Annual Seattle Weekend

Annual Seattle Weekend
December 19-21, 2008
This is our 7th year of going downtown with Kirstin and Kirk in December. Kirstin and I decided after I got married that we would prefer to send time together then buy each other gifts so we cooked up this weekend. Now it is a wonderful tradition that we SO look forward to!

A few years ago I started going through Hotwire to book our hotel and we saved lots of money and got really nice 4 star hotels. For several years we have gotten the Sheraton and one year the Westin and this year we got the Hotel Vintage Park. The rooms were nice, a little small, but they have free wine hour every night. That's a nice perk! :0) It is also a bit of a hike from the shopping area. Really the Sheraton is the perfect place to stay for closeness to shopping.

Every year we go to Benihana's one night for dinner and the second night we try some where new. We went Friday night and sat with a really nice family from New Castle that also comes downtown every year as a family. It was one of our funnier dinners at Benihanas. Afterwards we walked around for awhile and then came back to the hotel and chilled out in the sitting room for awhile. It was a great start to our weekend!

I love this picture that Kirstin is taking of us trying to take a self portrait.

There is no picture of us where we are both looking at the right camera.....irritating!~Saturday~
Here we are eating at PF Changs....another yearly tradition. We wake up and have coffee and breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks and then Kirstin and I head off to shop and the guys head to do their shopping (usually for us). This morning the first thing on our agenda was getting some nice warm snow boots. Our tennis shoes were just not going to cut it. Wow, was that a GREAT purchase. We were SO thankful for them!! Then we meet together for lunch at PF Changs. After lunch we go our separate ways again until 7-8pm. Amazingly enough, Kirstin and I are still shopping until the very last second that we have to start getting ready for dinner.
This is after we dropped off packages at the hotel (the guys had already done this 2 other times for us) and we were headed back to Macy's for a scarf for my new purse that I had been obsessing about. The snow had been coming down steadily since 2pm and it was a winter wonderland. The Macy's Star
We are headed back to our hotel to get ready for dinner. The scraf in hand a few other little items. :0)
This year we went to McCormick & Schmidts for dinner. Darin wasn't exactly sure where it was so we asked the front desk and they steered us to the 4th Ave location though Darin thought it was on 1st. The streets were terrible with packed snow and snow still coming down so we decided to walk instead of trying to find a cab. Well we got to the restaurant and they were closing due to the snow and they said we didn't have reservations there but the one on 1st. So then we trekked back 3 blocks and down 3 blocks and finally we were at the right place. We looked like drowned rats......unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this. BUT dinner was sooooo good and therefore made the long walk worth it. We did get a cab for the ride home. :0)

~Sunday~
This is the view from our hotel room Sunday morning.
Yeah, Darin has Starbucks in hand! Always a great sight to see!!After breakfast the guys headed to the Seahawks game (CRAZY!!) and Kirstin and I headed to Bothell in our Tahoe.....much to Darin's chagrin. I'm not an experienced snow driver. My dad taught me how to drive in the snow by saying, "stay home." Our Tahoe handles very nicely in the snow though. Kirstin and I made it and got her last bit of shopping done. Then we got to her house and I couldn't get up her drive and I was almost getting stuck. We tried a couple of places to park but I was getting really scared that I was going to get the Tahoe stuck. Kirstin went and got her neighbor and he said, "I don't think your 4wheel drive is on. " Sure enough it had slipped out of 4wheel (due to some of our packages & purses), so as soon as I put it back into 4wheel the Tahoe went right through the snow and we were able to park. It is really amazing how much help 4wheel drive really is! Now we are getting ready to scrap the rest of the evening and all day tomorrow. I'll think about getting home later tomorrow. LOL!