CHBP!

Just a few more weeks of freedom until our weekends are consumed with home ownership! This weekend we mosied up the hill to the Capital Hill Block Party. It's actually an all weekend long festival of bands on several different stages in the Capital Hill area of Seattle. We just got tickets for Saturday since that's when most of the bands we wanted to see were playing and because it was Aimee's birthday, so we got to celebrate all day with her! We met up with a group of people just as one band was finishing up, so we all headed into a nearby bar for some drinks and to make Aimee wear their awesome birthday hat. The bar is called Unicorn and is themed like a circus. We hung out there for a while until the next band we wanted to see were up and we headed down the street for that.

The rest of the night we were in and out of bars and checking out all the good music and other booths. I also finally got to try Cupcake Royale's seasonal strawberry cupcake...it was like a dream come true. It was just a white cake with strawberry butter cream frosting, but oh my word the frosting was to die for...it was bursting with strawberry deliciousness. I am definitely going to have to try to figure out their secret for that one...sooooo good.

The final band of the night was the headliner, which we really wanted to see but apparently so did EVERYONE else, so it was super packed. After being pushed and dragged around for about half an hour we moved to the back of the crowd for a little while then ended up just heading home. Moral of the story; good music, good food, good fun, but lots and lots of people and probably just as fun hanging out outside of the block party rather than dealing with the crowd inside.

Sunday afternoon we spent getting ideas and pricing out some things for our upcoming house renovations. The big things is really going to be the kitchen, but it's going to be amazing! I can't wait to throw on a pair of overalls and get back into construction mode. It's been far too long.

In other news, I'm almost finished reading Born To Run that talks a lot about minimalist running and ancient super foods for healthy living and such so I've been trying out a lot of their ideas. I got a sweet new pair of running shoes that I'm now pretty obsessed with. They feel like running in slippers which is awesome. I'm not sure how I feel about transitioning to the 5 finger shoes, but I'm trying to slowly get into the idea of barefoot running. I've also started trying a lot of recipes with chia seeds which are supposed to be the ancient miracle food that the helps promote energy. I'm giving it a try, but I think what would really promote more energy in me would be to get more than 6 hours of sleep...ever. Either way, it's a good book and fun things to try to get nice and healthy!

Cookies & Pictures & Movies...hoorah!

A lot of excitement going on in the last few days. Last week I had to give a presentation to a group of fellow officers on Public Speaking. I must say it was slightly nerve-racking. I haven't given a presentation like that in a loooooong time. To get myself a little more psyched up for the event I decided to make some cookies to share since the presentation was given at lunch time. So even if my presentation didn't entertain people completely at least maybe the cookies would! I made some delicious banana pecan chocolate chip cookies. They were awesome, although next time I might add more banana since it was such a subtle flavor in this batch, but they still got rave reviews and were completely devoured, and the presentation went pretty well too I must say.

Saturday morning I woke up to a completely awesome surprise! One of the blogs I follow is the Pioneer Woman, and more specifically the Pioneer Woman Photography blog. Every once in a while she has photo competitions where there's a theme and you can submit your theme relevant photos for he to choose her favorites from and then a winner. This week's theme was cell phone photography, so you could submit any photo that you had taken with your cell phone. I submitted a photo that I had taken of Kristen and Jordan at their wedding, along with a few others. There are thousands and thousands of entries for these competition, and everyday the Pioneer Woman selects about 20 or so of her favorite submissions. Saturday morning, SHE PICKED MINE!! Yay!!! You can see the blog post here. She has about 4 days of her favorite submissions, so out of the thousands of photos submitted, mine was at least in the top 100...awesome!

After all that excitement, we headed over to Bainbridge Island for a BBQ with a few of the guys that I work with. It was fun to finally meet all their wives and see everyone in a non work environment. When we got home from that, we got ready for our next excitements...HARRY POTTER 3D! I'm not quite sure what to do with myself now that I can't look forward to the next movie since there won't be one :( I guess I can still look forward to the DVD release then I can have a full Harry Potter marathon...which would clearly be awesome.

Sunday we went by our (fingers crossed) future home! We'll do the home inspection this week and finish up all the loan paperwork, then it'll all be official! We have until the end of August for closing, so we'll take that time to finish up our design ideas so that as soon as the keys are turned over to us we can start the renovation process! Although it may be a slow process and not be completely done for another couple of years, it's going to be great! I can't wait to get started with it all. We also took Ben out at the house and let him run around the yard...he's going to looooove being able to run all over the place when we let him out.

Blog Shout Out!

I read a good amount of blogs, and wish more of my friends/family would write blogs so I can keep up with everyone easier! I do have one cousin who has a fabulous blog that I would encourage everyone to subscripe to for a variety of reasons. First of all, Amy is a fantastic writer and anything she writes about is truely captivating. Amy carries the BRCA 1 breast cancer gene and her blog It's in the Genes follows her journey through breast cancer. As previusly mentioned, Amy is a fabulous writer, so all of this information is laid out much more elequently on her blog than I could ever put it. Besides fighting cancer, being a mother, being a wife, being a writer, and maintaining a blog, Amy is also writing a memior on her experience. If she gets 5,000 subscribers to her blog, her editor believes she can get her memoir published. I would highly encourage all to subscribe to her blog to help in the effort as well as gain the enjoyment of reading her talented writings!

