Ciao Amici e Famiglia

That’s “Hello friends and family” in Italian because we are going to be headed out to Italy and Greece for three weeks. We’ll be leaving on September 17th and coming back on October 9th. We are flying into Venice and then making our way down to Southern Italy for the first two weeks. Along the way we’ll hit such amazing places as Bologna, Florence, Cinque Terre, Naples, Capri, Rome and more. Then we will fly over to Greece and spend some time in the Greek islands before ending the trip in Athens.

What about when you come back?

We’ll be living down at Jennifer’s Mom’s in McDonough for a little while and then we will begin to look for a house to settle down in around Atlanta. We’re not sure of the time frame yet for that and probably won’t know for at least a few months.

What have you been up to lately?

Since coming back from Seattle we’ve been at Jennifer’s Mom’s but have been very busy. We spent some time seeing friends and family, but have spent a lot of time at and preparing for a couple of our friends’ weddings. Most recently we’ve been planning and preparing for the trip to Europe.

Thanks everyone for your support during the Smith Family Tour and we look forward to many great memories with everyone in the future. We are very excited about some time to relax and explore Italy and Greece. We’ll make sure to get with everyone and update you after we get back.

Bye, Bye Seattle.

Our small group's trip to Camano Island our last weekend here.

Well folks, our time in Seattle has come to an end. We’re really going to miss this place and all the friends we’ve made. It’s odd because as sad as we are to leave, we’re just as happy to see everyone back home. August is gonna be a whirlwind of a month, but we have tons of fun things planned!

If you’re wondering what we’ll be up to after August, well, you’re just as clueless as we are. We’ve been saying lots of prayers, having dozens of heart-felt talks, and spending countless hours pondering what’s next. We honestly don’t know. Your guess is as good as ours :). So say a prayer God will reveal to us the next leg of our journey!

We honestly can’t wait to see all of our Atlanta folks! We missed you just a bit. Ok, a lot! We leave in just a couple hours and plan to be back by late Saturday night. It’s about 48 hours of driving in all! We have some fun stops along the way so it shouldn’t be too bad. I foresee lots of singing to bad country songs in our near future, hehe.

Praying for safe travels home,

Justin & Jennifer

Pike Place Market.

Any discussion on fun things to see in Seattle would have to start with Pike Place Market. This place is by far the best spot to spend a weekend afternoon. The first time we went, we spent 5 hours there! You sort of end up eating your way through the market so it takes a while between each place to get hungry again :).

Pike Place Market

We weren’t really sure what to expect when we first went. We had been to tons of markets before, but this place is seriously unlike anything we’d ever seen. First off, it’s huge. I’m talking multiple levels with dozens and dozens of shops and vendors. You can find anything from specialty Mexican spices, to “crumpets” (aka english muffins). It’s a food lovers dream. If you’ve read this blog at all then you can guess how much we adore this place.

Beautiful hanging food arrangements.

We’ve been at least 5 different times since we got here and it’s one of the things we will miss most about this city. It’s one place you can go to get a true feel for the city….it’s love for good food, design, different cultures, and the beautiful outdoors. It’s incredible.

When we go we have a couple places we have to stop. One of our favorites would have to be the Crumpet Shop. We’ve tried several things on the menu, but the two best would have to be their pesto/parm/tomato crumpet and their crumpet topped with Nutella. It’s seriously making me hungry just typing this! When I ordered the Nutella crumpet last time, Justin couldn’t stop laughing at how messy I was. I seriously saw a kid at another table eating it more neatly than I did! By the time I was done I had it all over my hands and parts of my face. Embarrassing but soooo worth it!

Blurry camera pic of Nutella crumpet.

Another favorite spot is Beecher’s Handmade Cheeses. You haven’t tried cheese until you’ve had theirs. They’re known for their mac-and-cheese and we can definitely vouch for it’s deliciousness. Last weekend we added a grilled cheese to the mix and it was the best we’d ever had!

Our final must-try spot is called Piroshky Piroshky and it’s a Russian bakery. It’s single handedly the best thing we’ve ever eaten…and remember we eat a lot! Hehe. We tried their meat and cheese Piroshky and you can’t even believe how good it was. The dough is softer than you can imagine and literally melts in your mouth. The crunchy cheese on top and the creamy beef mixture in the middle is seriously to die for. We only get one when we go and you better believe we fight each other for bites!

