Since I was combining a girlfriend trip with a family trip our first stop on Wed was Kimberly's house. OK, not our first stop, first I had to go to the grocery store. Decided to make lunch for everyone. It's a super simple salad but Sharon said it was one of the best salads she's ever had. Kim says she could eat it every day! Wish I had taken a pic for you but at least I'll tell you how to make it.
As soon as I got to Kim's house I was greeted by these beautiful faces!
The main reason why Kim's house was my first stop. Trying to catch up on precious baby time! When the boys are together it's hard to get them to focus on anyone but each other but at least they would give me hugs and kisses all day. Lily can go from laughing to crying in a minute. She keeps us on our toes! Julie practically tossed her back into Kim's arms as soon as she started crying, what a wuss, LOL.
I don't know why I insist on smooshing my face next to any baby's face. It's not a flattering angle but I had to post this pic because of the look on Lily's face.
While trying to squeeze in baby kisses, I worked on the salad. This is a perfect summer salad using fresh corn on the cob. I buy about 4 or 5 ears of corn, cut the corn off the cob and sauté it in butter and fresh chopped garlic. Finish it off with salt and pepper. Set it aside to cool down some.
Then prepare the rest of the salad. I love adding rotisserie chicken to my salads for protein and it's easy. Julie shredded the chicken and we set it aside so that people can add as much or little chicken into the salad as they want.
The rest of the salad consists of things that I love on a salad, arugula, cucumbers, avocado, red onion, shaved parmesan cheese and salt & pepper flavored slivered almonds (they are amazing on a salad, found in the produce section, a splurge but I buy them when they're on sale). I add the corn and toss all the veggies together and then let people add the amount of almonds and cheese so each salad is customized to personal tastes. I use Ken's light sweet vidalia onion but any dressing you like will work. Try a salad with the corn and your favorite salad fixings and you'll love it!
BTW, if you don't feel like sautéing the corn, you can microwave an ear of corn in it's husk for 2-3 minutes and cut the fat end and squeeze the corn out and voila, easy corn on the cob! Thanks Kim for that tip!
After we left Kim's we went to Lynnwood to hit Olympus Spa. Nancy and I love this place but it's a naked lady spa so hard to get others to go with us. Julie and Sharon don't have that problem, woo hoo! Poor Nancy had to work so she met up with us after work and still got some spa time in. The spa features not only hot tubs and steam rooms, it has different rooms that you go in and relax (I fell asleep in the sand room, my snore woke me up, I should have gone into the nap room). Each room with a different benefit. You can spend hours there going from room to room and hopping into various hot tubs (different temps) but since this was a special occasion we also scheduled treatments. I got a 90 minute massage. Too bad my masseuse didn't know that. After I got out I noticed the time and had to go let them know. They refunded me the rest of my massage but it doesn't make up for the lost time. This is the second time I booked a 90 minute and got a 60 (the other time was at massage envy). That time I let them give me the other 30 minutes and it was awful. From now on, I'll make sure the masseuse knows ahead of time, what I paid for. The other two had fantastic treatments and came out glowing. Luckily Nancy joined me not too long after my massage so we just wandered around the rooms, trying to find empty ones so we could gab.
After spending as long as we could at the spa we had to leave to meet up with Kathy and Jordan for dinner at our favorite all you can eat Korean restaurant, Original Sul Lung Tang which conveniently is right by the spa. Korean is one of my favorite foods and I've taught Jordan to appreciate it. We all ate until we could eat no more. It was awesome! Even though it felt like our belly's were going to explode, we headed out for some frozen yogurt. There's still a tiny bit of room in my belly that the yogurt could fit into. I think only Jordan, Kat and I had yogurt. The rest couldn't hang.
Being the wild and crazy gals that we are, we headed home to prepare for another action packed day!
