Washington "Stay-cation"

With the rising cost of gas, this summer’s buzzword has become the “stay-cation.” Rather than encouraging people to travel, local communities are promoting day trips and activities that require less than a tank of gas. This trend depresses me a bit, as I am a big advocate of travel. I could go on and on about the benefits of seeing the world and experiencing life from a different perspective, but that’s a different blog post for a different day. Instead, I’ll discuss our own “stay-cation,” which came about not as a result of the skyrocketing price of oil, but rather from our roles as host and hostess. A good friend of ours spent a sizable chunk of his summer vacation traveling all over the Northwest, and my mom flew out to claim her prize for attending each and every event of our “Wedding-a-thon.” Our household doubled in size (as long as you don’t count our two basil plants struggling to survive on our windowsill). Having been once described as the “Travel Mary Poppins,” Jon eagerly embraced the challenge of tour guide, made all the more exciting by the fact that he now had the opportunity to show off his hometown. For the week and a half-ish that we entertained guests, we felt like we were on vacation, too. And for all intents and purposes, we were. We saw some cool stuff, we ate too much, and we stayed up too late. All necessary ingredients for a successful vacation. Warning: the next part of this post has the potential of coming across as a laundry list of activities and/or a travel brochure… My mom and our friend arrived within a day of each other, just in time for Reception #4. As we live south of the city, it was necessary to drive through it on the way to the lake, so of course we had to stop in Seattle. Jon thrilled at the chance to uncover various picturesque sites, just whetting the appetite of our guests for an upcoming, longer trip, which was planned for the Fourth of July.

In the meantime, it was up to me to entertain my mom while Jon was at work, and our friend ventured to Portland. Luckily my mom is flexible and laid-back, so we spent our days exploring Stepford…er, DuPont, and the surrounding areas, including my new school. We also did some shopping; Mom was finally able to experience IKEA and all its glory (including the Swedish meatballs that are a mandatory part of the trip for us). We spent a day at the Tacoma Museum of Glass, which I’ve been meaning to check out since I moved here. Isn’t it funny how we never take the time to be tourists in our own towns?!? But I digress. My mom and I can both honestly say that the glass museum blows. Seriously. We were able to watch a team of artists blow glass in the museum Hot Shop. It was really interesting...and really hot. The artwork is beautiful and even more impressive now that we know how it is produced. Jon joined us for a trek to Olympia, the state capital of Washington. We experienced the Farmers’ Market for the first time (eating delicious Rainier cherries the entire time) and walked along the water before hiking up to the Capitol building. I felt like I was on my fourth grade field trip to Jefferson City again. But these ventures were just small potatoes. The holiday weekend was upon us, and we certainly took advantage of every moment. We hit the ground running on the Fourth, meeting Jon’s dad and his wife at Pike Place Market in the morning before hopping on the streetcar (gee, whose idea was that?) en route to a picnic lunch and the Wooden Boat Festival. We were able to board a few boats and a few of us even got to take a ride around Lake Union. Then it was off to the Seattle International Beer Festival. We have a sixth sense when it comes to finding these things. Yes, we took our family to a beer fest…again. As this festival was near the Space Needle, we hopped on the ever-useful monorail to the waterfront in order to watch the fireworks. Whew. It’s no wonder that we got a late start the following day as we were all pretty exhausted. Plus, the weather was gray and rainy for essentially the first time since our visitors had arrived. Yet that didn’t stop us from visiting the Tall Ships Festival in Tacoma, featuring—you guessed it—tall ships. Again, we got to board some, but unfortunately we were not able to ride any pirate ships…although there were plenty of pirates milling around.

(It's a Captain Jack sandwich!)

