4th of July Weekend in Seattle

Half a year has come and gone as we just wrapped up celebrating 2010's 4th of July. Time flies!

I started Saturday with oatmeal that I topped off with the last of my husband's, Nature's Path Flax Plus Red Berry Crunch cereal, which added a nice crunch to the usual concoction. I just love the bunches of granola in this cereal too.

Instead of heading to my usual Zumba class, I went down to my apartment's gym and did 35 minutes on the elliptical while reading and then ran for 25 minutes on the treadmill. Should have just gone outside and ran but I got my hour in and felt better because of it.

I then spent the afternoon down at my best friend's and got to enjoy the fresh veggies from her garden. The peas were crisp, sweet and delicious, though unfortunately not a ton of them. And I ended up taking a whole bag of lettuce leaves homes, which will be part of my lunches all week. Everything is so fresh and yummy and great to know exactly where my produce is coming from and what's in it.

Saturday evening was spent at the Seattle International Beer Festival at the Seattle Center. I actually don't like beer much at all so I just went to be social. The festival was a little chaotic with lots of little dogs underfeet (and one that was tearing into a stuffed animal) and long lines. But surprisingly, I ended up sampling a few of my friend's beers that I wouldn't mind ordering. Though honestly, they weren't really beers but more like fruity ciders or lambics.

We then finished the evening off with sushi at Genki - while they don't serve only sustainable seafood - they use fresh and quality products and I only get fish like salmon, tuna and scallops that are local to this area and on the Monteray Bay's best or good alternative seafood watch list. And a suprisingly delicious sustainable (non-seafood) item is their grilled eggplant nigiri with a crazy smokiness that I couldn't get enough of.

Sunday morning, on the 4th of July, we visited the Lake Union Wooden Boat Show since my husband is totally into old sailing ships and it happens to be just a few blocks away from us. They had a ton of boats of all sizes and eras and here's our picture in front of the Hawaiian Chieftain. When we have kids it will be great to take them here so they can build a little mini wooden boat as a souvenir.

For fireworks, we were planning to head over to Gas Works park to watch the big show but at about 4:00 p.m. it just start raining - typical Seattle. So we decided to head to the other side of the lake to a friend's who has a rooftop deck to view the show from and played games and ate snacks. The weather did eventually clear up, though at one point it was so foggy you literally couldn't see to the other side of the lake. Seattle weather is just crazy! It's July for goodness sakes!