On Saturday, we all woke up super early to meet up in southeast Vancouver to head on over to the border and onwards to Bellingham, Lynnwood, and Tulalip, in that order.

At first, the driving arrangement was for there to be a “boy car” with the three guys including NPY, and a “girl car” for the five girls. However, some concern about how a U.S. border guard will perceive three guys heading into their country in a hot little sports car induced us to change things up. Ultimately, all day long, the three shortest girls, including me, rode in NPY’s “little car”.

We hoped to stumble on places that offered a tax exemption to BC residents even though the official exemption is still going through the courts. It resulted in a great deal of mental mathematics to apply the sale discount, a possible Washington tax, and then a quick conversion to Canadian dollars. We were only successful in getting a tax exemption at Target, Macy’s, and Banana Republic. Going through the cashier took longer because the clerks took down our address information but it was so worth it.

It seems I’m kind of seasoned by now in going to the few cities we went to, the ones on the I-5 between here and Seattle. NPY and I have a little ritual wherein he takes a bathroom break at the duty free shop and I take the driver’s seat and stay there until we cross the border. He thinks I get us through the U.S. guards easier. (Except this time I had a small meltdown with four, instead of two, people’s border crossing success riding on my answers. We saw our guard was asking people to pop open their trunks and I panicked and pulled the hood lever instead of finding the small trunk button to press. The guard got a kick out of how I flaked, teased NPY for not doing the driving, made a deal of not seeing little Kit in the back seat, and tried to call me on driving away while the emergency brake was still on. It was down, but looks up.) On our way back to Canada, we may have done some creative (and always minor) accounting and NPY handles that pressure better and stays in the driver’s seat.

We’re also getting the hang of eating when we go on a roadtrip. We usually hit up a “value-added” American chain restaurant and order independently and feel disgusting from the food, exacerbated by sitting in a car all day. We tried it with some success at a Claim Jumper last time and this time at Macaroni Grill: we split a salad and an entree wherein I, proportional to my size and metabolic rate, eat just one-third of each.

It wasn’t too bad for NPY to hang with just girls for the drive and we did tease when the conversation veered towards discussion about underwear after I queried why someone wanted to go to Walmart in Tulalip. Funny enough, all four of us went a little crazy in Walmart. It occurred in the cereal aisle where we saw Eggo cereal and chocolate Mini Wheats. These are products I’ll hear about on The Impulsive Buy blog (American, based out of Hawaii) but wait in vain for their arrival in Canada. Even NPY got into it and selected two boxes of cereal all regularly priced at under $3 while we are lucky to get them for $4 at the regular markets. Between the four of us, we got 11 boxes of cereal! I also got Quaker hazelnut latte oatmeal because I was sure we don’t get that here.

Shopping for clothing was the major event and other than a tantalizing teaser at Macy’s in the morning, we didn’t get to Seattle Premium Outlets until 5:30 or 6. We made up for it when we did finally arrive! I seem to have had prints on my mind adding the white dress from Ann Taylor to the white blouse from Macy’s–I think it’s the nicest white dress I will ever own. I also tried on the best little black dress (LBD)–most unfortunately only photographed with my phone camera–at Banana Republic. NPY echoed my thoughts, “It looks like a ballet dress,” with the cross-over neckline and cross-over detail on the skirt, without any of the wrap-dress fussiness. But Kit tried on the same dress and it showed me how it ought to look so I had to return it to the shelf. I was quite shocked that Kit didn’t have a dress to attend a wedding recently so it was satisfying to send the girl home with two dresses from our trip!

Of course, I got another 20-pack of hangers for $2 from Target. We always visit Target and/or Walmart and I seem to get a 20-pack of hangers each time. NPY keeps taking my hangers home with him. The newest 20-pack is teal-coloured.

NPY got what he wanted: shoes. Although he thinks he’s quite different from “Tim”, one of the boyfriends, I like to think they bonded over shoes at Nordstrom and Nike when they really liked each other’s shoes! NPY bought white Lacoste shoes that are going to plague me when he fusses over them. Good thing I can always divert myself with anything on my iPhone….

Finally, I had to snap a picture at one of our last stops, the Nike Factory Outlet store, because they seem to be all about the wyn win right now.

On this day..

• Dineout Around Washington (mostly Bellevue) - 2011
• The Safest Place on Earth - 2006