If you’re keeping score, you might have realized that there’s still weekend left, so we opted to drive out to Mount Rainier. I was extra-excited because I had never been to see the volcano, either. It’s not uncommon to hear locals proclaim a day to be favorable because “the mountain’s out.” Well, we visited the national park on a day that it wasn’t. But it was kind of cool to be inside a cloud, and it made the fact that there was still snow on the ground in July a bit more believable. Oh, but we’re not finished yet. Jon had a four-day weekend (and I had a three-month weekend), so we headed up to Seattle once again on the Monday after the Fourth of July. Jon took us to a lot of his old haunts around the University of Washington. We stopped at various parks along the way before enjoying a great dinner at an outdoor restaurant. My mom left a few days after that, having had as much fun as we did, I think. Our friend spent a couple of days in Vancouver and then returned to the “Spoon and Captain Jack B & B.” His brother quickly joined the group as the party continued. We attended the Sub Pop 20th Birthday Music Festival, enjoying artists such as Mud Honey, Iron & Wine, and the Flight of the Conchords. The rest of the “stay-cation” consists of a haze of meal after incredible meal. The brothers insisted on cooking for us, so of course, we obliged. I am proud to say that I ate fish…and I liked it. If you look outside right now, you might see some pigs fly by. Congratulations if you’ve made it this far. Hopefully by now you aren’t bored but rather excited at the prospect of visiting us. You, too, could experience all of these adventures firsthand and be mentioned in our blog (but probably not by name, unless you want to be). Just let us know when you’ll be visiting…I think we’ve finally recovered from this round of guests.

EXTREME HEAT!

From the "I should have posted this months ago" file:

The National Weather Service often issues warnings when tornados, heavy snow or high winds are in the forecast, so I was alarmed to see a warning had been issued on an otherwise warm and sunny June 25: -- Severe Weather Alert -- ...HOT WEATHER ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON THIS WEEKEND... TEMPERATURES ON FRIDAY ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM THE 70S ALONG THE COAST TO THE UPPER 70S AND 80S INLAND. ON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY MOST AREAS SHOULD REACH INTO THE 80S...WITH SOME LOW TO MID 90S POSSIBLE. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT A FEW SPOTS COULD APPROACH OR BREAK THE RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR THE DAY…

This is proof positive that everything is relative. While many in the Midwest may scoff at the warning, we here in the Northwest were forced to get the box fan out of the basement and ride out the weekend of EXTREME HEAT! We tried many different things to beat the heat, like going to the lake, and keeping cool with beer.

Unfortunately, the basil didn't makew it through the weekend.

Wedding Finale

A lot of couples spend an entire year planning their weddings. We were able to plan--and execute--four in the same amount of time. It literally was a year to the day. The then-mustachioed Jon dropped to one knee in the middle of Kansas City International Airport on June 29, 2007, and we celebrated our final wedding reception on June 28, 2008.

The locale for this fourth fete was Lake McMurray, Washington in the Sons of Norway Pavilion. While this party had a very laid-back vibe, I still was able to wear my wedding dress one more time, possibly setting the record for "Most times wearing a wedding gown (when marrying the same guy)."


Jon was a trooper for also wearing his suit one more time. He kept it casual, though, by going sans socks.


Normally wearing a suit in June in Washington would be no big deal. However, when we were making final preparations for the big event, we came across a very alarming piece of information. The National Weather Service had issued a weather warning for our weekend of camping and celebrating.

Coming from the Midwest, I'm completely used to all kinds of crazy weather, especially in the summer. From tornadoes to flash floods to severe thunderstorms to heat indices in the triple digits, you name it, Missouri has it. However, in western Washington, the temperatures were holding steady in the 70s on a warm day and I hadn't yet seen a single lightning bolt.

Needless to say, we were intrigued, so we opened the alert on the computer and this is what we found:

Warning: EXTREME Heat!

Temperatures were expected to reach...wait for it...the mid-80s. Gasp. Obviously, we laughed when we read it. Guffawed, really. As did most of our out-of-town guests, also used to hot--often humid--summer weather. (The native Washingtonians, not as much, because it was legitimately hot.)

Okay, so it was a bit stuffy in the pavilion, but that just encouraged people to take a dip in the lake or play bocce ball outside, which is what we'd been hoping for in the first place. The sun shone all day long and the environment was incredibly festive.

Like nearly every other event we host, this one also centered around food. We thought we were pretty clever by getting food from a local brewery under the guise that we would warm it up ourselves. It was a good idea...a great idea if there hadn't been quite so much food. We picked up trays full of ribs and barbequed chicken, mashed potatoes and potato salad; buckets of green salad; and tub after tub of beans and barbeque sauce. (In fact, we still have ribs and chicken in the freezer if you want to come over.) Thank goodness we had the "A-Team."