Meat and Cheese Piroshky

The best way to visit the market is to come with an empty stomach and a desire to try new things. Don’t get bogged down in the first place you see either! Take advantage of the people you go with and get small items from several places to share. Trust us, you won’t regret it :).

This sign cracked us up!

The famous place where they throw fish!

Fresh fish and an adorable little boy :).

Chowder sampler from Pike Place Chowder. Mmmm....

Counter of tempting desserts...

One of the many talented street performers.

A beautiful day in Seattle. Look at those clouds!

Well, Hello There.

3 yr. Anniversary Dinner at the Space Needle

Well hello there loyal readers. We’ve been a little, ahem, absent from the blogging world. All is well though. In fact, things are terrific!

While we haven’t been blogging, we’ve been busy exploring this incredible city and making tons of new friends. Yep, we finally have friends to hang out with! Pretty exciting stuff right?

We’ve been enjoying life in Seattle, but thought we should take the time to catch you guys up on what we’ve been up to. It’s been a month since we last blogged! Geeze! Has it really that long?

Before we start the influx of posts on all the fun things we’ve been doing, we’ll start with a bit of a “shout-out”. Here goes…

“I LOVE MY HUSBAND!”. Yep, I surely do. Last week we celebrated three years of marriage and cheered to 300 more (as Justin says). We are really blessed to have found each other and absolutely love being married. This time last year we had NO idea that we would be living in Seattle and it’s so fun to see how much our lives have changed in the course of a year. We can’t wait to see where we are next year! Guesses anyone??

We celebrated our anniversary with a camping trip to the Olympic Peninsula (more on that to come) and on the actual day, had dinner at the Space Needle. The Space Needle is a complete tourist attraction. We dressed up for the date, but most of the people there were in jeans and sweatshirts. It’s a fortune to go ($50 pp for semi-decent food), but luckily we had a buy-one-get-one entree coupon. I had signed up months ago (when we were still in San Diego actually) on their website for their “anniversary club”, hence the coupon. (We’re total cheap-o’s in case you didn’t know!) It was the perfect way to celebrate our anniversary!

Prosciutto wrapped Beecher's cheese with cherry glaze. Incredible!

Paella

Seafood alfredo pasta.

The view from inside the restaurant.

The view from the top of the Space Needle.

We live by the radio tower on the right :).

The city at night.

Lost Party.

(Justin’s Recap)

As soon as we got back from Portland we jumped back in the car and headed to the grocery store to grab some items for a LOST finale party! Davey and Kristen didn’t watch the show, but had some friends that did. Their friends had rented out a theater to watch the finale and were nice enough to let us join them!

We are huge fans and thought it would be a lot more fun to go to a party than sit at home and watch it on our TV. Plus, we got to meet some new people in the process which is something we’ve begun to enjoy a lot more since starting this trip. We got there and they had some awesome LOST themed food and decorations. In case you don’t watch the show, the labels are from something in the show called the DHARMA initiative.

Awesome cupcakes and "canned foods".

The fellow "Losties".

The people there were really nice and we enjoyed getting to know them a bit before the 4.5 hour event started. One guy was a magician so, of course, Jennifer made the guy do some tricks for her. He did a trick where Jennifer just thought of a random card and then thought of a number between 20 and 30. Jennifer picked a card and then 26. She turned over 25 cards and then the 26 was the card she had picked. I was pretty amazed and I’m typically skeptical about a lot of magic.

Even the water bottles had themed labels!

The theater was at an Audio/Video place and they rent it out to showcase their technology and ability. We talked to the guy who ran it for a bit and it turns out the theater takes a cool half million to build. The chairs reclined and there was surround sound and an HD projector. It was a pretty nice setup and one I might like to have in a house one day, albeit a cheaper version.

The theater.

The $500,000 theater. Incredible.

My gorgeous wife about to watch Lost.

All in all, it was a really fun way to watch the finale of one of our favorite shows. We were a bit disappointed in the conclusion of the show, but the facility and company couldn’t have been any better. So, if you know a random group of people that are into the things we like don’t be afraid to invite us. We might just show up and have a good time!