April 20th

This bumper sticker is so appropriate for DC Metro Traffic!

April 16th

Saturday, we got up early (are you seeing a trend) and headed out to our private bike tour around the City. Now, I haven’t ridden a bike since 1997 but this was fairly easy. It was really the best way to see the city. We started in Stanley Park, headed to Granville Island, the Olympic Village, Chinatown and Gastown. It took about 5 hours, with a stop for lunch, but we all had a great time. Here we are below standing next to the Olympic Torch!

April 15th

We caught the 7AM ferry to Victoria Island. After a 90 minute ride, we drove straight to The Butchart Gardens. Now I'm not one for flowers, but it was gorgeous. Again, getting there early allowed us to have the run of the place and take pictures without others in them. Here am I next to a huge tree! Next we headed to Victoria and checked out the Empress Hotel and Parliament. Then it was back to the ferry so we could change for dinner at West. We enjoyed an amazing meal and topped it off with cake to celebrate Mini Cooper!

April 14th

Being on East Coast time, all us girls were wide awake bright and early - despite having 5 hours of sleep. We picked up the car and headed North on the 5 to British Columbia. We stopped at the Visitor Center and took some pictures. Here is Denise, myself and Hilary.

We hopped back in the car and headed straight to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Here is Martta and I before heading across. It was so nice to be in the woods and having the place pretty much to ourselves. Next we headed into the City for our spa appointments and then out to a great dinner at CinCin. It was early to bed, because we had to catch the 7AM ferry to Victoria!

April 13th

My best friend Martta and her sister in law, Heather, have this great blog: www.hmhdesigns.wordpress.com. On it, they share different craft and food projects they have experimented with. Some are great successes and some are great successes after many trial and errors. One success was this great iPad cover. Martta recently made a similar case for her iMac and when I saw it, mentioned I would like one for my iPad. Little did I know she would make it so quickly and in time for our trip to Vancouver. Everything fits perfectly inside and its now my primary cover. I’m thinking of having her make one for my mom’s birthday! Check out the blog for instructions on how to make your own!

April 12th

In preparation for the trip to Vancouver, I picked up some Hunter Boots. I've been eyeing these for awhile and when I saw the initial forecast was rain everyday, I decided to splurge and get them. First, I ordered the standard boots from Zappos. Unfortunately they were a little too tight so I went to Nordstrom.com, ordered the wider Huntress boot online, and picked up from the store in Tysons. They fit like a glove and I wore them practically the entire trip. They are a little pricey, but good shoes are well worth it! Here is  picture of them in action!

April 10th - 6th Annual Strides for Success

I have spoken here before about my goal this year to complete a 5K by actually running it. I do my fair share of 5K’s but it’s usually walking and chatting with a bunch of women and going to Brunch afterwards. So, I found an online training program, “somewhat” committed to it (took me 12 weeks as opposed to 8) and signed up to run Strides, which is our Spring fundraiser. Now, its been a busy League week - Strides and Class Project colliding together (did I forget to mention I am on the Strides and Class Project committees), but I was committed to race.

I arrived to set up early this morning, met my friends from work who graciously decided to run, assigned Course Marshal’s and then headed out to race. Now, I thought I was going to be in a good position, since I drove the course earlier and knew the 1, 2, 3 mile marks. Unfortunately, the Fairfax County Police set us off in the opposite direction so I was all kinds of messed up from the start. Joan and I started running, and I asked if it was ok to walk if I needed it (she is a super speedy runner). However when we made it to mile 2 and hadn’t yet walked and were still feeling ok, we noted that we could probably run the whole thing. We may have spoken too soon, because not soon after, I had to take two 30 second walk breaks. However, we determined, this still counts as running the whole race J As we came upon the finish line, we sprinted to the end with many of my new friends cheering me on. It felt great to actually accomplish my goal - I finished the race running, it’s the furthest I have ever run at one time and I did it with a good friend. Bonus - we had a great increase in participation!

Side note - after the race, Joan said she felt bad because I had to run two steps to her one. Doh short people!