My mom makes a living from cooking for large groups of people and one of our dear friends is like freaking Wolfgang Puck/Emeril/Bobby Flay/Rachel Ray, so the kitchen was covered. They did such an amazing job, in fact, that one of the other guests complimented "our friends at the brewery." I'm not sure he believed me that they were ringers we had enlisted ourselves.


In addition to these two, we once again were blessed with the help of friends and family. There is no way we could have pulled off yet another reception without them (you know who you are). How else would we have gotten the pavilion set up in time, went shopping to pick up last-minute items, taken pictures, and cleaned up by ourselves?!? And that's only a fraction of the help we received. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have such incredible people in our lives.

Other than watching me try to eat ribs whilst wearing a wedding dress, there weren't really any formal activities.

We were, however, able to recognize a few special individuals. Jon's dad and his wife were awarded with the "Trifecta Award" for attending three out of four of our wedding extravaganzas. (A private ceremony was held to honor a lovely couple who also achieved the "Trifecta" back in Kansas City. I guess that means we still owe my younger brother who can boast the same...) And then finally, the only person--besides Jon and me--to attend all four weddings received the "Wedding-a-thon Award." Congratulations once again go to my mom for such a wonderful achievement.

The remainder of the day was spent eating cake, killing a pony keg full of fresh root beer, and catching up with friends and family, which was followed by another night of camping by the lake. Quite a nice book-end to all this wedding business. I think it's safe to say that we're done and done. Although we were talking just this morning about going to Vegas and getting hitched for the fifth time...

Tip Tap Toe

Back in the day when I took dance lessons (kindergarten through senior year, to be exact), I could never quite decide what to make of the adults in my tap and jazz classes. Was it cool that they still were getting their groove on...or was it more of a pathetic endeavor?

Well, I can now say with authority that they were cool. Really cool. What, praytell, sparked this definitive conclusion? The fact that I am one of those adults taking dance classes. This winter I decided I needed a hobby. Subbing was unfulfilling and I just didn't really have a lot going on (other than planning a plethora of weddings). I have always enjoyed tap dancing, even taking a class in college (by far my hardest one that semester) and "performing" in my service organization's variety shows at the nursing home. So it seemed natural for me to find a studio on the internet and enroll in a teen/adult tap class.

And what an appropriate description that turned out to be. The approximately 16 students in the class covered all ranges of the age spectrum. There were a few middle and high school students, a couple other girls in their 20s like me, several moms with daughters in the class, and even a handful of women in their 60s and beyond. In fact, as we were carpooling to dress rehearsal, one of the women told me that she worked for the military during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Seriously.

But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. I joined the class in the nick of time, as the instructor had just begun to choreograph the recital routine. That's right, we were going public. Recitals were always one of my favorite things about dance: the costumes, the hair, the (streetwalker) make-up, and the adrenaline rush of being up on stage.

Fittingly, the song our instructor chose was Tina Turner's "Proud Mary." A perfect song for a brassy bunch of women ready to shimmy. (Really--there were requests to do some sort of shimmy move from day one.) I was surprised by how many of the steps came back to me and found it quite easy to mesh into the class and routine. Plus, when you're working with, ahem, more mature students, you do a lot of reviewing along the way.

Fast forward to June and recital time. Keep in mind that when you're dancing to Tina Turner, you have to look the part. Our costumes consisted of red sequins, a black (fake) leather skirt, and fishnets. Lots and lots of fishnet. Not only did we wear fishnet stockings, but we also wore fishnet sleeves. Some of the ladies were self-conscious about having that much arm showing, if you catch my drift. Picture, if you will, 70 year-old women wearing fishnets and black leather mini-skirts... Nice mental picture, eh? (Actually, they looked darn good.)

On June 21st, I made my dancing debut with this new studio. I wriggled myself into the aforementioned costume (which Jon had to help me with because I kept getting the sequins stuck in the fishnet) and troweled on the hooker make-up. For those of you who have never performed before, all that make-up is necessary so that you show up on stage. Otherwise you look washed out. But I digress.

