Social Weekend - This one could be a chapter book, so settle in!

"Is it just me, or since we are sitting in the front row, we kinda have to watch the belly dancers..."

When the above statement is my ice breaker on a Saturday night, I can almost guarantee some great blog material... :)

But I'll get to the belly dancers later... I like to tell our adventures in chronological order.

Friday.

A co-worker of Adam's was nice enough to invite us out to dinner on Friday night with her family.  Adam was about 95% sure that the restaurant was called Barnaby Bay, so we asked a friendly pedestrian, "What way to Barnaby Bay, my good sir, please?" (Sorry, in hindsight, that sentence sounded better with an old English accent....).  The kind pedestrian pointed down the street we were already on, so we thought "Nice! Look how we are seamlessly blending in with this lovely community!" We got to walking.....and walking.....and walking..... no sign of Barnaby Bay, no sign of the Mary (the co-worker), no contact information, and I was getting cold and hungry, trust me, a bad combination.

We had passed a restaurant called Bayou on Bay, and since Barnaby Bay never materialized, we assumed that Adam had just misunderstood.  He went inside to get a table, while I decided to wait outside (it was super busy in there) and found an outdoor heater....which turned out to be some sort of exhaust fan from the restaurant...which smelled like fried fish....whose stink molecules firmly lodged themselves in my jacket... greeeeat...

So Adam finally returned and informed me there was about a 50 minute wait. At this point, I was quite grumpy...Adam can confirm, you keep this girl out in the cold on an empty stomach and you could be dealing with the Hulk.  So, now what?  We put our great minds together and decided to try e-mailing Mary, crossing our fingers that she would be able to check her work e-mail from her phone...and she did!!! She called Adam and said, "Oh, we are at Boundary on the Bay, we have been here for about a half our and our table is almost ready... Where are you guys??"  Oh ya know, about 8 blocks away from THAT restaurant! :)

So we finally make it to the right 'Bay' restaurant (Come on, people! Where is the originality? The creativity? I know there is an actually bay here, but really??).  Turns out, Mary had actually taken Adam on a tour of this restaurant when he traveled here for his interview...that was comical watching him explain that he really was paying attention on the tour... :)

Ok, so Friday's dinner was great, lots of good conversation and yummy food! After sleeping in on Saturday to about 7:00 (thanks Dudley), we were looking forward to a relaxing day of laying around and watching football.  The weather turned out to be beautiful, though! We couldn't waste a Saturday inside when the sun was out and the rain was away, so we decided to find a new trail to hike. We found a really pretty one near Lake Whatcom, packed up our four-legged kids, and hit the trails.  It was absolutely beautiful!

I wish I could have taken more pictures, but it was wasn't happening with the dogs...I think we might leave them at home next time so I can have two free hands.

After returning home, we watched the Ketchup and Mustard teams play football (Alabama and LSU... I didn't have my glasses on and when Adam asked who I was rooting for, I asked "Who's playing?" (Yes, I had been sitting in the living room the entire time the game was on, I just don't pay attention to those little details). Then after looking up at the TV, squinting my eyes to see the teams at the bottom to no avail, went with my gut and chose Mustard.) We were only able to watch the first half of the game because we were invited to attend an auction and dinner for a large non-profit in the area.  And that's where the belly dancing nightmare occurred....

The theme was Arabian Nights.  We arrived at 7:00, dinner was at 7:15.  I noticed some ladies dressed with red angel wings, bare mid drifts, and enough sequins to choke a horse.  Interesting choice of usher, I thought to myself, but I didn't spend much time thinking about it since there was complimentary wine at the bar.

After perusing the silent auction items generously donated by local businesses, including excavating services, football tickets, and...drum roll please....a vasectomy (not even joking), it was time to find our table.  Our table happened to be right in front of the stage, a perfect spot to watch....the belly dancing performance.  Now, from my experience, belly dancers aren't usually extremely body conscious...meaning, we got quite an eyeful...and that's when I chose the perfect opportunity to meet the couple to my left. :) No time like the present, right?

Luckily our table was just great and everyone was so funny, (when I could hear them over the rock concert-esque sound system blasting Arabian tunes in our ears). The dessert was just fabulous! But after the auction ended, we were more than ready to get home and relax.

Whew! Busy weekend, right? Not over, yet!

Sunday, Adam's sister and her kids visited our house and we went on a walking tour of downtown Bellingham...unfortunately, about 98% of restaurants and stores close on Sundays, so that limited our stops to Bob's Burgers and Brew and the pet store (which actually turned out to be a fish only pet store, super exciting..... :)

Sunday night, our neighbors invited us over for dinner, and we got a ton of great Bellingham information and ideas on what to see and where to go. Yay!