4 St. Patty's Days as Husband and Wife

This past Thursday-Saturday, Graham and I enjoyed a luxurious getaway in celebration of our 4th wedding anniversary. It was the longest amount of time we've spent ALONE together since Isla arrived and I'm happy to report, we still really like each other!! This much-needed mini-staycation came in the middle of a particularly hard season both with school and parenting challenges and so we were thrilled to get away. Given all this, I had very high expectations for the trip (which is always very dangerous for me) but I was not disappointed. Not one bit.

 We caught the Anacortes ferry to Friday Harbor for our first night. We spent the drive listening to a parenting book on CD, "Love and Logic" for toddlers (wow, we sure know how to get the romance going don't we!!?) It seriously was awesome though. We are rarely home at the same time so it was our one chance to listen to the book together and discuss strategies. It sparked great conversation and we sort of have our plan of attack, so to speak, for the next month or two.

Our hotel is the highest building in the picture, up on the bluff overlooking the harbor and ferry dock.

Lovely bed

I spent a great deal of time reading which was particularly enjoyable in front of the fire!

The view from our room

We spent the, may I mention, SUNNY (!!!!!) afternoon wandering the shops in town before our dinner reservations at our hotel's restaurant, The Bluff. We had an incredible soup to start: Blue Moon hubbard squash soup with beet chips and rosemary cream. Both of us are desperate to attempt a recreation of it as it was more brothy and savory (very complex flavors!) than a lot of squash soups. Next we had a salad of warm spinach and brussel sprout leaves with pancetta, berries, hazelnuts, fresh housemade cheese and a sherry vinaigrette. The salad was definitely lacking in the salt department but at least we got some veggies in us! For my main course, I had a bone-in pork chop along with sweet potato and yukon gratin, balsamic figs, mustard cream and a cider gastrique. Graham had the cider-braised short rib with parsnip mash, and Honeycrisp apple and fennel slaw. We like to compete when we eat over who orders the best entree. My meal definitely "won." The package we'd booked came with a $50 dining credit. We most definitely spent more than $50 for our meal but somehow they still didn't charge us. This was only the beginning of our string of good deals.

The next morning was a bit more overcast (but not rain!) so we ate our hotel's complimentary breakfast and caught an early ferry back to the "mainland." 

 We took a spontaneous detour to La Conner because the pregnant one got a severe craving for either clam chowder in a bread bowl or fish and chips. And she wanted to eat them by the water. My dear hubby happily obliged. We ended up at this adorable little place, The Calico Cupboard, where I indulged in chowder and homemade bread. Graham even splurged and bought a berry lemonade to share because he saw me eyeing it on a neighboring table. I blame the hormones but I totally teared up because it is so unlike him to spend $$ on stuff like this when we don't have a coupon! Awe, true love.

 It was at this point that I decided I needed to find some cute mason jars juice cups to pull out come summer. They just making drinking so much more fun!

The 2nd night of our getaway was a "surprise" except for the fact that Graham left his email open a few days prior. Trust me, I don't read his email but I just happened to glance at the wrong time and see a confirmation from the Woodmark in Kirkland. I put on my most surprised look when we pulled into the hotel but I don't think he bought it. Our friend Amy is a manager at the hotel and must have gone to all ends to get her staff to absolutely spoil us. When we walked up to the front desk, we were greeted with "Oh it's the famous Croziers!" by some nice man we'd never met. "Ummmm. Yes? I guess?" We were given the key to our room, a water view SUITE on the 3rd floor! And look at the goodies that were awaiting us in our room: chocolate-covered strawberries*, sparkling cider (for the preggo), a stuffed dog "Woody" for Isla, a hand soap and lotion set, a porcelain to-go mug and lid, cupcakes* and A FRAMED WEDDING PICTURE OF US!!!! We have yet to figure out how on earth they got that picture!!

 The suite felt bigger than our house and had a least 5 bay windows overlooking the water. Graham was pretty excited about the room. Sorry Amy. I promise he only jumped on the bed once. :)

 Our living area

 I couldn't get a good picture of the bathroom because it was so huge but this is the view of the water from our bed. The whole ordeal was divine.

But get this: it gets even better! So we head downstairs to Bin on the Lake for dinner (with the buy one entree, get one free coupon that Amy had left for us in hand). As we are deliberating over the menu, our waiter comes up to tell us that, not to make our decision any harder, but that we must order a starter as Amy had instructed them to provide one on the house for our anniversary. Sweet! We chose the corzetti (handmade coin pasta with winter squash, sage brown butter, almonds and ricotta) which was rich and wonderful. Next we ordered and salad Rogue blue, almonds, pancetta, winter squash, brioche and balsamic. Our waiter insisted on some champagne "to help us celebrate." He brought us bubbly even after I told him I was pregnant and then whispered than mine was non-alcoholic. He was probably one of the best servers I've ever had. He sold us hard on the filet mignon. I figured that since I'm borderline anemic and all, I should have the beef. :) This time both of us ordered the same thing (I think Graham was secretly worried I'd "win" again if he didn't order the same thing as me). It was probably one of the best pieces of beef I have ever had. Oh yummy yum!

After our leisurely meal, our waiter returned to offer us dessert. We declined, telling him we had cupcakes* waiting in our room but did they have any ice cream* we could take up to the room to make them a la mode? He said they didn't have ice cream at the restaurant but what kind would I like? They would make sure they got us some. WHAT?! Really?! By this point, I started to wonder if I actually was famous and didn't know it or something. Who does this kind of thing? We were told just to be sure we put our room number on our bill and "someone" would be up to deliver it to our room shortly. We headed back to our room (only to be stopped at the front desk so they could offer us still more champagne) and it was only 20 minutes later when our waiter of all people knocked at the door with a pint of ice cream!! It was so nuts. I felt like royalty. Amy must have given her entire staff a pep talk before we arrived, telling them to make sure we got whatever we wanted. Wow, wow, wow!

We had another lovely, sunny day on Saturday including coffee and reading at Zokas, followed by some maternity shopping attempts downtown Seattle and closing with Piroshky Piroshky down at Pike Place. We met up with my parents for dinner in Marysville to retrieve Isla and closed out the evening by watching our wedding DVD at home.

A huge THANKS to my parents for watching Isla and to Amy for making our weekend incredible. And now, thanks to my readers for still reading (if there are any of you left....)

*For those of you who may be wondering why dessert was consumed on this little getaway, Graham and I pre-agreed that we would have a brief Lent sabbatical during our anniversary celebrations. :)