Pregnant Soulfriend, Seattle On-Demand Poetry, and Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

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i have finally reached the age where my friends are intentionally getting pregnant (as opposed to those ‘whoops-surprise baby!) and it is sort of blowing my mind. it’s most mind blowing because i am 0% ready or wanting to have an alien baby growing inside me and then be outside of me and i have to make sure it lives and thrives. it’s hard enough taking care of myself at the moment.

When SoulfriendsHave Babies (on purpose)

you may remember when the hubs and i made a quick trip to NYC (and bought a $4 cookie) and i got to see my soulfriend, lindsey!

 

‘soul friend’ noun. like a soul mate except you don’t marry them, you just have an incredibly deep and amazing friendship that your soul needs in order to be happy.

 

that’s lindsey to me and we are celebrating our 8th soulfriend anniversary on wednesday. flowers and chocolates are welcomed. anyways…when we went to visit back in may they had just found out they were expecting a baby (and it was on purpose)!

chelsea and lindsey nyc baby!!!!i sort of freaked out because she is my first super close friend that is preggers! i also did a very good job of not telling anyone until the time was appropriate and it was so hard not to talk about this in that blog post from NYC. i asked her so many questions and tried to wrap my brain around what it would be like to grow something inside of you.

 

she was in seattle over the weekend for a wedding so you bet your booty i drove 3 hours from portland to get my hands on this belly again because inside is an adorable and smart little boy!

pregnant friend blogs for wives chelsea averyisn’t she the most beautiful pregnant lady ya ever did lay eyes on!? YES.

 

it was so amazing to spend the whole day with her on saturday and i truly had my hands on her belly for 3/4 of the day because the little guy is just tumbling around in there.

 

please note: you can only put your hands on a pregnant woman’s belly if her know her well and you ask first. don’t be weirdos.

pregnant friend wife blogwe hung out with her friends (and now my friends…guys you have to be my friend now) eli and shelly. we had an action packed day that started out with going to a farmer’s market in seattle. we first had to find the fruit/veggie/food item that most closely resembles how big that baby is and currently he is an eggplant! crazy.

seattles farmers market size of eggplant babythen things got real pacific northwest-y and there were two hipster men with typewriters offering up poetry at ‘name your own price.’ eli shelled out $4 bucks for a poem to be written about this little boy waiting to be born in december by a mama from colorado.

 

he needed 15 minutes so we strolled, ate pastries and when we came back, he did a much better job than we anticipated. he referred to the little babe as a “boulder” tumbling around and wrote about “december embers” which made us all cry. he even put the word “magic” in there and we love harry potter. he got another $2 for that. that’s what you can do in seattle folks.

poetry in action seattle farmers marketwhen we asked him if we should pay him before he started writing or after he was done he simply said “whichever you prefer. whatever makes you comfortable.” oh PNW and your passive ways.

 

after this we ate burgers which i neglected to photograph because sometimes eating food trumps taking photos of food. this is when our friend bryce joined us! lindsey and him went to high school together and then when we all met in college, we had some roaring good times and now he lives in seattle!

 

someone had the genius idea to tour the theo chocolate factory, where it costs $10 for the tour but they do load you up with chocolate samples and information! oh, and you get a hairnet! AND a free chocolate bar at the end of the tour!

theo chocolate tour hairnets

we joked that we were going to be delivering lindsey’s baby and we were all really professional doctors and nurses. obviously.

blogs for wives pregnant friend hairnetsthey have a chocolate bar that contains buttered toast. it is my new favorite and if they weren’t $3.50 each i would have bought everyone in the world one because they are that good.

theo chocolate tour pregnant friendwe had the sassiest tour guide ever and at one point when he asked if anyone had eaten cocoa nibs from peru and one guy raised his hand, he said “prove it.”

 

i am going to have a chocolate pipeline in my house one day.

sassy theo chocolatei felt like i was advanced in hearing about this process since we visited hershey, pennsylvania and discovered that hershey’s chocolate world is amazing for adults too! i do like theo’s better because they are all about fair trade and organic and they put buttered toast in their chocolate.

theo chocolate tour seattlehere’s the run down in case you want to start your own chocolate making.

theo chocolate tour pregnant friendafter our chocolate touring, we all headed back to eli and shelly’s to get some water-including their hilarious cat. apparently he prefers water straight from the tap as opposed to that stagnant water in a bowl.

kitty drinking from faucetwe bid adieu to the fun couple because eli had to go to work as a wine sommelier! so cool. he was able to taste and define all these amazing parts of the chocolate too.

 

bryce took us to golden gardens park in ballard, on the puget sound and it was beautiful! there were people picnicking, playing in drum circles, swimming, boating and squeezing their soulfriends.

ballard seattle washing golden gardenssoulfriends chelsea avery

as you can see, neither of our husbands were with us. we have been known to go completely into our own world when we get together since we no longer live in the same state (although now she is back in colorado after living in NYC for three years so that makes me happy).

 

her husband (my roomie for 2 years in college) had to fly back to CO earlier in the week to get back to work and ravery received a surprise award from our toastmasters district as “toastmaster of the year” so he stayed in portland. it was probably for the best because i think we tend to annoy them because they get a little forgotten when we are together.

