AmeriCorps Vista Farewell

It was our last day of AmeriCorps service at the Red Cross. It was time to celebrate!

We ended our last day early and headed to Amanda and Carson's apartment where the festivities began. The party commenced with a ceremonial "untucking of the shirt" dance to a singing card which James provided.


We then hopped on a bus to head downtown for some drinks and food at our favorite happy hour location, Noc Noc (mostly because of its Vista friendly happy hour prices).






We met up with everyone else at Broadway Billiards where we spent the rest our evening. These people are AWESOME!















PS - I fear it was an expensive bar tab.

Good times with Casey & Nelson

One of my good friends, Casey, from AmeriCorps had her boyfriend, Nelson, in town this weekend so we spent Saturday evening with them. Good times were had by all, even if they are a little fuzzy.

We started out with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then headed down the street to the bar, Von's, where Casey and I started out with the house martinis, ouch!

Angie also joined up for the later part of the evening. This bar has a happy hour wheel with different deals and it gets spun every thirty minutes. We got $3 vodka ice teas and the next spin was $4 lemon drops and we felt it was necessary to order 2 rounds immediately.




After closing Von's (it's a hotel too, so they close earlier than typical bars), we headed towards home but got distracted by the Chapel on the way. It's an old church that's been converted into a martini bar... oh so good! Techno and laser lights... who could complain!

2 Years!

Andrew and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary in Oregon at McMenamin's Grand Lodge for the weekend. It was originally built as an orphanage for children who lost their parents traveling the Oregon Trail. It was later turned into a senior living community and then into a hotel. There is a theater in the hotel with free movies and local McMenamin's Brewery Beer at all the restaurants and bars throughout the hotel grounds. We also visited a sake factory nearby, and learned on the tour that they are the only American owned sake factory in the world. Who knew we were so close? We came home with two bottles even though during the tasting Andrew discovered that sake in not his favorite.

The entire place is painted very eclectically. There are stories and images painted throughout the halls and each room is named after a previous resident. Our room was the Al Reynolds room.

We decided to take the longer more scenic route home, up 101/Oregon Coast Highway, so that we could get a few glimpses of the ocean.

SeaFair

The weather wasn't great but the tickets were free, so we headed to SeaFair with Tom and Emily. Because of the low cloud cover we didn't get the full air show, but being first timers we didn't know what we were missing. The I-90 bridge over Lake Washington is closed for the show. These planes fly with their wing tips no more than 18 inches apart. It was pretty amazing!


Going to SeaFair in the rain is exhausting. I'm sure Tom & Emily will love the fact that I posted this (Luckily it's a dark picture). But, Elly just climbed right up there like she belonged and napped with them. It was too cute.