Here comes the sun

The first warm weather of the season has arrived! I'm still a bit hesitant to banish all my sweaters and coats to storage in favor of the summer clothes, but this last weekend brought us the kind of weather that reminds me why I live here. It truly is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on earth. I made my first trip to Bainbridge island and the peninsula since my divorce, and it was quite cathartic. I had a great time with my sister Nicole and a couple of other friends in BI Saturday and then Sunday me and a friend went out to La Push and then down the coast hitting the beaches on the way home, we barely made it back in time for karaoke but we made it.
The boy and I met up with friends at the beach here in Seattle, golden gardens, and then had a lovely lunch at one of our fave Mexican joints, Gorditos.
It's supposed to stay nice this week so I'm very much looking forward to many outdoor activities and soaking up the vitamin D, you never know how long it will last!

Monday playlist: Beach House, Black Pine, Vetiver, Yo La Tengo, Au Revoir Simone, Midlake, Passion Pit, Crystal Castles, Bon Iver, Rogue Wave, Neon Indian, Xx, Coconut Records, Grizzly Bear

In like a lion....?

We had our first whispers of warm weather last week, and it always reminds me what FREAKS seattlites are about the sun! I have the fabulous fortune of working only a couple of blocks from one of the lake Washington beaches (sand!) and have very much enjoyed the proximity and am looking forward to summer even more now! It's back to rain for today but the forecast for next weekend is looking good!!

christmas and what not

Jared and I took a trip down the 101 for a pre-holiday vacation before he had to head off to Australia (where he is now). It was a great trip! Jared got a great deal on a surfing sweatshirt,

 We stopped at the dunes on the way to gold/nesika beach...

we also stopped to visit the dinosaurs (more on this in a separate blog)

There was great surf, and the beach was sunny and deserted. We played on the beach every day with abbey,

(we lost abbey's ball at one point...)

 and watched the sunset from the hot tub. We got a great deal on a rental house that was beautiful.

we even drove down into California for the day and saw a bunch of seals sunning themselves.... awesome! (sorry about my thumb in the pic)

all in all, it was a very relaxing and fun trip, and I'm pretty sure I want a farm by the ocean now....

Faux-versary

This weekend Jared and I went up the peninsula a bit to Sequim for a weekend away, and to kind of celebrate our anniversary (since Jared will be on the road for our real anniversary). We've been curious about the area for a while, so it was cool to get to do that. We had dinner at one of our favorite dinner spots, Ajax cafe, over in Port Hadlock. It was amazing as usual, but we didn't get to the rental house until late on Friday so we couldn't really see the view, but, holy moly! It was so nice to wake up across the street from the ocean!

this is where Abbey decided to sleep...

We went to breakfast at a great local place then headed out to check out the Sequim Saturday farmers market. Sequim is the 'lavender capital of the world' so we picked up some loose lavender, as well as a few other treasures there. We went out to port Townsend to try and hit up a couple of favorite spots, but ended up 'killing' too much time at the coffee place. We missed our window for lunch and didn't feel like waiting for dinner, so after a little shopping (the fabric store there was having a huge remnant sale!), we went back to Sequim and ate at a great little hole in the wall Mexican place. Not quite as good as Cazadores, but it's hard to hold a candle to our favorite restaurant in Poulsbo!
We finished out the evening at the Dungeness spit, it was a bit windy, but man, what a view! You can literally see Canada! There's a 5 mile walk out to the light house there, but since it was pretty late in the evening, we decided to save that for another day. We couldn't bring the dog out there, so we brought her back to the rental house and played with her on the private beach there, it was pretty heavenly :)

 Dungeness Spit

it was pretty cold

the little sign next to the diaper says biodegradable diapers take a year.

they had this posted, what a great reminder!!

Sunday we had breakfast at the house before we checked out, then headed up to the sol duc hot springs. We soaked for a while up there and took a break for a lunchy snack, but when we got back the tub we had been enjoying was closed for a cleaning cycle, so we headed back to Port Angeles to check out a couple of shops and find a dinner spot, and boy did we! We ate at Michael's Steak house and it has definitely made our top 10 northwest best restaurants. Maybe it was because their menu seemed to be reading my mind (cucumber infused vodka bloody Mary? smoked salmon Alfredo?! chocolate mousse banana parfait??! where has this place been all my life?!?!?!?!!YES PLEASE!!) I don't remember the last time I ate that much or felt that painfully full, but it was SO WORTH IT. Thank you, Olympic Peninsula. once again, you didn't fail us, even though the weather kinda did. (65 and cloudy Sunday. meh.)

thank you oly penn!