Another fantastic weekend getaway with awesome friends, three days of surf,  yummy food, hours of dominos and beachfront fireworks.  The sun joined us too – we could even see Tatoosh Island!

Cape Flattery

Anyway, the surf was awesome.  We only made it out once but we went to Short Sands – a place Matty showed us a couple of years ago.  It’s a quick quarter-mile or so hike through a grove of old growth forest that leads to a protected cove where the waves are always nice (at least the two times we’ve gone!).  We surfed until we were almost too tired to hike out and were completely satisfied despite the downpour of rain the rest of the weekend.  Back in Portland, Matty and Alison took us to Mississippi Street where there’s this really cool salt shop with giant peonies.  Like the size of your head, giant.  We loved them and want them for our wedding.  I hope they’re in bloom mid-April but it may be a bit too early.  Matty and Alison we might have a job for you in transporting giant peonies!

Evidently, it's hard for me to take normal pictures...

We were lucky with great spring weather so we were able to shop Union Square, Haight Ashbury and Hayes Valley happily, ride bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito (our butts hurt SO BAD after!) and hang out in Golden Gate Park.  We also had delicious food, especially from the Clift where we got to sit in the Worlds Largest Table Chair!

We had the best time despite the weekend flying by! I think we’ll try to make it to SF every couple of years for traditions sake – if I say it on the blog, we have to do it!! Below is a highlight of my favorite moments and a video Kevin put together on our bike ride.  Click HERE for all of our weekend pictures.

I have a print of a similar picture (that I got on my trip to SF with D!) so it was fun to replicate it!

On our bike ride to Sausalito!

World's Largest Table Chair!

My new bag that I'm in love with!

My apologies for the furlough.  Its’ been a lot busy with little to write about.  Funny how that works.  Here’s the holiday re-cap:

For our two year anniversary, Kevin took me on a surprise overnight date! Poor Kevin, after last year (which was a super surprise – like I had no idea it was even happening surprise), I told him it’s expected now. He set the bar too high for himself. Lucky me, he loves surprising me even more than I love being surprised! This year, he arranged for us to soak in the pools and get a massage at Banya 5 and stay the night downtown. Yay!

In Spokane, were new traditions of horrible gingerbread house assembly – horrible because Auntie didn’t read the directions first…sneaking the candy was the best part anyway!  And old traditions at the Edburg’s Rockin’ Christmas Eve.  Christmas weekend flew by but I was lucky to get to visit with everyone I had hoped.

For New Years, the annual Brick House, Crock Pot Cookoff Party commenced in Lincoln City, Oregon.  Like walking off the plane in Honolulu, something about this crew gives me a perma-grin I can’t seem to shake.  I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate a great year, and ring in the new, than with these guys.  Well, except Kevin and I would have loved to surf! Stupid winter storm watch, flash flood, BS.  And, yup, my meatball subs with homemade marinara took first place in the crock pot cookoff.  Can I get a “Three-peat!”  Kevin tied with Ambrose for second with his mommy blog Orange Cranberry Bread Pudding!

Much love to you for the best 2010 has to offer. Already, it looks to be full of weddings and babies. I can’t wait!

Thank goodness for Disneyland!  Where all your worries are left behind (nevermind that we went Friday and the game was on Saturday).  I haven’t been since the fifth grade and it was as magical as I remember.  We were blessed with Disneyland expert guides, free tickets, little to no lines (I guess a 30 minute wait constitutes ”no lines”) and a beautiful day.  We hit Space Mountain first, our Disney guides favorite, grabbed a fast pass and waited in the short line.  We ended up riding it three times, without cheating, in less than an hour which we are told could quite possibly put us in the Guinness Book of World Records.  That set the pace for the rest of the day.  Bouncing from ride to ride, park to park (California Adventure didn’t exist my last visit) and meeting our favorite characters.  They were slowly starting to put up Christmas decorations, which I LOVED.  We rode the “ride this ride last because you’ll crap your pants and nobody wants to walk around all day with crappy pants” ride – and did not crap our pants.  And got SOAKED at Splash Mountain.  We thought we were so smart by sitting in the middle.  The middle happens to have water spill over and soak you.  Not splash.  Soak.  My entire right leg, butt and shoe were soaked for hours…but it was my favorite!

We had such a good time as big kids.  I can see why parents get so excited to take their little kids.  The kids were sooo happy.  They really were on cloud nine.  And so much fun for us to watch.  I thought often about Alli meeting all the Princesses and how much she would love all the rides.  When we go back, it might not be free (oh by the way, tickets are up to $97/day for a park hopper pass.  Yeah.  HOLY freakin’ CRAP!  Plus food and souveniers….enough to go broke.) but we now know to go mid-week in November to get your money’s worth!  If I had to wait 110 minutes for a ride, I’m pretty sure I would not be able to smile at the happiest place on earth.

Another magical weekend with awesome friends!  We’ll get ‘em next year, Dawgs!

As we headed, we took a little detour (more like a couple hour detour when all was said and done) to Driftwood, Texas where Salt Lick Bar-B-Que is located.  Yes, MORE BBQ.  My tummy was not thrilled with me by the end of the trip.  But this was the best place yet!  We totally cheated the system by ordering to go, then eating in their banquet room, skirting the 45 minute wait.  Hey!  We had a busy day ahead of us, no time to dilly dally!  Definitely our favorite BBQ of the trip and worth the detour.

