Our loot from the REI garage sale

REI had a “garage sale” with tons of heavily discounted items. We got there half an hour early and there was already a huge line. Once they started letting people in, it was a mad house! Unfortunately since it was our first time, we weren’t able to find anything worth grabbing. But then people started throwing back the stuff they had grabbed but didn’t want. That’s when we raked in our kill! Yea yea, call us vultures–you’ll be laughing until you see the deals we got!

This is what we got (in no particular order): inflatable sleeping pad, two pairs of ski gloves, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of Nike shoes, a pair of sandal-shoes, and a pair of baby sandal-shoes. Let me give you an idea of the greatness of these deals. The particular line of gloves we got sells for $160. Ours were in perfect condition and only cost $34! And the boots? They normally sell for $185. The pair we got look like they’ve been used once and we paid $20 for them. What great deals! Watch out for my listings on eBay!

For dinner, Angela made a meatloaf cake. It tasted so good!

That evening, we had a bunch of friends over from our ward and it was a really good time. We had ice cream cake that said “Happy Birthday Princess” and I got to wear a pipe-cleaner tiara. Woot!

We waited for a few minutes and then the tour began.  The first animals that we got to see were a family of ring tailed lemurs.  They were really cute and could jump from the ground to the tour guide’s shoulder so fluidly it was really amazing.  We also saw some special breeds of pheasant that they had.  Next it was the big item, kangaroos!  They had the kangaroos in an enclosed area and gave us each a little bread so that we could feed them.  They ate right out of our hands and were surprisingly friendly.  I always thought kangaroos were sort of mean, but these ones were pretty docile.  We even saw some mommys with little joeys in their pouch and we got to pet them and feed them too.  They also had rabbits and tortoises thrown into the mix.  The wallabies also shared the same enclosure as the kangaroos.  I never really knew what a wallaby was until I saw them.  They’re just like kangaroos, but more furry and chubbier looking. They also had these really strange animals in there, I never really got the full name something like Patagonian Capris or something, but I dubbed them guinea deers because they look like guinea pigs with little deer legs, so weird!  After the kangaroos they took us to see and feed a ton of other animals.  They had mules, donkeys, more chickens and goats in one area and we fed them these alfalfa pellets.  Then we headed over and saw this miniature horse, which I guess is different from a pony.  We also got to see an ostrich and two emus, but they didn’t let us feed them (probably because they’d peck our eyes out or something).  The last animals we got to feed were some alpaca llamas.  They were pretty gentle and the tour guide coaxed some of us to feed them from our mouths.  I tried it…wasn’t the best experience of my life, but I escaped unscathed.   When we went back to the starting point of the tour we all got to hold a baby joey and take pictures with it.  It was really neat and he was soooo cute.

After we were finished at the farm Jon took me to Outback Steak House just to complete the Aussie theme of my birthday.  We both had really good meals and I even got a free ice cream treat.

I’d say overall it was a grand adventure and a really fun birthday!  Too bad birthdays only come once a year

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!