See you later, alligator

Our picnic at Golden Gardens to see off Karen was perfect, well except for the whole "seeing her off" part. We'd all like her to stay, but duty calls and she's been given a great opportunity to shine! Other than that, the weather, the sunset, the meteor shower and the company were all just lovely.

The guest of honor and me.

James and Mads.

RyRy manning the grill.

The ladies

Not sure what's going on in this picture - between Maddie discovering something and me apparently eyeing the chips and salsa, it's funny.

Reason #692 of why I love Seattle.

TGIF

My weekend will be starting with a little Golden Gardens picnic to officially say goodbye to Karen, who is moving to North Carolina. (She's taken the position of Assistant Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at East Carolina University and while I'm SUPER proud of her, it'll be sad to see another friend move away.) After the picnic, we'll likely go out somewhere in Ballard, maybe the Loft?

Then tomorrow morning, the view below will be waiting for me at home. I'm very excited for the rest of the weekend to be kick-back- sitting on the deck, BBQing, watching the sunset, drinking some good wine with my parents on Samish Island. It's one of my happy places.

Do you have any fun weekend plans?

Recipe for a Perfect Wednesday Evening

2 Tasty sandwiches
Generous helping of a beautiful sunset
A sprinkle of sailboats on the horizon
A light breeze
2 warm jackets
Plenty of Golden Gardens
1 cute fella

Combine all ingredients for a delightful treat and enjoy.

(Martha ain't got nothing on this recipe)

One of these things is not like the other

Take a guess, but I suspect it won't be hard.

Golden Gardens

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Seattle is cool.

As you may recall, my friend, Danielle is in town and staying with me for a couple nights (unfortunately I've been coming home late from work, but she understands) and she has wanted to do some of the more Seattle-like activities that I totally take for granted. For instance, yesterday she biked to Gasworks just to take a picture of the beautiful skyline because she misses it. What is crazy is that I look at Gasworks outside my office window on a daily basis and forget how lucky I am to always take in the beautiful scenery!

Today she is going to Pike Place Market and that got me thinking - why the heck don't I go to the market more often? I could use some honey, fresh flower and amazing mini-donuts more often. She also is going to go walk around downtown for fun. I couldn't even tell you the last time I did that!

This past weekend we went to Golden Gardens for a BBQ picnic (where we had awesome food including homemade potato salad, brats, watermelon and cucumber salad, caprese, root beer floats, yummy cupcakes, rice crispy treat and more!). I live like 5 minutes away from Golden Gardens, but I haven't been since Kimber's birthday last June! We also walked around Greenlake which I sort of forgot how much I liked - since all I do is run these days, I forget how pleasant the lake is for a leisurely stroll.

So I've set a new goal: I'm going to enjoy more of the typical Seattle locales and activities. It's pretty much the best city ever, so might as well enjoy it!