By the time we reached San Antonio we had little time to see all of the sites before they closed.  We brushed up in the car on the “must sees” of San Antonio and did all we could.  First we went to the Mission San Jose, the largest mission in San Antonio, known for the Rose window.  Then we hustled over to The Alamo, the shrine of Texas liberty, which happens to be right smack in the middle of their downtown.  We walked through it and around it until they closed then walked the River Walk to LaVillita and back, in search of something, anything, a la mode.  Alamo…a la mode…it was on the mind.  Sweet success with a giant brownie served with ice creams!  

San Antonio was a really cute city.  I wish we had a little more time to explore the intricacies of their downtown.  I’m glad we went though, even if just for a quick tour. 

Back in Austin we met up with Ambrose for dinner at La Condesa, a yummy Mexican restaurant.  Then we went to The Driskill, Austin’s historic and rumored haunted hotel.  We sipped drinks and swapped stories from our trip.  It was the perfect way to wrap up our mini Texan retreat.  Good times with great friends!

This is who we saw:

Phoenix - Usually what would happen is we’d be driving and a Phoenix song would come on the iPod and one of us would say “Oh, I like this, who is it?”  And it was always Phoenix.  The Frenchies put on a solid show. 

Raphael Saadiq - Kevin loves Raphael Saadiq (from Tony! Toni! Tone!).  This is his favorite song.

K’Naan - I felt really cool because I had heard of K’Naan from Mohamed at work.  Somali born rapper, emigrated to Canada.  Raps about his life growing up.  He really engaged the crowd and was fun to watch. 

John Legend – LOVE him.

Them Crooked Vultures - Dave Grohl’s new band with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

Kings of Leon - SO GOOD!  We’ve wanted to see the Tennessee brothers and cousin for awhile now.  Eddie Vedder came out and closed the show with them, singing Slow Night, So Long.  AWESOME!  *Two very random side notes*  Eddie Vedder is wearing the same shirt he wore the Monday before at the Seattle Pearl Jam concert (also an amazing show).  Later, we accidently ran into one of the fans that caught a tambourine Eddie threw into the crowd.

Another day on our feet, we were pretty beat but we had heard about this free after party at the abandoned, soon to be demolished, Austin Power Plant.  We managed to get wrist bands to get in but quickly found out the party was outside.  Only VIPs were allowed inside the power plant.  Not wanting to kick it with the all ages crowd we left to close out one of the bars on 5th, dancing the night away.

For lunch we went to the famed Stubb’s.  Kevin was drooling over how good his ribs were our entire lunch – so, I guess they beat Iron Works from yesterday.  After lunch, we checked out the Market District, home to the largest Whole Foods (their HQ is in Austin) and Waterloo Records.  We knew we had a big night out in SoCo for First Thursday, so we went back to our hotels and enjoyed the free wine and cheese reception (cheese meaning nacho cheese out of a dispenser – d.lish.) and cooled off in the pool.

On our way to First Thursday, we stopped on Congress Bridge to see if the bats would come out and play.  We could hear them going crazy and saw a few flying around under the bridge but again, no big 1.5 million gush of bats.  Too bad   First Thursday in SoCo was full of energy.  All of the shops stay open late and there are a bunch of mini flea markets up and down the street.  They had creepy Halloween creatures out promoting an event, their Rollergirls were rolling around and there was live music everywhere.  My favorite part - Hey Cupcake!, the cupcake shop in the airstream.  They were good, their schtick was a “Whipper Snapper” where you could choose to get your cupcake injected with whip cream.  Clever.  I didn’t do it, but Kevin did.  We still like Cupcake Royale best!

Anj was able to meet up with us for a late dinner at Guero’s (texmex) then we met some of her co-workers at Malverde.  This place was hotttt.  If you were to do chic northwest *right* - it would look like this bar.  There was a great outdoor patio, hanging plants, a moss wall, wood everywhere – but done up modern.  If in Austin, I recommend!

Day one, we flew out at 6am.  Talk about stupid.  That’s REALLY early when you calculate travel time, being at the airport early, etc.  It did give us most of the day to wander around Austin though.  So far, we’ve been to (the tallest) state capitol building, which seems to be infested by locusts – go figure, Ironworks BBQ, South Congress Street (SoCo), and Amy’s Ice Creams.

Austin is known to have the world’s largest “urban” bat colony.  They live under Congress Bridge and every night at dusk 1.5 MILLION bats fly out from under the bridge to find food.  We waited VERY PATIENTLY for a VERY LONG TIME and did not see 1.5 million bats.  We saw about 20.  Total.  No swarms of bats.  Nothing to wait over an hour for.  We decided that it could be one of two things.  1. LIES!  ALL LIES.  Austin’s way to trick tourists and make fun of the hundreds of people waiting for the bats, or 2. the bats weren’t hungry tonight, but they’ll for sure be out tomorrow.  I’m not sure yet we will be waiting for them…

We don’t really have an agenda for the rest of the week, except ACL on Friday.  Just more exploring and lots and lots of sweating, BBQ and TexMex (not necessarily in that order).

Our hotel is by the Real World Austin pad! It's now a restaurant, just like the Real World Seattle pad.