Girl's Weekend

So this last weekend I had the wonderful - and very rare - opportunity to spend a whole weekend with just my sister. My very sweet, cute husband agreed to watch Gracie for the weekend while I flew up to Oregon and headed to the coast with my sis, Kat. To start things off, can I just dote on my sister for one second? This girl is amazing! She's super smart, super talented (she travels all over the world to go to salsa dance festivals), super in shape (she and her boyfriend are contemplating training for an Ironman), and just super self-motivated. In fact, while I was there, she had me do a walk with her in an organized walk for those affected with mental illness. She was the team captain for her company's participation. You go, girl!

But back to the girl's weekend. I flew to Portland Friday afternoon, where Kat picked me up from the airport, and we headed two hours southwest to this fun little coastal town called Lincoln City. We decided to stave off eating until we could get there, and we didn't get there till 8:30 pm (9:30 my time, people) so we were both starving. We quickly checked into our awesome hotel into our awesome room that had an AWESOME ocean view. Then after asking the lady checking in where we should go for dinner, went to this cute little place where we stuffed as much seafood into our bellies as possible. And even though we were totally, completely full, yes of course we managed to also scarf down some dessert.

View from our hotel room!

The next morning, we slept in (ah, a beautiful, uninterrupted night's sleep), went to this fun little place for breakfast, and then we couldn't help ourselves. We found our way to the local Tanger outlet mall and shopped a LOT. And I mean a lot. I didn't think we'd done too much damage, but then we found the Ann Taylor Loft, and it was downhill after that. So much so that I seriously thought I might actually have to buy another piece of luggage to check all of my new clothes into.

Cute little place where we had breakfast.

Us after a very successful day of shopping for clothes. :)

After we spent seriously ALL of our money we possibly could on clothes, we ate a quick lunch (the cupcakes totally ended up calling our name too), and then decided to stroll into the downtown and see what the local shops had to offer.

Not that we were doubting, but truly those shops delivered some wacky things. One store had all sorts of practical jokes and gadgets, including this mustache sucker. I know, I kind of look like a man holding it, because my hair is pulled back. But it's so funny I can't not post it.

We also found our way into a kite store with again a lot of practical joke products (the lady behind the counter especially loved the putty that made noises like passing gas), as well as into an antique shop that had some beautiful dollhouses and thousands of miniatures if you're into that kind of thing. Which apparently people are because that store had everything for a dollhouse you could imagine.

Afterward, we decided it was warm enough (finally the fog had lifted) to head to the beach. We dropped all of our billions of bags of clothes off into our hotel room, changed into some flip flops (aka beach gear) and went out to the beach just outside of our room. We did a little bit of beach combing, but it wasn't the greatest place for that, so mostly we just enjoyed the serenity of the beach and ocean. As I was telling Kat that Boyce had mentioned it might be possible to see some gray whales, low and behold, we saw a whale peek out of the water for just an instant. We scrambled up to the nearest rocks where we could get a better view, and sure enough, a couple of seconds later, it showed itself again, this time blowing water through its spout. I was so elated I grabbed Kat's arm in excitement and almost knocked her off the rock. We watched the whale, and its partner, for probably 20 minutes until they were out of sight. How cool was that?! Sadly though I didn't even try to get a picture.

We walked along the beach probably for a good couple of hours before heading back to our room. We weren't ready for dinner yet, so we decided to pop in the movie "The Help," which we'd rented the night before but had been too tired to watch. Kat hadn't seen it yet. We made it about halfway through the movie when we realized we were hungry and went to this restaurant called "Kylos" that was right on the ocean, where again we gorged ourselves with seafood (I had lobster-stuffed halibut. How amazing does that sound?!). Kat ordered something called an oyster shooter, which was a shot glass filled with slimy oyster-ness and cocktail sauce. She tried to get me to the taste the slimy thing, which I finally surrendered and did. And it was good, but only because it was smothered in cocktail sauce.

Kat "shooting" her oyster.

Me with a giant piece of halibut.

Kat with a crab melt. Who knew crab melts existed? I sure didn't.

We went back to our room, finished "The Help," and several tears later, at about 10:30 at night, we decided we needed to get dessert. So we asked the lady in the office what would be open that late at night (places in this little coastal town closed early). She named a few options and we embarked to find one. But...after driving up and down the town for about 20 minutes, we realized we couldn't find any of the places she mentioned. We had about lost hope that we would be able to get some yummy, chocolaty goodness, when we spotted a place Kat was familiar with that she knew would be open. And our dessert dreams were realized. :)

The next morning was pouring rain! We got up early because we had to make it back to Portland by noon to participate in a walk for NAMI, an organization that focuses on awareness of mental illnesses. For me, the walk was really eye opening because lots of people who seemed to suffer with these issues, participated. I thought it was a really neat experience. The walk literally looped around the Willamette, and it was really beautiful (despite the rain). Kat and I tried in vain, both before the walk and after, to check out Voo Doo Doughnuts, which is sort of famous and has a cult following, but the line seriously wrapped around a couple of times each time, and the last time, I had to catch my flight.

Me with Kat and her co-workers at the NAMI Walk.

So all in all, we had a wonderful weekend. Lots of laughing, shopping, seafood, chocolate, and everything else that made it a magical time. Thanks Kat for taking me up on this idea! We'll do it again sometime hopefully sooner rather than later! :)