Anyways…..we decided to have one last dinner at the original Red Robin in Eastlake before it permanently closes later this month (due to the old building needing lots of work or something ridiculous like that).  Sad sad news.

There’s just something special about dining where it all started.  The cool retro signs and decor set it apart from every other Red Robin.  Not to mention, it has great views of Portage Bay during the day and the fun atmosphere is supercharged with young families and college kids from nearby UW.

Nobody ever said date nights had to be intimate and quiet.  Or fancy.  We rode the bus.  And didn’t even get to sit by each other on it.

(please excuse the bad photos…didn’t want to get milkshake on our good camera)

Where the burger goodness started, over 60 years ago

According to the website:

1940s: Red Robin started as a tavern near the University of Washington in the 1940’s. It was called Sam’s Tavern. Sam sang in a barber shop quartet and loved to sing the song “When the red robin goes bob bob bobbin along…” Sam eventually changed the name of his tavern to Sam’s Red Robin.

1969: Over the years Sam’s Red Robin simply became Red Robin. It was transformed from the tavern into the first Red Robin restaurant that opened in a 1,200 square-foot building perched on a Seattle hilltop.

There’s your history lesson for the day.

My first visit to a Red Robin was somewhere in Arizona when we went to cheer on K-State at the Fiesta Bowl back in college.  Oddly, I think I’ve only had a hamburger once in all the many times I’ve eaten at a Red Robin.  I like the wraps and chicken sandwiches.  Accompanied by the tasty fries, of course.  And even more odd, Todd always gets a crispy chicken tender salad.  No tomatoes.  He says it’s like the best salad ever.  I’ve tried to duplicate it, but can’t get my crispy chicken tenders to be as crispity crunchity.

Don’t cry because it’s over…..smile because it happened.

Ok, at least there are 14 other locations in the Seattle area, but this one was special.  Miss you already.

A Europreview

Day 1 : London or Bust (London)

Day 2 : Sight seeing & City Hiking (London)

Day 3 : Falling Down (London)

Day 4 : Motoring Day (London)

Days 5, 6, & 7: An attempt to accelerate this process (London, Cambridge, Paris, & Zurich)

Day 8 : Love at First Sight (Zurich, Chur)

And so that leaves us in Chur (here’s a map).

We woke up in the morning and headed down to catch the train to Arosa. First, however, we wanted to make sure we had some lunch. Because we were on a budget for food — due to the exchange rate as well as having just spent a premium of $150 on a hotel in Zurich a couple of nights before — we headed down to the local grocery store — Coop. I won’t get into the details, but apparently in grocery stores, you’re supposed to weigh & tag your own produce. They won’t do this at the register. Especially don’t do this if there’s only one cashier. Who doesn’t speak English. And who has to run back to the front of the store & do this for you. Causing the single line to get longer.

But I digress.

So we headed down to the train & got on with about sixty or seventy somewhat rowdy German senior citizens. Fortunately we found of the smallest second class sections and were unbothered by them so were able to enjoy the ride through the mountains.

The train stopped at about 4 or 5 little wonderful towns on the way up to Arosa. We didn’t stop as it didn’t look like there was much to do there, but they were enchanting nonetheless. We simply stared in awe and day dreamed about them from our train window.

Note some of the senior citizens departing the train on the car behind ours.

It had been 10 years since I was here last. The last time I was here was in June of 1999 for a choir trip. Now that I think about it, we also had a large contingency of senior citizens with us on our trip — as it was the intergenerational choir trip, with both high school students & senior citizens. Here’s a pic I shamelessly stole from one of my friends on Facebook who posted this.

Our first order of business was to eat, so we walked around the little lake and sat on the bench to have our lunch – which consisted of bagettes, wonderful cheese, grapes, and a couple bottles of water.

And of course, our second order of business was to try to run faster than 30km/h for the local speed sensors. And then plan our hike.

We kept on hiking up through Innerarosa and up to a beautiful chapel overlooking Innerarosa — complete with a majestic cemetery (I don’t use those words together very often).

We stopped to take a quick bathroom break while we had the opportunity (in the cleanest public bathrooms I’d ever seen) and refilled our water bottles and had a drink out of the free water “fountain”. Not sure what’s in the water but it was better than any bottled water I’ve had.

We met some other hikers who spoke enough English to take our picture

At this point, Katie had the high point of her trip. I kid you not. All the places she’d been & things she’d seen so far was nothing compared to what she saw & heard next.

Yep. Cows. (She would say “NOT just cows — COWS WITH BELLS!!!!”). They just wandered throughout the countryside and hills, and we could hear them long after we could make out any of their features of them.

