24 September 2008

Weekend with Lizza

Last weekend, my friend Lizza and I met up in Seattle for a weekend of shopping and catching up on each other’s lives. We’ve been friends since the seventh grade and have remained good friends through the years. She now lives in Spokane, WA and we try and meet up somewhere in the middle once a year. One of my earliest posts on this blog was about my friendship with Lizza.

This year, we decided that some shopping would be fun. We met up in Bellevue, WA and spent Saturday at Bellevue Square mall. We had a blast shopping for shoes, cosmetics, athletic wear, and house stuff. And we talked and talked and talked all weekend long.

Our friendship is one I cherish immensely. I consider myself very lucky for having a longtime friend like Lizza, to have someone who innately understands me and knows my life history. Spending time with her is always a highlight for me.

We had some fun with the PhotoBooth in my MacBook...

We were doing the Zoolander look and making some funny faces...




17 September 2008

One namers and initials

When there were no kids yet in our social circle, we gave the couples a name that combined both names - BriVet, EdZel, LeWongs. We couldn’t think of a one namer for Mon and Josh, though.

But now that we’ve graduated to having kids in our world, the one namers have changed to initials:
- MJM (Mon, Josh, Maddy)
- LPD (Louanne, Patrick, Danika)
- YBJ (Yvette, Brian, Joshie)
- LENB (Liezel, Ed, Neo, Bob) => our cats are our kids!

Mon came up with this. I think it’s hilarious!

8 September 2008

Camping!

Ed and I went to Bay View State Park in WA for our last camping weekend of the summer on Sept 6. It also marked the first time Ed and I went camping on our own, without friends. I’m happy to say we had a very enjoyable and peaceful weekend together.

Camping revolves around food. Having not grown up camping, I still find the experience somewhat strange. You bring your kitchen and bedroom outdoors and pretend you’re in the middle of nowhere. I guess some people do camp in the middle of nowhere but that’s too much for me. I prefer car camping which basically means we pack as much of the comforts of home into the car and we use our stuff outdoors.

Bay View State Park is near La Conner WA. Padilla Bay borders the park and overall, the park is clean and well-maintained. There are flush toilets and showers for the campers. We basically spent the weekend cooking, eating, reading our books, tending to our camp fire, and enjoying the view of Padilla Bay. We ventured into La Conner on Saturday afternoon and visited some of the stores and galleries. All in all, a very relaxing weekend.

Relaxing, until we got home on Sunday evening. My flight to Chicago was early the next morning so I had to pack. It would have been fine if that was the only task to do but I picked blackberries around our camp site (there were tons!) so I had to make jam when we got home. After all the jam-making and the packing, it was past 1am. Had to be at the airport by 6:30am. Yeah, my eyebags were in full force come Monday.