 

if that didn’t make it the best weekend in a long time,  i woke up to a surprise from my husband…he made completely from scratch cinnamon rolls as part of our relationship goals for the month! truly the best cinnamon roll i’ve ever had and i ate two and felt like crap the rest of the day (but totally worth it). you can find my #iwokeuplikethis photo eating one of this on the instagram.

homemade cinnamon rollswe spent all of yesterday finalizing his two keynotes for the week by laying them all out and running through them. he’s pretty impressive and super smart and i love that we get to work together.

homemade cinnamon rolls ryan avery practice

i am so thankful for a sunny and love/cinnamon roll-filled weekend. it’s been reenergizing and my soul feels better. now to set out on my uncomfortable tasks and goals for the week, which include working out because i couldn’t even do 5 jumping jacks yesterday after that sugar/flour indulgence over the weekend.

 

questions:
1) do you have a soulfriend? how long have you been friends?
2) apparently ‘from scratch cinnamon rolls’ take 5 hours to make, longest you’ve spent actively on a recipe?
3) highlights of your weekend?

14 Comments

  1. Jane

    September 15, 2014 at 10:09 am

    ah, Chelsea, I think you mean “fair” trade, not “free” trade in your chocolate story?? It’s a common mistake and there’s a big diff between them ! However, I enjoyed your preggers commentary very much and now am inspired to whip up a batch of cinnamon rolls for me and my soul friend/husband Ernie.

    Thanks!
    Jane

    • chelsea

      September 15, 2014 at 10:24 am

      i definitely meant “fair” trade, jane! thank you for pointing that out (i think i was just getting excited about the *free* chocolate bar they gave us at the end). rightly so-HUGE difference between them 🙂

      hope your cinnamon rolls turn out delicious and ernie is a lucky guy! thanks for your comment!

  2. Paula Howley

    September 15, 2014 at 10:11 am

    I just had to interject and say “Big deal” about the poetry. My 8 year old daughter did that very thing this summer!
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152221842160780&set=t.570070779&type=3&theater
    She made $130 selling lemonade and poetry over 3 nights in front of the Chamber Music festival this August!

    1. I have a soul friend who gets me better than anyone but she is an unfortunate mess whom I cannot help because she doesn’t want to be helped. I miss her.
    2. I refuse to bake because it just means I’ll eat it. Once in a while I do banana bread.
    3. Highlight of my weekend was the whole family being at Meaghan’s soccer game and working on my humorous speech and getting in the groove!!!
    Paula Howley recently posted…Public Presentations For Kids

    • chelsea

      September 15, 2014 at 10:28 am

      that is AMAZING that your 8 year old did the same thing, paula! i remember seeing that picture and she is way cuter than those hipster guys any day. love it! incredibly impressive that she made $130 selling lemonade and poetry in 3 nights-what the badass entrepreneur!

      i am sorry to hear that your soul friend isn’t in a great place and that has to be super hard to see 🙁 sounds like the healthier choice for you though, even if it’s not easy.

      mmmm banana bread. i know what you mean and it’s super hard to bake something and then not have a place to take the remainder (i used to just drop them off in the break room at work…now that break room is our kitchen).

      hooray getting in the groove this weekend and it was such a beautiful weekend in the PNW so perfect time for a soccer game! thanks paula 🙂

  3. Ashley @ Saving Money in your Twenties

    September 15, 2014 at 12:01 pm

    I like how 99% of these photos have your hands on her belly- so cute! hahahaha. Also I was about to ask for the recipe that he used for the cinnamon rolls and then got to the part where you said they take 5 hours. uhhhhhhhhh yeah gonna pass on that one… yikes! I’m sure they were delicious though 🙂
    Ashley @ Saving Money in your Twenties recently posted…Nachos & mini pumpkin pies… aka the meal of champions

    • chelsea

      September 15, 2014 at 8:07 pm

      haha i know ashley…i couldn’t keep my hands off her! i at least checked in every once in a while with her 🙂 isn’t 5 hours crazy?! maybe we will post the recipe when he does it again for christmas (both sides of our family found out about the cinnamon rolls and we are starting a petition for him to make them for the holidays)

  4. Rachel G

    September 15, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    Okay, I do find all the photos with your hands on your friends belly a little hilarious. Cool to see how excited you are! I get quite excited about babies, too, and I had a nephew born last year, so you can probably imagine how thrilling that was for us. Now that I think about it though, I think that the vast majority of babies born to my friends and relatives of my own generation have been surprises…happy surprises, of course…but probably actually “on purpose” planning tends to come later in life.
    And the poet on a typewriter is quite interesting, I’ve never seen any sort of “service” like that.
    Rachel G recently posted…How to Move to China (ESL Route)

    • chelsea

      September 15, 2014 at 8:10 pm

      i should also admit that i have about 23 more photos that i didn’t post with me handling that amazing belly, rachel! i’m unstoppable. how exciting that you have a nephew, i bet that is so fun to have a baby in the family! agreed that later in life those babies become more ‘on purpose’ and less ‘happy surprises’ 🙂

      yeah…they were totally hipster men that embodied the whole old-time poetry thing to a T!

  5. Joe Shaw

    September 15, 2014 at 5:38 pm

    1) Not really.

    2) It took 6 hours, I was a prep cook for Applebees at the time and, yes, we served it. For the record … I DO eat at Applebees sometines, but I am very selective about WHAT I eat at Applebees.

    3) Lost the area humorous speech contest to a guy I coached during the run up to the competetion. Good for him!

    • chelsea

      September 15, 2014 at 8:12 pm

      crazy talk about something taking so long to prepare AND that people have to be active in it (as opposed to my 8 hours of meat in a crock pot that i walk away from). ohhh i bet you have some stories from you applebees days…please let us know what we should be avoiding joe!

      wow! congratulations on coaching someone that placed first in the humorous contest but bummer that that meant you got knocked out. still…speaks to your coaching abilities so hooray 🙂

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