Next was onward and upwards

And up, and up, …

And at this point we had come up far enough, and had to start the descent a different way back.

This is part of a 5-star hotel which, at the cheapest time of the year, if you reserve in bulk, starts at $325 a night (source).

The train home! Thanks Arosa! See you in another 10 years!

Every once in a while, we ‘let loose’ and have a night of fun (not that our regular group times are ever lacking in fun and laughter).  Last night, about half of our group decided to meet at TechCity Bowl and show off our mediocre bowling skills.

Team Canada (Jason) vs. Team U.S.A. (everyone else)

I love these gals & guys. They’re part of a group of friends we’ve made through our church over the past couple of years, and I can honestly say that life would be pretty rough without them. We’ve all been transplanted here from cities across the U.S. and Canada, each of us far from our families and friends back home, so we’ve become each others’ Seattle substitute family.

Speaking of Seattle…..stay tuned for some exciting news coming up in the next couple of weeks.

So immediately when I found out I would have this past Saturday off, we decided to spend that day doing one of our favorite weekend pasttimes–driving around the Pacific Northwest.  It’s been months since we’ve had the free time to do it, so we fueled up Baby Blue (yes it’s a car, but she has a personality all her own and we consider her a member of our family) and booked the day for a drive west to the Olympic Peninsula, come rain or shine.

I was really hoping for shine, since the Olympic mountains are gorgeous snowcapped wonders this time of year.  But instead, the fog hovered over the Sound and rain was in the forecast all day.  No less excited, we headed towards the Seattle waterfront to board the ferry bound for Bainbridge Island.

We’ve ridden the ferry many many times—mostly thanks to my dad’s love of ferries and requests to ride whenever they come to visit—but this was the first time I had driven on been a passenger riding in a car on the ferry (it’s rare that Todd ever lets me drive).  Quite exciting.  Afterall, that’s not something you can do in most parts of this world.

We unloaded on Bainbridge Island and headed north to the Olympic Peninsula.  Not really having a set itinerary, we just drove along and eventually ended up in Port Angeles for lunch a couple hours later.  We always aim to dine at local eateries where we can savor some good ol’ homecooked meals.

(this pic is for any Twilight fans out there. Port Angeles had several other shops capitalizing on the Twilight craze…and no, I did not suggest we go here for that reason.)

Apparently you can see Canada from here on a clear day.  No luck for us…which just means we’ll have to do the drive again when the sun is out.

After walking around for awhile, we left Port Angeles and drove Baby Blue back to the ferry to Seattle.  There’s just something calming and relaxing about driving around the Pacific Northwest.  Or maybe it’s more of a mysterious and eerie feeling. Either way, it’s exciting to purr along the winding roads together, not really knowing what lies ahead.

Joy, obviously, because we get to spend time with friends and family.  Times which uplifts one’s heart immensely. And sadness, because I know that this short time together is all we get for the next ‘who knows how many’ months until we meet again.

Though none of us knows how long we have left on this earth, so we should enjoy every single day to its fullest, right? (but that’s a whole separate blogpost series right there that I won’t start into today )

We’re so thankful for Ben & Kim, who organized and invited a bunch of our friends over for lunch on our last full day in KC (okay, mostly my friends, since everyone except for Todd & Scott were from my hometown).  I’d been looking forward to this for quite some time, especially because it was the first time I’d seen my cousin, Little Miss Lily, since she was just a wee little newborn.

I’m pretty sure she had no recollection of us from back then, but we were fast friends right away and I was seriously tempted to snuggle her back with us to Seattle.

And Crystal’s little boy, Gavin, so grown up and curious (and walking!) since the last time we saw him back in June.

Look deep into their blue eyes…..don’t those two cuties just melt your heart?

Crystal, Kim, little G, me, Ali & Lindsay.  I’m blessed to have known these lovely ladies practically all my life.

While us girls chatted away, the men were left to entertain themselves and the kids.  I got a good chuckle upon seeing the living room scene.

Cousin Ryan, Lindsay & Lily. Such a good looking family.  Oh, how I wish I still lived just blocks away and could come over on a moments notice to babysit.  It’s nice to see she seems to have inherited her father’s goofiness.

Or perhaps it just runs in the entire family…..

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

On our way to the airport Monday morning, I was happy to squeeze in one last coffee date with my college friends Kaddie & Erin.  These two girls make me laugh like no one else can and an hour with them really isn’t sufficient enough time, but I’ll gladly take whatever I can get.  And at least now Todd & Erin are once again settled up on their cheeseburger bets.

So hard to say goodbye to everyone, but we had great fun and lasting memories during those 4 whirlwind days back home.  Until next time….

’tis not in forest nor yet in dell,

ever it holds me with magic spell,

I think of thee, Alma Mater.

