Hello Celebritys

One of the things we wanted to do on our trip was go all out by dressing up in our formal skirts/dresses and going out to eat. We were originally planning on going out to dinner, but ended up going instead to a really cute little tea room. We decided to go on Thursday and, for a couple of us, it was a "lazy morning" day. For the other two of us, it was up-and-at-it early in the morning.

Sarah and I went out to run some errands in the morning. We left the other girls sleeping, and were on our way.

We started off by going to a coffee shop in Issaquah for breakfast. We had an Entertainment Book for our trip with Buy-One-Get-One coupons in it, including a coupon for Cafe Ladro. We each got something to drink and a treat to eat, both of which were very good!

Of course a roadtrip is not complete without getting gas at Costco - especially when it happens to be the cheapest place around. Of course, we had to wait in a ridiculously long line. . .but it went pretty quickly, considering there were at least 20 cars waiting before us!

If there is one thing I miss from California, it's In-N-Out Burger. If there are two things I miss from California, the second is Trader Joe's. Since Spokane/Coeur d'Alene are not lucky enough to have a Trader Joe's - yet (someday???) - that was one place I wanted to go. Sarah and I had fun wandering the aisles and looking at different products. I got peanut butter filled pretzels for my mom (trust me, they are amazing!) and cheese puffs (much better than Cheetos!) for me, plus a few other things. Such a fun store!

We then headed to REI in downtown Seattle because I wanted to get a BPA-free water bottle. The REI in Seattle is quite impressive. We didn't spend much time there this time, but I've been there before, and even though I'm not a big "sporting goods store" girl, I still find REI Seattle impressive. :) Yes, that waterfall is at REI.


We headed out so that we would make it to our 2:30pm tea reservation at the Queen Mary Tea Room in Bothell, Washington.

After tea we took some pictures in a local neighborhood.

We left the tea room and headed back. However, however hard we tried, we seemed to hit traffic every time we tried to leave town on this trip. So even though we left tea at 4:30, we still managed to hit terrible traffic coming out of Bothell. As is evidenced from the above picture, Laura + Downtime While Stuck in Traffic = Random "Secret Agent" Pictures. :)

We decided to take a detour and visit the Chittenden Locks and Botanical Garden in Ballard. We got to watch several boats go through the locks, then we spent a good deal of time walking around the gardens. However, eventually our feet started to hurt, we were tired of getting funny looks, I was dangerously close to running out of memory on my camera, and Michelle's camera battery died. We were pretty tired by the time we left.

We finally got back to Val's aunt's house, fixed ourselves a tasty dinner of fruit-filled crepes, bacon and eggs, and quickly crashed. It was a long, but very fun, afternoon!