So anyway, I started hunting for plane tickets to San Francisco. I've never been and Micah went last when we was like 12.. Plus one of my good friends just got back from a trip with her fam there and I got super jealous of the amazing-ness that San Fran has to offer! I also wanted to take a little trip without Livi, just the "three" of us.. Micah, me, and our babe #2. For his 29th birthday, when I was preggers with Olive, I kidnapped Micah to Las Vegas to go see Jason Mraz in concert (one of Micah's favorites). And apparently I'm starting a new "babymoon" tradition for us haha.
My parents leaped on the opportunity to babysit miss Livi for the weekend -- they kinda love her just a bit. ;) And I've gotta say, I'm SO grateful that Micah and I are so incredibly blessed with living close to our parents to both be involved in our children's lives and have a close relationship with them. I never had that, growing up in Washington separate from my extended family, so it's really such a blessing.
And my sister took my fur baby, Zoey for the weekend. :) she has 2 dogs herself so it's like a weekend at a doggy care center for Zo.. Only she won't come home slightly depressed haha.
Now the only work is to find flights, hotels, & car rental. Once I started comparing prices, talking with my parents and sister, they recommended I take Micah up to Seattle.. I haven't been back since we moved away (more than 12 years ago) and that idea seriously took root. I had to go to Washington. Especially in the Fall, um hello beautiful!
Tickets were the exact same cost, from SLC to San Fran and SLC to Seattle. Sooooo, flights: booked!
Quick searches of hotels.com and booking.com and I found our hotels, right in the cities I wanted.
Now for the sneaky part... I had to pack Micah's bag, Olive's over night bag for my parents, Zoey's bag & goodies, not to mention all my crap too... Sheesh! Luckily under my bed has lots of storage. ;)
Our trip was set for October 24-26, but I had to drop our babes off to their destinations before the morning of our flights.. I would've been so screwed if I had to swing by Sandy & Draper before our 8:30am flights.. Kill me. So Thursday, the 23rd I took Micah out on a date, with the pretense that we won't be home all day the 24th so I needed to drop off Zoey to my sister and we were dropping Olive off to my parents to babysit.. And then we just wouldn't pick her back up haha.
Not gonna lie, dropping off Zoey and Livi and not crying or losing it was SO incredibly hard! I hate leaving Zoey when we go out of town, so many of our trips we can take her with us so I don't have to do it very often.. And it breaks my heart everytime, even though I know she will have SO much fun and totally forget about me.. I still miss her and her massive tongue & crazy hyper yet snuggly personality. Best dog ever.
And don't even get me started on leaving Liv.. Since she's been in my life, I have only slept one night without her.. When my parents babysat for us over our anniversary. And this is a whole weekend! (Ps I'm writing this as we're still in Seattle and it's killing me.. Lots.) So when we dropped off Liv on Thursday night, it took everything in me to not burst into tears as we left. And I may have kissed her about 30 times more and hugged her as tight as I could. Love that little babe. It's hilarious, if someone said hey do you want a weekend vacation with no kids? Of course I'd say 'absolutely!' But then immediately miss my baby soooo much.
Anyway, after putting on my best poker face, we went to Mt. Fuji's steakhouse & sushi in Sandy and literally ate 4 sets of sushi rolls! Don't worry, mine were all tempura. ;) but Micah had some kinda squishy sushi that was a bit nasty hahaha. It looked SO gross! And I love sushi. The worst part is being prego I want it 10x more than normal. Like I could have it for every meal and be stoked on life.
I then kinda had to tell Micah a part of our plans.. That we had to wake up at 5:45am for our mystery busy day and that we weren't picking up Zoey or Livi til later. We had plans to go to dinner and a movie, but it was already 9:30, and I still had secrets to do.. Aka do last minute packing and throw our bags in the jeep without Micah noticing.
So we went home to a super quiet empty house.. Actually really depressing and almost made me cry, missing Livi and Zoey again SO much.. And I promptly fell asleep on the couch. Awesome. I woke up at 1:00am to Micah saying he was going to bed (he had been working apparently). I jumped up and told him he needed to go in the basement for a few minutes while I did some birthday prep... Kill me, I was so tired!