K-S-U! we’ll carry the banner high,

K-S-U! long long may the colors fly,

Loyal to thee, thy children will swell the cry,

Hail, Hail, Hail…Alma Mater!

-H.W. Jones

Big game tonight. We’re cheering on our wildcats from afar.  And wearing matching shirts.

The Blue Moose.

They have the absolute best hummus ever.  I drool just thinking about it and the spinach salad with strawberry poppyseed dressing.

This is also where Todd & I had our very first date, so of course we like to come back here whenever we can and have a little anniversary.  I also like to remind him that he wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me to get a meaningful sentence in on that date (which is probably why I denied that it was our first date for quite some time), but apparently we still thought each other was pretty cool.

Some other people who are pretty cool….we met up at the Blue Moose with Drew & Sallee Gaelle again and our friends Shawn & Mindy drove up from Wichita to hang out with us.

After dinner, we headed to Drew & SG’s plaza apartment for a game of Apples to Apples.  These two guys were Todd’s roommates in college and Shawn was my co-worker for several years so I actually knew he & Mindy before even meeting Todd.  We’re all like one big happy family.

One big happy growing family, that is.  Mindy & SG are both about 5 1/2 months pregnant and oh, so cute.  I’m glad everyone’s plans coincided and we got to see them at this stage together.

It’s interesting how our conversations have changed throughout the years—from parties and college life, to houses and babies and work—but it’s so effortless to pick up right where we last left off.  It’s always hard to say goodbye.

I’m already anxious to start planning our next reunion….hopefully in Seattle.

We were all anticipating their arrival…

We spent the afternoon with Aunt Janice and had lunch at First Watch, followed by some last minute shopping and oohing and aaahing over her shiny new kitchen.

It feels so good to be together as a family and relax, eat, talk and play games.  Unfortunately it’s an occurrence that only happens once or twice a year, so I have to sit back and remind myself to cherish every fleeting minute….even if I’m getting dealt too many consecutive bad hands at Phase 10.

(Ben would probably like me to admit that I lost to him in chess….and it wasn’t even close.  What happened to the good ol’ days when he didn’t even stand a chance against me?!?!)

What a wonderful way to end our ‘Christmas Eve’.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

All the kids were up early and excited for Christmas Morning

We decided to only gift them toys this year (afterall, they’re just two big kids at heart).

these are snowslings for scooping up snowballs without getting your hands cold and wet. brilliant!

While it wasn’t quite the same as being together on December 25th, we still kept the family Christmas tradition of reading about Christ’s birth and having oranges in our stockings.  No matter when or where we gather, it’ll always feel like home by having those two things constant in our celebrations for the past 27+ years.

i love my daddy

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing more games until we were all worn out.

If only we could do this every weekend…

As with every trip back, it was a hectic whirlwind of running around the metro seeing friends and fitting in an hour here and there with whomever we could.

Thursday we enjoyed our separate little lunch dates with friends. I met my friend Jamie for lunch at Pot Pie (why do I always forget to take pictures when I’m with Jamie??! probably because the conversation is too entertaining) and Todd had lunch with Drew & Klee at Jersey Boyz.

Since everyone was at work, Todd & I walked around the Plaza and then took a relaxing drive through the snowy countryside.  I may have been the only person in Kansas City who was excited to see snow on the ground as we drove around. Seemed like everyone else was sick of it.

Every time we go back, there are a few places we have to eat at. Todd always has to go to Jersey Boyz and I just have to go to Kona Grill on the Plaza for sushi.  For being landlocked in Kansas City, Kona has some of the best sushi I’ve ever had, and dare I say it….maybe even better than anywhere I’ve found in Seattle.

My best friend Catherine: the person who introduced me to Kona. We’ve had so many sushi dates and girl talk together there, that it’s only fitting this is where we meet up again and share our favorite sushi rolls.  Problem is, our time together is never long enough.

Also in on the fun: Stuart, Drew, Sallee Gaelle (pregnant with baby Jonah).  It’s so nice to gather friends from different phases in our life and see how they all come together and catch up like old friends.

We said goodbyes and headed back to our home for the duration of our stay.  We love getting to stay at my brother Ben & sister-in-law Kim’s—there’s lots of laughter, sibling flashbacks to childhood (Kim & Todd just roll their eyes), good conversation, and never a dull moment.

Talk about two different lifestyles…Ben brought out his new ‘toy’ for Todd to look at.  Probably the only time you’ll ever see him hold a real gun.

Every night was game night.

Plus, we love getting to spend time with our ‘nephew’, Diesel. He’s always excited to see Uncle Todd & Aunt Katie.