Jon dutifully attended the show as he very much played the part of the supportive husband by watching (perhaps suffering through) several hours of little kids dancing. But he was rewarded in the end by getting to watch his "Poptart" of a wife tap her little heart out. Just like I remembered, being up on stage was pretty exhilarating. I think the performance went well. At any rate, no one fell off the stage.

Update Time

Now that summer is officially here in the Northwest (the clouds broke up and the mercury finally brushed up against the 80 degree mark), I felt it was about time to provide a brief update on some previous posts. Just to prove that I am able to keep up with life, you know. 1. And the Winner Is... You may recall a post way back when I wrote about the incredible luck my family has at supermarket drawings. Well, the prize fairy has struck again...this time bringing my brother a barbeque grill. Seriously. I couldn't make this up if I tried. 2. VOTE FOR DAVID COOK! You would have to be living under a rock for the past month (or have a life outside reality TV) to not know that DC won American Idol. Holy crap. That's right. I went to high school with the Season 7 American Idol (and all I have to show for it are some goofy Forensics pictures, a fuzzy VHS tape of our middle school musical, and an autograph in my yearbook which reads, "Avoid the clap, David.") 3. School Daze No more babysitting...er, substituting, for this girl because I found a job teaching junior English next year... 4. This Trip Brought to You by Facebook ...which leads directly into the next update: I broke down and joined Facebook. Like I predicted, I'm already addicted. (Do I smell the beginnings of a poorly written poem in the previous sentence?!?) But don't worry--I'll still find the time to update the blog.

The Joy of Gift Registries

Bed, Bath, and Beyond is the bane of Jon’s existence. Getting him in the store to set up a bridal registry was painful. Like watching David Archuleta squint on American Idol painful. I had to use my best nagging skills to do it, but I knew that it would make our lives easier in the long run. We slowly made our way through the store with the scanning gun, whose toy-like appeal wore off in about 3.7 seconds. We made an overwhelming amount of decisions, but then we were done. I made a few more additions on-line, but for all intents and purposes our job was finished, right?

I wish. And Jon wishes even more. But thanks to our overly-generous family and friends, we found ourselves with an abundance of gift cards and dinero (thank you again—too much, too much!). So, back to “B Cubed” once more. Since the store offers a discount to complete gift registries that expires after a certain period of time, we had a limited window to cash in. So even though it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day (seriously), we decided to go shopping last week.

In retrospect, perhaps we shouldn’t have attempted such a feat the day after getting lost in IKEA for 3 ½ hours. A much more enjoyable and delicious shopping experience, yet no less overwhelming. We stuffed Jon’s “old man car” with boxes full of put-it-together-yourself furniture and frozen Swedish meatballs and Bond-Ost cheese.

On one hand, I suppose you could say that we were in shopping mode. On the other hand, we had a very low tolerance for making decisions and making purchases. We also should have gone to the store more than 90 minutes before closing time. For that reason, we decided to divide and conquer. Jon tackled the cookware and knife sets while I grabbed a cart and “the list.”

I was in the zone. Fulfilling all of my Supermarket Sweep fantasies, I tore around the store, filling the cart with cookie sheets and trouser hangers. I could not be stopped. My packing gene kicked in as I wedged cake pans and kitchen rugs in between boxes of cutlery and picture frames. Face flushed with exhilaration, I rescued Jon with ample time to spare, so about 15 minutes prior to the store’s closing, we rolled up to the customer service counter.

We must have been their worst nightmare.

The staff was extremely nice and helpful. It wasn’t their fault that the computer rebooted smack in the middle of the massive transaction, which included a special on-line order. There we stood, with the doors locked, and other staff members cleaning up for the night, while the manager and assistant manager started over from scratch, scanning item after item. I felt horrible that even though the store had closed 30 minutes earlier, they were still trying to get us straightened out.

This time, Jon was not the only one who left the store with a glazed overwhelmed expression. At least we have some new cookware to console us.