I shoved a bunch of probably unnecessary crap into my bag and tiptoed over to my garage door. Just as I opened the door, to my pitch black garage, the second bay door started to open. What the...? I immediately smacked the button to stop it.. Stray car accidentally has the same code? Then I noticed a shadow moving outside.. Like a person. And the door started to open again! I held my breath, freaked OUT and hit the button again, unable to lock it because it was already being opened. Then the primary door starts to roll open too!! I hit the stop on that too and finally got my courage up and shored "Who's there?!" To which I got the reply, "it's me."
Micah.
Scaring the literal crap almost out of me. Oh that man. He knew he wasn't allowed upstairs while I did my secret whatever, and he had something to throw away, and he thought going into the garage (silently like a MURDERER) would be a great idea. Stinker. I got so shaky feeling, ugh! Terrifying. And unnecessary. Again, total stinker. So I closed the doors on him and told him to stay in the basement! I quickly threw the bags in the back of the jeep and let him upstairs. We went to bed almost immediately after that because 5:45 was fast approaching.
I set just a few alarms...
Friday, October 24th
5:45am came way too quickly.. And it was still dark outside, ugh. It's been almost 2 years since I've had to wake up consistently before the sun had risen.. I forgot how much it sucks to be awake before the sun is.
Anyway, I blindfolded Micah, threw my carry-on bag in the back and sped off. One big positive with where we live: the airport is only 25 minutes away. And that's if you're driving slowly. ;)
Unfortunately for me, Micah is exceptionally good with directions and bangerter is also a super obvious road, with the cement slabs, so he totally knew which direction we were headed. Stinker. He took his blindfold off when he guessed the airport was our destination, but he had no idea Seattle was our end game. At least I pulled off the important surprise!
The traffic was pretty light thankfully, so we got to the airport and into the long-term parking right on schedule. We sardined ourselves into an extremely tightly packed shuttle, and pushed through security with no delays. I bought a teeny tiny $5 muffin (totally not worth it) and massive water bottle (actually totally worth it) then we hopped on our plane.
My last flight was to Florida, for our cruise, and that trip took absolutely foreeeeever to get there.. So going into this trip I totally planned on a long flight, so I brought my journal, my current book Eragon, our iPad, my Nintendo DS, and snacks.. Lotsa snacks. The flight to Seattle was a non-stop, less than two hours, and a total breeze. I watched a few episodes of Parks and Rec (rad show, if you haven't already partaken of its amazingness) and barely had time to finish a quick journal entry before we landed. I love that flight.
Once we had our rental car, I typed in our hotel to my google maps app and started our 2.5 hour drive. Micah had a conference call so it worked out perfectly. Mind you, when I moved from Washington to Utah, I was 13. I never drove a car in Washington or paid attention to the roads much as a kid.. So for me to be driving us in my hometown yet a totally foreign state at the same time was a little odd. I am a confident driver so I wasn't intimidated with freeway driving or anything like that.. It was more surreal though than anything else. And I really wanted to just stare around at the trees and view, but kinda had to focus on not crashing our car. ;)
You might be wondering, why the long drive? Well, one of my fondest memories of Washington is actually a multitude of memories, all compacted onto one place.
Leavenworth.
Imagine a Swiss German town, lots of shopping and dining, live music and festivals all year round. All the shops are written as shoppe and things like haus is the norm for a building to be labeled. Like waffle haus, coffee haus... Totally normal. And every building is old, really cool, authentic old. The ambiance is cozy and really intimate, yet it's also surprisingly big to where you want to have multiple days to explore all of its nooks and crannies.
Every year my family and I would travel up to Leavenworth, blasting Manheim Steamroller the whole way up. We would sled down a huge hill, eat caramel apples, drink big mugs of hot chocolate, and shop in the hat shoppe and wood shoppe.. I'll explain their awesomeness later.
I found our hotel, Obertal Inn, on hotels.com that was really highly reviewed and wasn't horrifically expensive. Plus it was right on Main Street so we could just park our car and walk all around the shops. :)
As Micah did his conference call, and the highway turned into the canyon freeway, I was able to really take in the beauty of Washington. Finally. My favorite trees were way bigger than I remember them being. Seriously towering over the roads. I may have taken some pictures with my cell as I was driving.. But maybe not. No judgement.
All over the mountains were these amazing thick clouds. At some points you couldn't even see the tops of the mountains, or even where the sky began. Just a wall and ceiling of thick awesome clouds. The coolest weather ever. And of course the pics don't do it justice.
