Priceless

An alarm that went off at 5am.

A 10 hour round-trip car drive.

4 “official” stops for gas.

2 friends waiting for your arrival.

A low-key weekend with said friends – Priceless.

I left bright and early Saturday morning for Iowa.  The plan was to stay at Calee’s place in Ames and Amanda and I to drive there with an approximate 11:30am arrival.  (I was a bit late due to my own stupidity, though I’d rather blame it on not being observant enough in sheer excitement to get to my friends.  Let’s just leave it at that.) 😉

Once I arrived (Amanda was already there), we dropped our stuff in the guest room and Calee & her boyfriend Mark made us lunch – gluten-free waffles and scrambled eggs.  It was delicious!  While I don’t have a picture of the food, Calee was sweet enough to lay out anything Amanda and I may possibly need or have forgotten to pack.  Chimes Inn for the win! 😉

We had a short 2 mile run planned for after lunch but we needed some time to digest so we broke out the Uno cards and played a few rounds.  Hi, my name is Katie and I haven’t played Uno is so long I had to be reminded of how to play.  Oops.  It was fun and after a couple rounds (I lost every one), we headed over to the University campus and ran a nice, easy little loop.  It was cold but we were all still smiling at the end so it must have been good.  (How did we not get a pre OR post-run picture? Blogger fail.)

We chilled for a bit longer and then set out to Des Moines for dinner a A-Dong’s for vietnamese.  I got a tofu & veggie stir-fry with rice on the side.  I ate all the veggies and left behind most of the rice.  It was good!

We had a lot of talk about spending our evening relaxing and chatting over a bottle of wine.  When we got back to the apartment after dinner, our plans changed to chatting over Chai tea & chocolate.  Fine by me! 🙂

Sunday morning came so quickly.  We slowly woke up, showered and made our way to The Cafe in Ames for brunch.  I ordered the oatmeal (made with soymilk) and it was delicious – just what I was hoping for!

Everyone else seemed to really enjoy their food too.

Thanks to our gracious hosts for the weekend.

And thanks to my lovely blends for a great, relaxing and fun weekend.

(Also a thank you to Calee for letting me steal a few of her pictures…) 😉

Around 1 or so, I got on the road and made my way back to IL.  And as they say, the rest is history.

A low-key weekend with friends – Priceless.