[Addendum: The madness has not stopped. Since originally writing this yesterday, we have continued to be tracked by the massive BBB empire. When I came home from "work" this afternoon, there was another box outside the door. We excitedly tore into the packaging...only to discover that it was really a "Get Well Soon" gift for some lady in Illinois. Rather than receiving her completely appropriate gift of a comfortable body pillow, she is probably wondering what the heck to do with a 14-piece set of stainless steel cookware...]

Let the "Wedding-a-thon" Continue...

For those of you keeping score, we have now successfully completed Round 3 of the “Getting Married Since 2007” Tour. Now that we’ve officially been married for 3-7 months, we thought it was only fitting to celebrate that blessed event…again. Two weddings simply were not enough, so we continued the party in Blue Springs.

Before you start to think that we’re just selfish and greedy or hopeless romantics who can't stop getting married, please bear in mind that our motivations are purely altruistic. We want to be able to share this experience with people all over the country, all over the globe, really. While the wedding in Bamberg was amazing, I don’t think I would have been able to bear not having my grandparents and other family members present at some wedding-type activity; Jon feels the same way. Hence, a party…er, reception, in both of our hometowns remedies that conundrum. What a difficult cross to bear.

Thanks to video technology, we were able to show highlights from the wedding in Bamberg so that guests would feel like they were there. (And thanks to having too much time on my hands due to unemployment, I was able to put together a slide show of pictures and video as well.) Everyone else came for the cake.

I had heard that when you have a reception after a “destination wedding,” the mood is much more casual and relaxed. True. However, this was the stage that involved most of the planning that turns ordinary women into “BRIDEZILLAS.” Venue, photographer, caterer, DJ, cake, decorations, flowers, hair, etc. Even though I didn’t feel that way, I totally understand why couples are ready to just have the whole thing over with when they start getting into the nit-picky details.

We were very fortunate to find great vendors (wedding lingo—I read too many back issues of Modern Bride), so if anyone in the KC area needs recommendations, I would be happy to share. Perhaps it wasn’t the fanciest or classiest affair, but since we still haven’t figured out the validity of charger plates or seat covers, we were really only concerned that our guests had fun. In that we were successful, I think. And if not, everyone we know is too nice to tell us otherwise…even those who got stuck cleaning up afterward (a huge thanks—you know who you are!).

Speaking of help, now is the perfect time to “publicly” thank everyone who helped with the reception. Thank you to my lovely cousins, friends, and assorted relatives who came early to help set up—there is no way it would have gotten done without you. Thank you for arranging a beautiful bouquet, decorating a May Pole-esque cake, doing my make-up, taking care of the adult beverages, and for dancing the night away. Thanks also to those who gave advice along the way and answered all of my ridiculously wordy questions. And of course, thank you to everyone who attended, especially those who traveled long distances. We really can’t express our gratitude enough, although we will continue to try.

It probably sounds redundant by this point, but we truly had a phenomenal time. I didn’t sit down the entire night and I didn’t want to stop and eat (a momentous occurrence), both of which are excellent indications that much fun was had. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly perfect—our first dance song was played sans words, we didn’t get to talk with everyone who was there or long enough to those we did get to talk to, the projector wasn’t quite loud enough, we almost forgot the blessing—but we don’t really roll that way (no matter how much of a perfectionist I am).

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that you can’t plan everything. Life is just going to happen. You have to embrace the good and learn from the bad. (End touchy-feely, philosophical wandering.)

For instance, how could we possibly plan for my younger brother to don homemade lederhosen, dance his way across the room, and do an impromptu polka with my grandma while we sang “Happy Birthday”?!?

Did we have any idea that the dance floor would fill up with people mimicking Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and McDonald’s when the DJ played the “Burgerdance” song (a favorite at German fests)?!?

Would it have been reasonable to expect all of the grandsons and grandsons-in-law to serenade Grandma with a touching rendition of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”?!?

Could I have hoped for my grandpa to grace us with a more perfect blessing at the beginning of the night?!?

We certainly had no idea that we would be hoisting the tables in the air as we (well, really only Jon knew the words) sang and drank along to the German “Holzmichl” song…


You would think that after all that planning, preparation, and fun, we would be experiencing a bit of a let-down as we returned to “real life.” On the contrary. We have another reception to plan!