Girls Weekend Sixteen. State of Washington. October 17, 2013

Finally!!  It is here.  Girls Weekend Sixteen.  Our state this year is Washington, which means I don't have to fly anywhere this time!!  We had several years where we visiting midwestern states that surrounded Indiana, so Kathi just drove (Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio), which always made me just a bit jealous (because one can bring so much more STUFF when one brings a car rather than packing to fly) so I am quite excited about being able to drive up this year.  So, after dropping Megan off at school this morning, I headed back home to load up my cute little Nissan Cube with all of my scrapbooking stuff (because we still have a way to go before we are actually CAUGHT UP on our Girls Weekend scrapbook), and packing my suitcase and throwing it into the car, too, kissing Tucker goodbye, I hit the road to make the drive up to Seattle.  I first made a stop at Jamba Juice to indulge in my first Pumpkin Smash of the season for the drive as well as a stop to top off the tank.  It is a beautiful fall day and the weather forecast for the duration of this trip looks to be perfect.  Upper 50s, low 60s and sunny or partly sunny is forecast for every day.  God always blesses us on these trips, without fail.

After an uneventful and pleasant 3 and 1/2 drive, Kathi texted that she was on the ground in Seattle when I was about 20 minutes away from the airport, so our timing was nearly perfect!!!  I swooped up to the baggage claim and picked Kathi up, then back onto I-5 north for the final 2 hours of the trip to Birch Bay and the WorldMark located there.  We pulled into Blaine, Washington where the resort is located and were pleased to find that it appears to be a charming little town right on the water.  We checked in and during check-in I got roped into signing up to attend an "owner education" session on Saturday morning at 8:45 am.  ARRRgggghhhh, I hate these things because they really are an opportunity for WorldMark to try and sell you more points and while I LOVE our WorldMark ownership, I do not want to buy more points right now.  BUT!!!  Being here without Tom makes it easier to go to one of these because I CANNOT buy without his blessing.  Then, of course, they turned to Kathi and asked if she would like to attend with me and oh, did she forget to bring her husband, too???  Kathi and I guffawed at this.  While we both love our husbands dearly, their presence is just flat not allowed on Girls Weekend, so there was no "forgetting" involved, of course.  The lack of husbands is totally intentional!

So after check-in we returned to the car with a luggage cart in tow to load up our bags along with ALL that scrapbooking stuff that I mentioned earlier that I had packed into my car.  My friend Jill, who I do a lot of scrapbooking with, and I call this "the walk of shame", because we bring SO MUCH STUFF with us when we scrapbook that it is actually embarrassing to load it all up and bring it all through the lobby of whatever hotel we might be staying at.  There was so much stuff, in fact, that we had to make a second trip in order to get all of it up to our room.

Once we got everything up in the room we checked out our lovely digs and stepped out onto the balcony to breathe in the fresh air and look out on our view (which, frankly, is mostly the parking lot, but we can see a little bit of the water!) only to see a couple of gals unloading the backs of their cars onto luggage carts with stuff that looked quite similar to some of the stuff you can see on this cart.  I said, "look Kath!!! I bet they are scrapbookers, too!!"  Then one of the gals confirmed that guess by pulling a card table out of her trunk and putting it on the luggage cart.  These ladies had their own "walk of shame" to do!!  Later on, as Kathi and I were leaving the room to make a run to the grocery store, we saw these same gals pushing their stuff into a room just down the hall from us.  We just had to go down and chat with them a bit and we all laughed about this crazy hobby.

After driving around in the fog a bit and getting a little lost, we finally found the grocery store and loaded up on groceries for the weekend.  We love staying in the condos because we can dine out for SOME meals, but stay in and cook some, too, which saves us a little bit of money and we both appreciate that.  From the grocery store we decided to act upon the advice of the concierge and have dinner at the Dry Dock restaurant to satisfy Kathi's longing for a margarita.  Kathi had a reuben sandwich, which she enjoyed and I had their Southwestern soup, which was a creamy vegetable soup that was quite yummy!!  We then consulted Kathi's AT&T map program in order to get back to the condo, because we got very turned around in our trip to the grocery store, and it sent us on some big circle, when, we found out the next day, that the restaurant was literally just a few doors away from where we were staying!!

Once back in the room, we settled in with our computers to check e-mails and Facebook and such.  Well,  Kathi got onto her computer, while I spent time with the ResortNet IT people (again.....I just went through this last weekend at the Seaside resort) trying to get on the internet.  Unlike last weekend, we were FINALLY successful in getting me connected....Hooray!!  Which is my excuse for getting this written and posted so late. (Yeah, that's it!!)  We did our first "tossing of the states"  and here is what we are left with at this point in time:

We were both pretty sleepy at this point and having a hard time keeping our eyes open, so we decided that we were ready for bed and made a tentative plan to head north up to Vancouver, Canada tomorrow.  We said our good nights and headed to bed.  Good Night!!