On another note, papers have been signed on our house, we have 5 days to do an inspection and get final loan approvals, then we should own a home!

The Hunt!

We've been doing a little house hunting the past couple of months in preparation for the end of our apartment lease coming up in the fall. Ideally we would love to stop paying rent on an apartment and start paying a mortgage on a place. We've been looking mostly in the Capital Hill and Queen Anne areas of Seattle since those are the closest to downtown that you can purchase single family homes in, unfortunately that also means they're really expensive, really old, and really small. We've been to several open houses and gotten an idea of what we could get in the price range that we were looking at. Luckily we are kind of looking for a place that is move in ready, but has a good amount of work to be done on it so that we can put our own touches into the house. Although I'm not sure what will come out of it at this point, we have put our first offer in on a house...how exciting!

This is definitely one of the cheapest places we have found at all! The location is great towards the top of Queen Anne and perched up on the hill so it does get a few good views. One big part about this house that we liked is that it actually has a yard! It's one of the biggest lots we've found in the area which means lots of room for puppies and expansions and gardens! A few negatives...it is a really small house that needs lots of updating and there's a height limitation put on it by the owner pretty much meaning that we can't expand vertically. Other than that, there's a lot to work with, and I think we'd definitely be up for the challenge, and the mortgage would actually be even less than we're paying in rent right now...yay! Obviously the general look of it isn't really our style right now, but we've got all kinds of ideas brewing to rectify that!

We're going back and forth with offers and counter-offers at the moment, so we'll see what happens with that. We also still need to do an inspection on the property which could make or break it too. Home buying is our next big adventure though, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of updates to follow!

Jordan and Kristen Beach Blowout!

I wish I could still be sitting on the beach, but instead it's back to the grind. Last week was completely amazing though! Friday night we took the red eye out to Raleigh, NC with a layover in Detroit. We ended up running into Katie and Matt at the airport going to NC as well, and also happened to be on the same plane as Leigha and Nino on their way back to Michigan, so we started off the week right away with lots of friends! We didn't have any problems getting over there and were even a little early to meet up with Lauren and Lance in Raleigh and pick up our rental car. Unfortunately none of us had really gotten sleep on our red eye flights, so poor Ryan got the be the driver for 3 hours while the rest of us dozed in and out on the was to Emerald Isle. We broke it up with a much anticipated lunch break at Zaxby's (one of our favorite southern food stops). It's always on our list of places to go when we're back in the south. We made it to Emerald Isle just in time to shower up and get ready for the nights festivities...rehersal dinner!! The girls all headed to the hall a couple hours early to set it up and get all the food ready. Then the party started! And kept going and going and going.

Sunday was wedding day! Yay little brother! We checked out of our one resort and all went out of a big group breakfast where we also ran into Uncle Bill and Mary, so we had a rather large table of family including the day's groom! By that time we were able to check into our beach house for the week, so we did that and broke off to the beach and such. Finally it was time to get ready for the big festivites!! We headed over to the beach for the wedding a few minutes early to claim our spots and get ready to get some sweet pics and video of the days event. Everything went perfectly and the bright blue sky and sandy beach was an amazing background for the event. Dad did a great job officiating the ceremony as well and Jordan's friends helped out with the music for the ceremony. Everything was awesome!

After the ceremony we gathered back up on the deck of the beach house for a reception, dancing, and an impromptu pool party in the wee hours of the morning. It was so much fun hanging out with the family and extended family and the Freels family! I vote that Jordan and Kristen get married every year so we have an excuse to do it again! After the party at the Freels' beach house we went around the corner to our beach house to test out the gloriousness that is the hot tub. Some how people also thought it would be a great idea to fire up the grill for some brats...what everyone needs at 2am...surely. Eventually we all made it to our beds for the night, and the poor Dougherty family had to get up bright and early to start their long drive back to Michigan. I'm so glad they came down for the fun though!!

Monday night we got to do more celebrating for Jordan's birthday, and we spent the rest of the week mostly soaking up some sun on the beach, eating ridiculous amounts of food and consuming a countless amount of wine bottles. It was so much fun spending time with all my siblings that I am sooooo tempted to join them all in San Francisco now! Perhaps it will stay on my radar for the future :) I'm super jealous that they all ended up in the same area, but at least it's the same time zone and a quick flight for me to join...hint hint...visits will be happening soon.

One of the days we were in NC, we took a drive over to Beaufort, which is a historic little town known for it's role in the legacy of Blackbeard (the pirate). We walked around town for a while before renting some kayaks to boat over to a small island off the coast inhabited by wild horses. We hiked into the island to a little wetland area where they were all hanging out and god pretty close to them to snap a few pics and observe for a while. It's really cool to see them in the wild like that!

Saturday morning we got all packed up and ready for our trek back to Seattle. Our flights started off pretty awesome with a free upgrade to first class!!! This is the first time we've been able to use an upgrade since the let Ryan sit up there with me too! We took full advantage of the free food and drinks and I was pleasantly surprised by a delicious couscous dish they served! I'm going to have to give it a try to make it myself. Our second flight we almost got upgraded again, but they wouldn't let Ryan come with me on my upgrade so I had to decline. Luckily we had spacious exit row seats and a good movie on the iPad to watch. Several hours later we were back in Seattle and came home to my favorite little furry friends and a relaxing rest of the weekend!