Sunday, July 31, 2011

wedding time!

My senior year at UW I joined Husky Winter Sports (HWS) which was a club that taught skiing lessons at Stevens Pass. I made some of my best friends in HWS and this weekend I was thrilled to celebrate two Huskies getting hitched! Congrats Kelley & Roko and cheers to your beautiful life together!!!

Friday evening we had a lovely dinner in Sandy, Oregon at Kelley's parent's house. From their back yard we had an amazing view of the valley, river, and Mt. Hood. Perfect evening!

Saturday we had a lovely girl's brunch at Mother's Bistro in Portland. Kelley's last meal as a single lady!


Time to get ready for the wedding!

Picture perfect

Something blue

One last toast!

Finally it was time for the wedding! The ceremony & reception were at Roko's dad's house in Ridgefield, WA and it was absolutely beautiful.

Here comes the bride

Kiss the bride

Introducing Mr. & Mrs. Kruze!

Cutting the cake

Where it all began: the HWS crew

Such a fun wedding! Lots of love to Kelley & Roko - have an amazing honeymoon to Africa!!!

Going to the Capitol

So this weekend was Portland part 2! Last weekend on our drive down, as we were passing Olympia Marc asked "do you want to stop and visit the Capitol?" I said yes and then he kept driving past the exit. huh??? Apparantly he thought I was kidding but I wasn't. Since I grew up in Spokane, I never visited the Capitol on school field trips like Marc had, so this weekend on our way to Portland we made the detour into Olympia. It was definitely worth the pit stop! The building was beautiful and it's free & open to visitors.




Once we got to Portland, we stopped to visit the Rose Garden. It was beautiful - you could see Mt. Hood in the distance.


The other fun thing was meeting up with my friend, Sally, who I haven't seen in 13 years! We haven't aged a bit, right? :)
The rest of the weekend was dedicated to Kelley & Roko's wedding festivities! I'll create a separate post about their beautiful wedding!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Portland

Summer arrived just in time for our weekend in Portland! Marc and I took the day off work on Friday and drove down for the Katy Perry concert at the Rose Garden. I love that Portland is such an easy town to get around - here we are waiting for the Max (public light rail). We stayed at The Nines downtown and it worked perfectly to hop on the Max to get to the concert. Plus it was in the free ride zone!

The concert was fantastic! The only bummer was that the opening act, Robyn, was sick and had to cancel. We were really looking forward to seeing Robyn so that was disappointing, but we still had a fun night! Katy had a lot of energy on stage and put on a great show - and our seats were in row 7! Here she is on a floating cloud that flew around the stadium.

Saturday morning we went to the Portland Farmers Market at Portland State University. It was one of the best markets I've ever seen! It was huge - tons of different farmers with produce, plus local businesses selling baked goods, preserves, honey, olive oil, fresh cider, hand-made soaps, etc. Plus there was a stage with live music and it was in the middle of a park so it was beautiful. The best part was the food - I found two favorites: New Cascadia which had the most amazing gluten-free and vegan olive bread! Best gluten-free anything I have ever had - even Marc who usually is not a fan swore it tasted like regular bread. And Petunia's Pies and Pasteries that had a ridiculously delicious Salted Caramel Hazelnut Bar. I can't wait to go again next time I'm in town - which lucky for me is next weekend :)

Then as we were walking around we came across a car show. Fun to see how the cars have changed over the years. Check out this old BMW - enter from the front???

Next up was the berry festival - aka heaven. Have you ever had these white raspberries? WOW, they were amazing!

We ended the night with dinner/drinks at Departure which was the restaurant/bar on the roof of our hotel. Fantastic view - we enjoyed watching the sunset over the city!


Next weekend we will be back in Portland for a wedding - looking forward to another great trip!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

It's official: Bali

It's official: Bali here I come! I'm going to attend yoga teacher training at Vibrant Living Yoga at the end of September. My tuition is paid, my flights are booked, and now I'm counting down the days!

I always wanted to study abroad during college but never did so I'm super excited about getting to live in Bali for a whole month! There are a ton of different yoga teacher trainings to choose from so one of the reasons I like this one is because they serve raw vegan food for all the meals!
Just look at this amazing food
and the breathtaking beaches

I also like that they have multiple yoga instructors teaching different styles of yoga, so it's not an intensive study of just one method of yoga. Having the course over a long period of time also provides opportunities for days off to go experience the beautiful nature and culture Bali has to offer. I already have a growing list of things I want to do including: visiting temples, seeing the rice paddies, mountain biking down a volcano, going to the Monkey Forest, watching the fire and trance dance. . .the list goes on :)

From what I have read online, many of the cafes in Ubud have wifi so I am planning on blogging while I am there. If nothing else, I will write about my adventures while I'm there and post them online when I return. For now, I'm off to study - I have 4 books to read and write reports on by August 15th. Yikes, cue flashbacks to school!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Stand up paddle boarding

Today I went stand up paddle boarding for the first time with Karen & Marc. We bought a deal on Living Social last year for a 2-hr lesson with Washington Surf Academy. Originally we planned a date to go last October but the weather was bad so the owner, Andrew, advised us to wait until the summer. Well unfortunately that didn't help anything because we still ended up with a rainy day and wetsuits rather than sunshine and swimsuits. Regardless of the drizzly weather, we still had a fantastic time! It's quite a workout, so the cooler temps probably helped us from getting too tired.

There were 12 students and 2 guides in our group. After a brief lesson on how to get the board into the water and the correct way to get onto the board, we were standing up and ready to paddle! The boards look vaguely like a longer and wider surf board. The main difference, to me, was the stance - we were standing with our feet hip width and parallel to each other, rather than one foot forward/one foot back (like in surfing). Once I got comfortable with the body position, I found it quite easy to balance. About half the class ended up falling into the water at some point during the lesson but luckily I wasn't one of them.

I only wish we had our camera with us! Right after the lesson we went to West Marine and bought a dry sack so next time we will be able to take the camera with us without fear of dropping it into the water. Until then, here is a cool picture of some other people :)

Now that we know how to do it, there are plenty of places around Seattle that rent boards without us having to take another lesson. I also want to try stand up paddle yoga sometime!

Overall it was a fun way to spend the day and I look forward to going again! Although next time I won't complain about my arms being tired after 2 hrs...considering this guy paddled 300 miles over 5 days between Hawaiian islands. wow, that's inspiring!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Warrior Dash

Today I participated in the Warrior Dash out in North Bend with two of my friends. The Warrior Dash is a a 5k trail run with crazy obstacles mixed into the course. Think climbing a 30 foot wall with a rope, crawling under barbed wire, teetering over wooden planks, jumping over a fire pit and diving into a mud pit...just to name a few. I first heard about the Warrior Dash last summer but the closest event was in Oregon. Luckily this year they added a Washington location and we were quick to sign up. We had a fantastic time together and are already looking forward to next year! Here are a few of our "after" photos. Next year we need to recruit a photographer to take pictures of us along the way...any volunteers? :)

A little mud in the eye never hurt anyone


Mighty warrior women

lots of mud = lots of smiles!