Micah wrapped up his call about 45 minutes til we arrived so he was able to enjoy the view undistracted. We pulled into Leavenworth and I was beside myself giggling with excitement.. I was finally back in Leavenworth!!!
We pulled up to our hotel, dumped our stuff in the room, and wandered out to find some food.
We were both starving and decided on the restaurant Idlewild Pizza. Seriously was one of the best meals I've had in a long time. The ambiance was really cool, pretty rustic/warehouse ish, yet cozy. Kinda hard to explain haha. We ordered a house salad with a pepperoni pizza and freakin devoured the whole thing.
After lunch we shopped and wandered around. It was pretty chilly up there, only about 45 degrees and cloudy.. A welcome change from Utah's 70 degrees and sunny skies. I think I'm the only person other than my sister that's happier when it's cloudy and stormy than when it's sunny. Even in the summer I prefer grey skies.
The leaves were starting to fall and so the sidewalks had big crunchy maple leaves everywhere. Amazing!
As a kid, one of the traditions was taking silly pictures in the hat shoppe and playing with the toys in the wood shoppe.
This trip we still honored that tradition!
We bought some toys for Liv in the wood shoppe for Christmas (which I'm dying to give her now) and then grabbed a much needed caramel apple.
Messy gooey amazingness.
My favorite kind of shop as an adult this trip was the Christmas store, Kris Kringle. It's literally 3 stories tall, filled with SO many Christmas goodies!
We shopped around, bought an ornament for this year's tree and found some Christmas advent candles. Micah and I buy Christmas ornaments at every place we vacation, if it's feasible at least.
And the advent candles were a childhood tradition where it's numbered 1-25 and each night in December you burn down one of the numbers. You can't find them in Utah, have to order them online, but I found the classic perfect ones there so bought several for myself and some for my mom. Christmas is a big deal in the Elsholz/Russell house!
Micah found some amazing clogs in another store haha
And I somehow was talked into buying a ridiculous shirt that Micah couldn't stop laughing at. Yep.
After the our last stop, I was pretty tired of standing.. My growing belly was getting heavier!
We went back to the room to drop off our goodies and to relax while we chose somewhere to eat. Once we decided we hopped in the car and drove about 30 seconds to the restaurant.
We are at Gustav's for dinner -- a Bavarian restaurant with hearty portions.
Lots of hot chocolate was consumed.. Seriously so yummy!
After we ate dinner we went back to our room and fell asleep to the sound of rain on our roof, the glow of our fireplace making it even cozier.
Saturday, October 25th
Micah's Birthday!
The following morning we ate breakfast in bed (courtesy of Micah bringing us breakfast up from the hotel lobby).
Horrible pic but it's a waffle with Nutella & strawberries on top. Yum!
It was an incredible morning, very cloudy and totally beautiful.
It was honestly a little hard to pack up the car and leave.. I have missed this ambiance so much!
But we checked out of the hotel and headed out of town, heading down a different route, towards my home town Mill Creek.
Seriously, people live with this kind of beauty all around them. I'm so jealous.
Micah wanted to touch some "furry trees" so we took a detour and headed down a random road and touched the trees for the birthday boy. ;)
And posed for some legit selfies
About 2 hours after we left Leavenworth we arrived in Mill Creek! I didn't recognize anything in the outskirts of the city but as we got closer to my old neighborhood, things started looking familiar. I had to pose next to my fave sign ever!
Micah literally parked on the sidewalk (our sedan haha) to take this pic for me.
We passed my elementary school, the pathway I'd walk to school/ride my bike on, and drove into my old neighborhood. Cottonwood. Seriously such a darling neighborhood, even as an adult and homeowner I still see the charm in it now that I did as a child.
My old house.
Seriously, can you believe those trees are real?! And that house is a 2 story home, pretty big. Yet it looks mini next to those beasty amazing trees. Ahh I miss it! My bedroom was the one above the garage, on the far left. On summer nights I'd sit on my windowsill, window open, and put my feet out on the roof, looking out at the stars.
The neighborhood had so many bike trails that my bro Mark and I would ride down.. On Sunday's we would go with my dad too and take more relaxed trails.
We stopped off at another Mill Creek sign, this one at the country club I took swim lessons at as a child. Total flash back city!
