Easter in Seattle

You might want to sit down and put your feet up... this is kind of a long blog with lots of pictures.

This year for Easter we used our trial time share (a trial time share that totally made us into suckers, but that's for another post) and decided to go to Seattle for a long weekend. Here's what we did:

This was our car ride: long. gross feeling. traffic filled. and buggy.

Unfortunately this picture ended up being mostly of the sun and the top of this lovely red 4 door sedan. But in the middle of the picture, that little red brick building (not so little in real life), that was our hotel. The Camlin. It was right down town, we walked everywhere, it was perfect.

Our friends Boxy and Hannah took us on a day trip to Deception Pass and Fort Casey (not pictured). It was beautiful. And apparently featured in several car commercials lately?

It helps to have friends Dad's who are famous. Kate's Dad, Joel Skinner, is the bench coach for the A's and got us some sweet seats for the Mariners vs. Oakland game. The perfect night for a baseball game in Seattle. (Mariners got crushed incase you wondered).

Probably the most "touristy" thing we did--a recommendation from my Dad. He said he went on this Underground tour when he was in Seattle years ago. He said we HAD to go. We did. It was cool. Basically you go under the sidewalks and see where the city first was--before the big fire in 1889 and it was all rebuilt above sea level (hence all the super steep hills--which my butt now thanks you for). Crazy to see old store fronts, etc.

Easter Morning we went to Mars Hill Church. Except it wasn't at Mars Hill Church, but at the Seahawks Stadium. 17,000 people. Insane.

Adam had 2 things on his "must do in Seattle" list:

1. Get Seafood.

As you can see he did. And all that seafood dumped on our table...was gone by the end of our meal. Yup. GONE.

2. Good Beer
We wanted to go to Red Hook, but didn't have enough time to make the trip. But we went to the Elysian Brewery and I'm pretty sure by the end Adam had tried every beer. Dont worry though, most of them were in sample sizes... and we were there for about 4 hours...so no one was making fools of themselves.

Needless to say we had a great trip. And there was a certain little Stetson-babe who was quite excited to welcome us home. (sorry for the darkness of the photo).

Rewards

Why do rewards programs have to be so complicated? I feel like so often I miss out on great rewards programs because I half heartedly do them. Like Adam and I have accounts with most all airlines...but have yet to use them effectively. Word has it you can combine airlines points? Similarly, we have cards to every grocery store, but never get to benefit from their gas programs. On top of it all, I get groupons, subscribe to the foundry, and try to clip coupons in between breaths.

I don't ever feel like I have the time to figure out their system so it works for us. Or you have to only buy from the same website/store/airline--but what if there's a discount somewhere else. And there's always catches--blackout dates, you never reach the required number of points to use it, 1800#s that always seem to take 20+ minutes to get good answers.

One day I'll be inspired/bored and sit down to figure some of this out. I'll have a spiral notebook, pretty accordian file, labels, a calculator, pencil, charged cell phone, ice cold fountain diet coke and i'll figure it out. There's money to be saved out there and I am sick of being outsmarted by their "complicated" systems, ...or just by my laziness.

Taking after my sister-in-laws, kind of.

Our house is gray and white, and with the amount of gray outside lately, it needed a color pop. So, taking a cue from my creative sister-in-laws, I decided to make a wreath for our front door instead of buying it. I generally stay away from making things myself because I always expect with the amount of work that I put into it, plus time, that it should look BETTER than store bought--and for some reason I am always disappointed when that's not true. But this time, with our budget in mind, I went about it anyway.

a little pic of my crafty helper.

and the finished product. I still usually think I should have just bought one, but my bank account, and my husband are thankful that I didn't.

GREAT NEWS

I'm a sucker for good beach reads. Something Borrowed and Something Blue (and her others) were some of my favorites! AND NOW there's a movie coming out May 6th! Can't. even. wait!!

Saturday...

So almost every Saturday in the summertime, you can find Keje and me laying on NIC beach soaking in the sun (usually while our sweet husbands fish allllllllll day). Well, it's still only 54 degrees here on our warmest days, but we've really been missing our sun time. So this Saturday, we compromised... we went for a walk along the lake instead. It was a little reminder of how beautiful Coeur d'Alene is and just how much we love the sun. (you should also know that in keeping with tradition, we did this while our sweet husbands were working on the boat/fishing allllll day.)