Birthday Bash!~

Last week was my birthday and Jon took me to do a ton of fun things!  We started the day with some yummy yummy dim sum!  We went to this really good place called Jade Garden in the International district.  It got really good reviews on Yelp! and they were all right on the dot.  The egg tarts were some of the best I’ve ever had!  We ended up sharing the table with a couple of ladies and it was a real blast.  

After brunch we headed to the Seattle Cherry Blossom festival.  They had some boothes set up at the Seattle Center talking about Japanese culture etc and they even had a judo demo going on while I was there.  We saw this really cook fountain that they have at the Seattle Center and the weather was warm enough to have kids playing in the water etc.  It was a lot of fun.  No doubt that fountain is a hot spot in the summer.

In the afternoon we hit the star attraction to our day.  Jon found out that there is a chocolate factory in Seattle.  It’s called Theo’s Chocolate and they make organic, fair trade chocolate and are one of 3 major chocolate maker’s in the US.  I didn’t know it, but lots of those other companies that we think of when we think of are only chocolate melters, meaning they buy chocolate from a maker, melt it down and stick some marshmellow goodness in the middle then slap their name on it.  Chocolate makers are the ones who get the cocoa beans, roast them, grind them and make the chocolate that everyone else uses.  It was a pretty good tour and it was cool seeing all the machines, but the best part of the tour was the FREE SAMPLES!  They let you sample as much as you’d like at the factory and store!  Theo’s is known for their original flavors and our favorite was the thai curry chocolate!  They also have things like bread crumb chocolate (they butter bagettes and toast them then shred them into crumbs and put them in the chocolate), fig and fennel chocolate and chipotle chocolates.  They also make these origin bars that have chocolate from different countries, meaning the cocoa beans are from only one place whereas most chocolate is mixed together by other manufacturers.  It was sort of neat seeing the difference between the different chocolates.  You can get Theo’s chocolate in most Whole Foods stores and other health stores.  It was really really fun!  I had a really fun day!  

We headed over to Red Robin for dinner where there were all these cops waiting outside.  Like 3 cop cars and we thought something bad was going down, but they were actually there for a charity event.  Very funny.  

Thanks, Jon-oh for a really good birthday!  I loved it!

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