back in NJ

after a long day of flying, i finally arrived home last night around 6:30. what a fun trip! unfortunately i arrived home with Tucker sick and jeff exhausted - so it was jump right into caregiver mode. apparently one of the caregivers who watches tucker on the weekends came in sick and she gave it to Tucker (which i don't mind telling you makes me quite angry). we have a policy here that you do not come to work sick and she still did. he's a little better today, but still coughing like a maniac. at this point, it's seems very parallel to allergies.

so i thought i'd just begin my trip with the starting point of when i left. Andrew and i were on the same flight, so that was fun. After arriving, we found Jennifer almost immediately. We got our luggage and headed to our rental car. Once on the road, we hit our first stop, Target, to pick up some supplies. Next on the list was a stamp store that Andrew knew of. it was great! such awesome selection on stamps, paper, books, magazines, etc. i ended up buying a few books, some magazines and some stamps. way to weigh my backpack down almost immediately! next on the list was Maxines, a floral/gift shop. oh my god, was this place beautiful. Andrew thought i would love this place and he was right. it was like a fairyland. the colors were gorgeous and she had it decorated so lovely. i probably could have stayed there all day. it was like a fantasy land. she had these enourmous paper flowers running along the ceiling. our next stop to us to the funky, fun store, Archie Mcphee's. what a fun store. silly stuff, novelty items, gag gifts, funky candy, hats, wigs, toys, whatever! i bought some monster finger puppets for no good reason, but for the fun of it! jennifer and i took some photos in the photo booth. after Archie Mcphee's we headed for our hotel. we were all getting a little tired by then. we checked in and then got cleaned up for dinner. from our hotel we walked downtown to Pike's Place Market. we were heading to a chowder house for dinner but they were closed! we found another place that we thought looked good. they had a fabulous hummus and scrumptious salmon! we did a little shopping on the way back at a 100 yen store (a Japenese drug store), a cool gifty place called "Fireworks" and then into Norstroms quickly for Jenn to find a coat since she forgot hers at home. After i took a nice warm shower, Jennifer and i hit the hay to rest up for the following day.