Folklife

Monday we all had the day off (yay for actually getting holidays off as opposed to my old retail schedule...) anyway, we decided to hit up the folklife festival in Seattle.

I will be honest, I mainly enjoy festivals for the food.  That was the main reason we went because I really don't like hippies and this is essentially a hippie festival.  Not the cool tie-dye peace sign hippies, but the weird earth-tone flowy skirt no shaving kind of hippies.  I did want a tie-dye shirt though ;)

We got there and saw the parking garage was charging $17 (the festival is free) we said F that and drove up the street and found street parking a block away (woot!)  We wandered around the booths and scoped out the food choices.  We went for the sharing method so we ended up with lumpia from the Philippine booth, a burrito from the taco place, back to the Philippine booth for some more lumpia, pancet, and BBQ chicken, and a mango lemonade (my favorite drink ever- I've been inhaling the Simply Lemonade version lately).  Sawyer ended up with the world's biggest corn dog.  We settled down with the food to watch a juggler.  Sawyer even got called on to assist him, but he got shy half way up and changed his mind.

My stroller had a lumpia holder

Kellan was a fan of the mango lemonade too

Afterwards we walked around more booths and passed several music stages where people were dancing to live music

We got a strawberry shortcake and settled down by the fountain (one of my favorite memories from when I was young and we'd go to Seattle)

Sawyer loved the fountain so much!

We put sawyer naked (he wore a shirt as pants when we got back to the car) and I got my tie-dye shirt!  Sawyer says he wanted one so we might have to try tie-dying here soon!

I'm a hippie now!

Northwest Trek

We took the kids on Wed. to Northwest Trek.  If you aren't familiar, it is an animal park right before you get to Eatonville.  It tends to keep them in their natural habitats so they aren't all in small closed spaces like a regular zoo.  They have smaller cages for the ones that have been injured in the wild though.  It is good for the animals, but also means you might not get to see some of the animals.  Seeing as how it is only like 15 minutes from us, we decided it would be a good trip and we could leave around noon and still get back in time.  It is kind of pricey though (like $20 each adult), otherwise I think we would go more often.

The animals are all native to the Northwest (hence the name).

Very top center, barn owls perched

Bald eagle

They have a tram ride that takes about an hour.  You wind through acres and acres of wetlands, a big hill, and forests and can see anything natural that doesn't tend to attack each other (so no cougars but plenty of bison, reindeer, birds, elk, mountain goats, rams, etc.)  We came at a very good time because spring is when the babies are born!  We were even the only tram car that caught glimpse of baby mountain goats (we couldn't get the others' attention because we and one other family were alone in the last car and the tour guide can't hear us).

View of a valley

The baby bison are the orange ones

a hard to see mountain goat

Some rams

Sawyer's favorites were definitely the "Svens"

Sawyer and a beaver playing

This wolverine kept coming up to him in a stare-off

Bobcat about to go drink some water

raccoon next to sawyer's head

 We also saw a black bear (the grizzlies were off exhibit), a cougar, wolves, and one of Sawyer's favorites (he made us go back and look a second time) the "Pokey-cone" (Porcupine).  I was sad because we didn't get to see my favorite, the lynx (they're so cute) but that's what happens when they put them in natural habitats- they can go hide in some bushes.

I'm hoping to go back in the fall because that is when they are looking for mates and you get to see the rams head-butt each other and antlered animals tug of war and stuff.  It sounds pretty cool!

Portland Rock n Roll

Andy is signed up for 3 rock n roll marathons this year.  If you get a 3 pack, they are the price of 2, plus he will get SEVEN medals (3 finishing medals, 2 encore heavy medals for doing more than one, the pacific peaks for PDX and SEA, and the cascadia for PDX, SEA, and Vancouver.)  Today was the Portland.

After he got back from work on Saturday we headed down.  We were staying at his Aunt's house.  We arrived and hit up the packet pick up and expo.  I am very pleased with this marathon series.  We've done quite a few races and this was super organized, complete with instructional videos on how to install your timer to a place you can show your ID and get a wrist band so you don't have to carry your ID during the race to get your beer afterwards.  They also had a lot of booths with health and exercise products.  We got his bag and shirt, and headed out.

Back at Andy's aunts, Sawyer had so much fun.

We had a pretty crappy night's sleep due to Sawyer kicking us.  We slept in the same bed and made Kellan a bed in the bathtub (which worked perfectly and he was super cozy.)  Unfortunately instead of waking up at 5, he accidentally slept in until 6!  We were nervous about parking and road closures so it was kind of stressful.  We arrived however, to find a VERY close parking lot one block from the start, so we were all happy again.

Andy was brave and wore a Sounders jersey for the race.  Portland and Seattle are intense rivals, so it was kind of cool.  He said he only got booed during his race once ;)

We walked around and again, I was super impressed.  They even have a huge meet-up area for after the race with letter signs so you can go to your last name to meet up with your runner.

So many bananas

Andy's timer chip came with instructions so we tied one to Sawyer's shoe too :)

I don't have the pics of the start since I took a video (you can find on my instagram), but I have the first people.  You can see a guy there that dribbles two basketballs the entire race.  Super impressive!

We waited around and Kel fell asleep in the ergo for awhile and Sawyer played on my phone.  We were all starting to get grumpy though and hungry (I hadn't ate a single thing) when an angel appeared.  He was a Jimmy John's employee and was handing out free sandwiches.  I have never been so happy to see someone in my life!  We ended up getting a few and all three of us ate.  They got antsy so there was about 20 minutes there I was annoyed and overwhelmed, but that is pretty good considering I had them for a few hours alone in a public place with nowhere to run around.

