There are few things in the world that make me as happy as visitors, especially really old friends whom I love bunches and bunches.  And bunches.  So when Elizabeth emailed me last week saying her husband had a job interview in Tacoma and she was going to be tagging along, I immediately made plans to hang out.  Well, first I squealed and clapped (yes, I’m part seal), and then started making plans.

Elizabeth and John arrived yesterday afternoon.  As a bonus, Shaina (Elizabeth’s childhood friend and my birthday twin), drove down from Vancouver with her brand-new fiance, Kevin.  It was like getting a two-for-one coupon for chocolate or something.

As usual, I had spent hours thinking of ways to entertain everybody and had made absolutely no actual decisions.  Thankfully, Shaina had told them about the Experience Music Project.  John and Elizabeth are both music nerds (back in California, John was in a punk band and played at their wedding reception last year), so the decision was made.  (I LOVE visitors who come armed with interests.)

We found street parking (VERY valuable anywhere near Seattle Center) and wandered around.  We were able to point out all the major attractions, like the Space Needle, the Key Arena and the giant fountain where crazy Seattlites let their children play in whenever the temperature is above freezing.

This time though, besides the normal teenage skateboarders and precious toddlers risking pneumonia, there was also this chick:

Evidently, she was in the middle of her very own photo shoot.  And she was workin’ it.

Keep in mind, we may be in the middle of a “warm spell” up here, but for Seattle in January, that means it’s about 55 degrees outside.

Mike was obviously more than a little amused by the show.  The rest of us..  well, I think our faces say it best.

Yeah.

We finally made it to the EMP.

Bad news: It was 4:15 and the place was closing at 5:00- not nearly enough time to make it worth the cost of admission.

Good news: The staff took pity on us and let us check out some of the exhibits for free.  Score!

(Yeah, I look cross-eyed in this picture, but Elizabeth looks cute, so what the hell.)

Once we got kicked out of the museum, we headed to Green Leaf for some pho and further catching up.  I ADORE Elizabeth and John and was super happy to see them again- keep your fingers crossed that the interview goes well and they end up in Tacoma.  It’s not quite as good as them being our neighbors or anything, but it would be really nice to have some old friends near by.  (Actually, the idea of Elizabeth living 40 miles away from me in a slightly more industrial and smelly town will be extra comforting, considering that pretty much describes exactly how it was back in high school, when she made the commute to Orange County every day from Chino Hills.)

Ben came and visited us this weekend!  Since Ben used to live with us back in Anaheim, having him around really made it feel like we were back at home.

We did a lot, thanks to some fantastic weather- ate some awesome meals, caught up with some old friends and wandered around in the sunshine.  Ben is one of the owners of Hibbleton, a really fantastic art gallery back home that he runs with some friends (Mike’s brother Tony is one of the Hibbleton honchos too), so we made sure to make time to check out the SAM (Seattle Art Museum) while he was here.

The SAM was better than I expected.  They had a nice mix of modern and more classical pieces, but mostly I was surprised at how much I liked the featured exhibit.  Based on the name, I had kind of written it off.

If you have a chance, definitely check it out.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to take many pictures thanks to the standard museum “no-photo” rule.  Boo.  Luckily for us, the most entertaining thing we found in the entire museum wasn’t part of any official collection and therefore could be photographed freely.

As you leave the museum, you walk by a tiny room dedicated to the SAM’s 75th birthday.  They have some pictures of the museum over time and some notes about some of its greatest exhibits.  Standard stuff.  But then we struck gold- in the middle of the room was a guest book where people could sign their name and wish the SAM a happy birthday.  Some people simply signed while otheres wrote deep philosophical notes about the nature of art itself.

And then there were these random ass entries:

Obviously some kid who really likes Transformers wandered away from a tour group.  I love this kid.

Awesome.

No words.

Day = made.

My very BFF in the whole big universe made her first trip to Seattle since we moved here this past Sunday.  She was here for work, so we were admittedly a bit rushed, but really, is there anything better in the world than seeing your best friend?

Mary arrived Sunday evening, so Mike and I did what we always seem to do when people come to town- we took her out for Thai food!  Thai Kitchen, around the corner from our house, is rapidly becoming our go to place.  We ate lots of curry, took home lots of leftovers, and then Mary and I went to meet a college friend of hers (who is also now one of Mike’s bosses) for drinks at Black Bottle in Belltown.  Thank you Brian for introducing us to such a great place and for treating us to wine and dessert!

In between filming the next day, I met up with Mary again to go have lunch with our friend Derrick’s sister Lizzie and her brand new baby Bella.  I’m admittedly not one to usually coo over babies, but Bella is a definite exception- she has way more personality than a normal 3 month old.  I WONDER where she got that from, Uncle D?

Lizzie holding Bella- yes, she always looks that gorgeous puttering around the house with a newborn.

Lizzie actually let me hold Bella.  Note the look of abject horror in the baby’s eyes.

Mary, who immediately had Bella dancing, and then began planning her career as a star swimmer and violin player.

After Mary finished shooting her story (she even let me be her “assistant” for part of it), we had dinner at Quinn’s, a gastro-pub with a menu that is so meat-intensive that it features “marrow” as an entree.  Oye.  Even I couldn’t resist the siren song of pork during this meal, and inadvertantly swalled a couple of bites of bacon in my seared scallops with pumpkin risotto and bacon.  The evidence:

I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for pumpkin.  I feel like I’m walking down a very slippery slope here.

