfit. I had to go through a 5 day intro course before I could officially join the gym, so I did that for the last 2 weeks (Monday and Wednesday). This past weekend I had my first official class too. I have been sore every day since I've started. I definitely have a lot of muscles to gain! I'm excited to get stronger!

My Saturday Morning Class Post Workout

Me doing push presses...my abilities are less than impressive at the moment...but I'm working on it!

Ryan's hands got all torn up in his workout. He's much more impressive ;)

The other new thing we started this weekend was stand up paddle boarding. It's been a beautiful 80s and sunny in Seattle lately, so what better way to enjoy the sun than in the middle of a lake?!? Sarah (my middle school buddy), Ryan, and I went out to Greenlake and rented Paddle Boards for an hour. It's actually a really good workout too since you have to work a little to stay balanced with the board moving around underneath you, otherwise it's pretty easy and relaxing. I would definitely be iterested in getting our own boards at some point so we could do it more often and for a longer time. It would be a perfect thing to paddle out to the middle of the lake and just sit on the board with your feet in the water. So much fun!

Mini Makeover

After so much traveling around and excitement, we've tried to relax a little and get a little housework done.  This weekend's big project was a paint job. Eventually the big house plans is to completely redo the whole entryway combined with an addition onto the house. That probably won't be for another year or so, so in the meantime, we had to pretty up what we've got. The plain wood door had been driving me crazy especially with the lovely dog claw marks on the inside. While we were doing that, we figured we'd continue the color down onto the stairs as well. Really the whole staircase needs to be replaced as it's on it's last legs, but hopefully it'll hold out till we can do out big addition. I love the new color now, it definitely gives the house a fresh new look!

The Old Doorway

Boring rundown stairs

Cleaning off the stairs (you can see how run down the old paint was)

New color!!!

Pretty front door!

Ben decided to test out the color before it dried...then proceeded to run around the house...awesome

Tara nicely stayed out of the way

Another entryway projects was new doormats. I went with these plain rubber mats and spray painted it bright pink to add a little more of a color punch at the front door. These should be pretty easy to clean too. Unfortunately they took a lot more paint than I was expecting, so I used a whole can of spray paint on the one and didn't get to do the second one for the back door. Even with a whole can of spray paint, it wasn't completely covered. I'll have to go back and touch that up later. I think it's pretty though!

Mats before

Bright Pink Mat!

I also really dislike that our front door is hidden in a little entry vestibule, but that will hopefully be remedied in our next big renovation. For now I hope the nice bright color makes our entrance a little more inviting!

Colors in SF!

driving up the coast

Yet another exciting weekend! This time it was in San Francisco with all of my siblings! Last week and all of this week I've been in Port Hueneme, CA for training for the Navy. Nothing exciting, just classroom work about government contracts. It is super exciting though that I get to wear super cute business casual outfits. I could definitely get used to wearing stilettos to work everyday! Since I was going to be in California for the weekend between my 2 weeks of training, I decided to scoot on up to San Francisco to visit the fam. It just so happens that Lauren had mentioned before that she had signed up for the Color Run that weekend, so as soon as I saw when my training was going to be, I signed up too, and so did Kimberly! Saturday morning we all drove into SF to Candlestick park for the run. There was actually a run at 8am and then the one at 1pm which we were signed up for. The night before Kimberly and I got a little nervous that it was going to be a bit chilly for the run so we went out and picked up some long sleeve white tops. Turns out those were very much so not needed! In fact it was so warm and sunny out that all of us got a little extra tan color on our skin. The idea of the run is that it is a 5k in which every kilometer you get sprayed with a different color. You're supposed to wear as much white as you can so it shows the color even more. There were A LOT of people there, so actual running was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to zig zag through the crowd to get as much running in as possible. 

Pre Color Run 

Lauren's Team from Amyris...yes their team name is 'For Science!!!!' 

Getting bombed with yellow!

Lauren and Kimberly running through the blue!

Lauren's face took a color beating!

Finished! Lauren wins for most color!

Twins/Big Sisters! 

Kimberly and Me in the Yellow!

Colored!

Kimberly is pretty excited!

Sisters!

Lance and Lauren at the big dance after party!

Lance, Lauren and Kimberly having their own dance party!

Done Coloring!

After the run we headed back to Lauren's apartment in Emeryville to attempt to clean off of the color. It worked for the most part, but I think all of us were left with a few lasting memories of the run for the next few days! I definitely still have a splash of pink on my ankle that just won't wash off! Saturday night we headed back into the city to the Mission District to the Southern Pacific Brewing Co. It's actually an awesome place for large groups (which we had). It ended up being Lauren, Lance, Kimberly, Jason (for a few minutes before he had to head to a show), Jordan, Kristen and several of Lauren's friends. So much fun to spend a night with all of my siblings! The place had great super cheap beer too! I was shocked to only be charged $4 for a pint of beer in the city! We stayed there all night before picking up Jason, dropping off Lauren and Lance and heading back to Walnut Creek.

Family!

Sunday morning we headed back downtown for a little Dim Sum brunch! Unfortunately Jordan got called into work so he couldn't make it out to that outing. Sunday also happened to be Dad's 61st birthday! After brunch we headed back to Lauren's apartment to have a little happy birthday skype date with mom and dad. I hate that we're all so far away for days like that, but love technology that lets us act like we're all in the same place. Happy Birthday Padre!

Sunday afternoon I headed back down the 101 for another fun filled week of training. I'm so glad I got to make it up to SF to visit my siblings. I always love seeing what they're up to. I am so proud of all of them and their spouses for all the great things they're doing and the awesome lives they're making for themselves and I love being a part of it! Yay J K L P!