After my trip down memory lane, we grabbed a quick lunch at Wendy's (a baked potato sounded amazing, and it totes was) then headed into Bellevue where our hotel was.
In retrospect I wish I had booked a hotel in Seattle, not Bellevue because we had to commute across the bridge/highway about 20 minutes to get downtown. Next time we'll stay in the heart of the city. And ps there totally will be a next time!
We passed by Overlake Hospital, where I was born.. Crazy! And got to our Marriott. It was sooo nice! I of course forgot to take any pics of the hotel but it was really cozy and had the typical level of classiness that Marriott's have.
Micah had some calls to make once we were in the room, so I laid down on our bed.. Which was amazing ps.. And once he was done we headed out to shop and eat.
The drive to Seattle was fun, going over the bridges and through downtown. I love Salt Lake City, but Seattle is prettier, absolutely. It's actually a bit cleaner too, probably because it takes a bath everyday with the rain. We parked our car down in Pikes Place and wandered around the fishy warf.
Again dumping rain -- amaaaaazing!
The shops had just closed when we got there so we grabbed some hot chocolate at the original Starbucks and decided to drive-site see Seattle.
While driving downtown I saw this sign and almost cried.
We decided on Cheesecake Factory for dinner, so we parked our car in a parking garage and walked to the restaurant.
GameWorks was a place I loved as a kid.. Like a massive arcade for kids and adults. We popped in to show Micah it's awesomeness and saw this classic stereotype Asian kid rocking the Dance Dance.
Right before this pic, he was leaning forward, hands on his knees like he had just danced his heart out. We might have stayed to watch him jam out to some sweet techno beats.. And maybe taken a rad video of his mad skills. Or maybe I didn't do that. But I really did.
Cheesecake was amazing, as usual.
They also brought Micah a super yum cheesecake birthday loveliness.
Micah laughed and literally blew out the candle before he could even make a wish haha! So hopefully that isn't bad luck.
After we devoured the raspberry white chocolate goodness, we headed to the movie theatre right by and saw a movie. The tickets were SO expensive compared to Utah's! $25 for both of us. Ouch!
We didn't end up getting back to our room til almost 1am -- long day! But it was a great long birthday for Micah. I'm so lucky we found each other and that he is exactly the kind of husband I envisioned as a little girl and then tried to find as an adult.
Sunday, October 26th
Well I accidentally slept in til 10:30am.. Oops!
We then hurried and got ready, checked out of our hotel around 12pm, and headed downtown. Our flight left at 5pm, which meant we had to leave Seattle around 3:30pm to get gas in our rental, then return it and be at check in at 4pm.
I really wanted to take Micah on a ferry over to the San Juan islands and check out some of my other favorite places on earth, but it just didn't work out, timing wise. So we did the next best thing which was shop our brains out!
I totally spaced it on taking pictures of downtown.. Fail! But we didn't do anything terribly photo-worthy that day.
Micah found some clothes at the Nike store and at Forever 21, and we grabbed an adorable Seahawks shirt for Livi at Old Navy. My belly right now is just in between where I don't necessarily look prego, but normal clothes don't fit really well anymore so I wasn't too interested in shopping for once. ;)
We grabbed a quick and slightly sketchy lunch at a mall (totally blanking on the name) and watched the Monorails go by.
Our departure time came far too quickly, so we headed back to the car and made the trek to return home.
It was a little bitter sweet for me, sitting in the airport waiting to board our plane. I already missed the greenery & the grey skies.. Not to mention the familiar second home vibe that Washington gives me.
The flight home was a quick one, filled with more Parks and Rec episodes and salted pretzels.
A packed shuttle ride and quick 20 minute drive got us to my parents house, my arms aching to hold miss Liv again.
Olive seemed bigger to me when I picked her up at my parent's house.. I missed her dimpley smile and her crazy curls SO much! And when we arrived to my sister's house to get Zoey, she literally could've cared less about us. She was obsessed with Jess's dogs and totally didn't want to come home.
This trip was SO nice to reconnect as just the two of us, before baby #2 comes and to not having our little babe affect our schedule, or having to run home to let Zoey out to pee. As much as my heart ached and I missed both my babes, I really am so grateful that we were able to take the weekend for the two of us.
Til next time, Washington!
xoxo
Mandi
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