I really can’t emphasize how happy I was to see Mary!  Hopefully next time she comes we’ll be able to spend an entire day together, but still, I’ll take a few hours wherever I can get them.

Between Justin, Amy and Derek, we had 10 solid days of entertaining out of town guests.  Thankfully, Seattle has a lot of things to do to aid us in this task.  Evidently, we constructed some sort of “pop art” theme when we planned out what to do to keep Amy and Derek entertained.

On Friday, while Mike worked from home in the afternoon, the three of us went to check out the Great Seattle Graffiti Wall.  Amy, our resident photographer and art aficionado, had specially requested that we check this out during their trip.

Finding it was kind of a pain.  I had tried to Google it, but I kept getting different intersections, so we ended up driving around aimlessly for an extra 20 minutes.  When we finally found it (we finally noticed a graffiti-covered wall at 3rd Ave S and S Stacey Street) we were thrilled!  Derek and I were even more thrilled because it was right by a McDonalds, so I could feed my Diet Coke addiction and he could snack on some Chicken McNuggets.  (Seriously, Derek loves chain and fast food more than anybody ever in the history of the universe.  It’s comical, but it’s also comforting, because I love Derek).

After Derek’s snack, we proceded to do exactly what you are supposed to do when you see a giant wall of brightly-colored legal graffiti: we took pictures of ourselves!

Uncle Dung!

Derek giving me a boost.  I know you’re marveling at my grace.

Sister act!

I actually really like this picture.

Amy had tried to get us to take a group shot using her camera timer.  We ran away just before the camera went off.  She was irked.

Finally, a semi-successful group shot.

Amy took video to get a picture of the entire wall if you want to check it out (warning: you can hear a lot of wind in the background):

After spending an hour or so jumping up on walls that were covered in bum pee, posing like giant nerds and marvelling at the wall in general, we were cold and hungry and ready to go clean up before getting dinner at Lunchbox Laboratory in Ballard.  I was really excited to try this restaurant out- it is a build-your-own-burger place (a lot like The Counter in SoCal, only with a wider variety of meat and a decidedly less bourgoise feel).

There were definitely a LOT of choices, which Mike found a bit overwhelming.  We both said we’d like to try it again, but The Counter ekes out the win in head to head burger competition.  Mike and I split a Butterfinger Shake though, which we agreed was the best milkshake ever.

The smile is Derek’s seal of approval.

On Wednesday at 2:00 pm, we bid adieu to Justin.

On Thursday, we said hello to them:

Yay!  Amy and Derek are here!  The girl Bach and the white Bach!

Many adventures to be recapped tomorrow.

This Thursday night we got our first official visitor from back home- our friend Justin flew in Thursday night, giving us the chance to hang out with an old friend, flex our hosting skills, and finally start knocking a few “touristy” things off our list of to-dos.  Yay Justin!

I took this picture as he was loading his bike into Mike’s car at the airport.  Yes, Justin is so hard core that he travels with his bike.

Mike worked on Friday, leaving me to do the entertaining.  We scoped out Pike’s Place Market, ate some Macaroni and Cheese at Beecher’s, which was so delicious and filling that half a cup of the stuff kept us full for about 5 hours, and then took the longest walk ever in the rain.  We walked so much that we were sore the next day, which is saying a lot, because Justin is the most athletic person I know.  After all that wandering, we came back to the house, where Justin rode his bike down and up Queen Anne Hill in the rain to get some bike parts, and then fixed Mike’s bike.  We munched on some ramen from Boom Noodle (just in time for their happy hour specials, score!) and walked around the Capitol Hill Neighborhood, where I got a parking ticket because I simply forgot to pay for parking (you can take the girl out of the suburbs…) and we laughed about how Mike might have died if we had ended up living in a part of the city that actually looked like a city.

Of course, I forgot my camera the entire day, so I don’t have pictures of any of the cool stuff we saw.

We ended the day with a night-time pit stop at the Colonade Bike Park (so the boys could plan for their biking adventure later this weekend) and a delicious dinner at Flying Fish in Belltown.  More adventures and touristy goodness to come…

We hadn’t even been in Seattle a week before we got our first visitor! Derrick graced us with his presence last Thursday, and it was one of the highlights of the week.

Derrick and I met up in Belltown, near his sister’s loft. He took these extremely flattering pictures of me as I walked to meet him:

We explored a local yarn store where Derrick bought some yarn to make his new niece a scarf. (I taught him to knit 3 years ago during a fabulous trip to Ensenada. He has yet to learn how to purl though). Then we wandered through Pike’s Place Market as it was closing, where we bought some gorgeous lilies for the new parents and baby. Here I am, posing with the lilies and showing off my fashion sling:

As thrilled as Derrick was to get to hang out with me, I wasn’t the actual reason for his visit. Rather, Derrick came to Seattle for something even more exciting than bonding time with me (I know, that IS hard to beat in itself): his big sister Liz, who lives in Seattle, had her first baby last Tuesday! Like a good brother, Derrick hopped on a plane and made it to the hospital just in time to be there for the whole thing. Awwwww.

Congratulations to Liz and Nate and the (still not officially named) baby!

And thank you Derrick for making time to hang out with me! It feels good when friends come to visit. I can’t wait until you come back!

(I really hate this picture of me. In contrast to Derrick and his ridiculous photogenicity (I’m declaring that a word), me, my ghost white face and my rain-slicked hair look extra not-cute. This is part of the reason I delayed making this post.)