Andy finally came in, officially clocking at 2:15, which is really good because he didn't even start running until a month ago :/ heh heh, he had set his corral time way back past the 2:30 though so we had to wait awhile for him since they stagger the corrals every 2 minutes and he was in corral 17.  He crossed the finish line feeling great though!  Sawyer was proud to wear his medal.

He even fell asleep with it and holding his cowbell!

The weather was shifty with rain off and on but I was really happy with the experience and recommend that to anyone.  With the race so big, they shut down roads in the city so it is great site seeing as well.  There are people that go to a ton of them- the medal for doing 10 in a year is HUGE.  There are also bands along the course, which is cool.  The next one is Seattle, June 21st!

Chantal and Stephanie's party

My former manager Chantal is getting married to her lifelong best friend Stephanie.  They are doing the ceremony on a cruise so the people that don't agree (her fiancee grew up mormon so some of her family might have issues) don't have to make a difficult decision to attend or to try to make up excuses.  For the rest of us that love them but can't go on the cruise, they held a small party at a bar in Capitol Hill Seattle on Thursday night.  I hadn't really hung out up there much, but knew it was the happening spot for 20-somethings and anyone different and weird.  It was pretty cool up there and definitely busy for a Thursday night.

Char drove me, Grayson, and Jake (all former co-workers, Jake is Char's bro in law).  It was SO fun hanging out with them all again.  We spent the whole time talking about how we used to love and look forward to work everyday and joking around.  I miss Jake's awkward jokes and me and Grayson would just BS for hours and get annoyed when customers came in to interrupt.  We also got to see Vicente and Laeshun and some other people we have worked with.  It is funny about any type of at&t gathering- we have all seen or worked with each other in the area because we have district meetings, people have to change stores a lot, and people fill in at other stores so it kind of turns into a giant hugging reunion when you get everyone together.  I wish our other old co-workers could come, but they had plans and no sitters and we will see them again at the end of the month for Grayson's going away (he got an internship at Nordstrom.)

Jake, me, Chantal, Char, Grayson

We were all terrible at selfies

This one cracked me up

It was busier than this, we just got there early.  It was a cute place that served all drinks in mason jars

It was a bit crazy because I called Andy on the way home and had him set out clothes and makeup for me, I ran inside and grabbed them, then ran out the door, and didn't get home until 12:30ish, then had to get up for work at 5.  It was definitely worth the zombie status on Friday though.  I hope we can all hang out a lot more.

Recent accomplishments

I don't blog much as much anymore, so I always feel like squeezing stuff into each one.  I end up missing some things, but it is so hard to find the time to do it!  There were a few things lately I should post about:

Andy got me garden boxes for mother's day and we took all the blackberry bushes out of the back yard.  He also trimmed all the crap growing back there so it almost looks like we have grass (technically we do, it is just a ton of rocks under with it that will break your ankle if you tried to run around in it).

Monday I was feeling a little off, but then the gas light came on during my drive to work.  Most people don't know, but I get really bad driving anxiety.  Like really bad.  It is weird because any other aspect of my life I am really easy going and I don't stress about anything, but driving is a whole other world. I also hate pumping gas- Andy always gets it.  But driving is the worst if I don't know where I am.  Anyway I got off in Renton to find gas and I was bawling driving around and it was literally making me sick so I called in that day.  Plus my car's counter went from 23 miles left until the gas went out to ZERO.  I know it couldn't be accurate but that literally almost gave me a heart attack.  Anyway, I ended up taking the long way home because I called Andy and he told me the road I was on would hook up with highway 18.  I calmed down a bit on that gorgeous drive through countryside but was still feeling like crap all day headache and all.  I decided to buy a few plants for my garden boxes on the way home so now hopefully we will have a few vegetable plants producing some food.  I have no idea what I'm doing though.

I have also been keeping up with my Couch 2 5K.  I haven't missed any days and I haven't had to walk any extra.  Yesterday was the "dreaded" week 5 day 3 which is when they make the first jump to "long" runs.  I'm sure my friends will find this laughable because everyone I know runs half marathons and 5 miles daily, but this is when you run 20 minutes straight and I was so excited to actually do it without any walk breaks. :)

The other day a friend from high school (we had PE together for 2 years) posted on FB that she wanted to go for a hike with someone on Wednesday, so I took her up on it.  She had seen everyone post about Rattlesnake Ledge and I like that one, so we went there.  It is 1160ft elevation gain, 4 miles round trip, and I had just done my first "long" run so I was a little nervous, but we did it!  It felt great.  It is also awesome that she did so well because she is such an inspiration- she recently lost over 100 lbs this past year!  We had a lot of fun and went at the perfect time- there was hardly anyone there, but on our way down we passed quite a few people.  The weather was perfect at around 75ish but a little cooler in the forest.

Panorama view from the ledge

This is from the lake at the bottom and the top of that cliff thing is where you end up

Panorama view of North Bend from the back side

I am also getting a little better at guitar.  Right now I can play Wonderwall (Oasis), Burn (Ellie Goulding), I'm yours (Jason Mraz), Hey Jude (Beatles), and I'm starting to learn Stairway to Heaven but it's using your fingers picking and I'm used to chords with a pick and it is REALLY hard to finger the left hand so I think it will take awhile.