Friday morning the fun began. I got the kids off to school and then the clock chimed "1987" and Mardi and I were on the road!! We laughed and talked and laughed and laughed the entire way to Seattle!
Well, there was a stop in Ellensburg - and of course it was windy!
We checked in to the hotel and promptly took our picture in the elevator! (When you don't get out and do things like this often, you try to document every moment! Ü )
We quickly dumped our bags and walked down to the Pike Place Market and Water Front area. I had hoped to catch a picture of them throwing fish, but it smelled so awful there and they were taking so long I finally just walked away! Imagine fish being flung back and forth!
We vowed to perfect the cell-phone-self-portrait on this trip!
What do you do when you're walking along and come across a 6-foot penguin?
You take your picture with him!
Ditto when seeing giant iron men with swords!
You can't go to the Pier without stopping that Ye Old Curiosity Shoppe and visiting Sylvia! (She's the one on the left!)
We decided it would be fun to buy matching souvenirs to remember our trip with. We quickly realized that two adult women can not sit in a public restaurant and take pictures of their hands/rings together without raising eyebrows at the tables around them! We quickly deleted the other hand/ring poses and went with the wonder-twin-power pose!
That evening the conference was amazing! 2,500 women in attendance!
Michael McLean performed.
John Bytheway was there.
After the talks/performances, the audience could go to the stage and meet the "stars" - not something Mardi or I were interested in doing, but as we walked by I did get this picture - I can say I stood by the lady who stood by a lady who stood by John Bytheway!
This is our usher, James. He was from Africa and we got to help him meet one of the speakers, Mariama Kallon, who was also from Africa. That was very fun for us to be a part of.
When we left the center that night we very confidently jumped on to... the wrong city bus...we had asked the hotel receptionist person which bus to take to get back and she said "The 124." Well, FYI, there is apparently a 124 North and a 124 South. 124 N takes you about 5 steps from our hotel. The 124 S takes you to the ghetto, dog town, the dark side of Safeco Field, about 5 steps from purgatory!!! Inches from the freeway headed toward the reservation and a place called Tukwila! That's the one we got on!
After noticing we were getting further and further from our hotel Mardi asked the driver when we were heading back - he said, "This bus doesn't go there, get off." Uh - ghetto - 11:30pm - pouring rain - we were the only 2 sober people in a 12 mile radius (and that includes the bus driver). Long story short - we got our transfer tickets, stood in the rain, talked to a wine-o, got on the right bus, had a wine-o on the bus tell us that "Girls like you shouldn't ride the bus at night." Yeah...no kidding! And low and behold, the 124 N got us 5 steps from our hotel - which only took us abt 2 steps at the clip we were running! (Picture of us after we were kicked off the 124 South.)
We had a lot..LOT...of nervous energy when we got to our hotel. We ordered pizza at midnight - (woke up with heartburn at 4:30am). We laughed some more. We mocked our "Room with a view." Yes, we could see the Space Needle, but we hardly considered it a "view" when we had to plaster our faces to the window to see it!
The weekend was amazing! Didn't take many pictures Saturday. We did meet up with Aunt Lori Saturday and had lunch (huge Nachos to keep the midnight pizza company)! Next year TOFW is in Spokane. I'm already looking forward to it! I know I didn't share much - anything - about the topics the speakers talked on, or say anything about the incredible music. It was all just one big journal-worthy event. When I die, buy the book! ;)
