Girls Weekend In Walla Walla, WA - Day One

We had so much fun on our Girls Weekend to Walla Walla, WA that I never had a moment of downtime to type up a blog and share our fun.  So, I’ll be sharing it with you now over two blog posts.  Be prepared for some photo fuuuuuun.

Friday morning I took Dawny out to breakfast at The Orchard House before we picked up Phoenix.  It was so enjoyable having Dawny along for our Girls Weekend.  I am so glad she joined us.

 

Once Phoenix was on board, we met Danielle and Kate in Nampa so we could head westward to Walla Walla.  I had wanted to have a super fun trip with my girlfriends for a while now and Walla Walla seemed like an easy enough trek as it is only four hours away.  My friend Brenda had planned to join us but she had to make a last minute trip to Chile to be with her family.  We missed her.

We decided to stop at the Wildhourse Resort & Casino in Pendleton, OR for some lunch and penny slots.  We were celebrating Phoenix’s one month of divorce anniversary so I bought her a margarita to celebrate.  After lunch we hit up some slots and both Dawny and I ended up winning about $30 each.  Not a bad way to start vacation.

 

We finished the drive to Walla Walla and found our rental house for the weekend.  I decided to try Air B&B for the first time and we all went in on a house with several bedrooms/beds.  It turned out our host was out of town for the weekend as well so we had the whole place to ourselves.  We really loved the close location to downtown (about seven minutes) and the house was located in a nice neighborhood.  I didn’t think our bed was comfortable and we had one bathroom for five women.  Also there was a very loud party going on at the house behind us our second night so it was really hard to sleep.  All in all, I would consider an Air B&B again for future travel.

We arrived in Walla Walla around 4pm, which didn’t leave us much time to do much wine tasting.  There are a few wineries that were open later than 5pm and most had live music after hours.  Our first stop was Plumb Cellars where we shared a wine slushy.  It was basically a sangria mix that was frozen and it was delicious.  I think that was the highlight of the trip!

 

We spotted a guy walking on the street and asked him where we should go for some fun in this small sleepy town.  He suggested trying out Public House 124 so that is where we headed next.

 

We had the best waiter and had tons of fun drinking beer, sharing a few appetizers, and basically being rowdy.  Phoenix had told the waiter it was her one month divorce anniversary.  We laughed thinking we should have made her a sash and tiara like you see women do when they are having a bachelorette party.  A short time later he brought her a celebratory shot.  It was hilarious.

 

Upon the recommendation of the waiter, we moved onto Mill Creek Brew Pub.  This was another highlight of the trip as they had the best porter of the trip.

 

We decided not to order any additional food and instead explore other choices.  I found a Mexican restaurant on Yelp that was cheep but the group we talked to on the street said the wait was long and suggested a pizza place.  We walked to the Mexican restaurant and found that even if we ordered to-go and took our food back to our rental house, that it would still take over an hour.  So we headed to a nearby Safeway and picked up a smorgasbord of mix and match food for our dinner.  After filling our bellies, drinking a few more adult beverages, and chatting for a little while, we called it a night.

So far our girls weekend was off to a great start.

On Our Way To Wine Country

Happy Friday!!!

This gal flew into Boise last night.

WhoooHoooo!

We are about to have a super fun girls weekend with this girl.

And this girl.

And this girl too.

We are headed to Walla Wall, WA for a girls weekend in wine country.  I’ll toast to that!

Since the Air B&B we rented has WiFi, I’m going to try and pop in with some of our fun.  That is unless we are having too much fun.

To Be Continued….

A Victim's Plea: Denise Amber Lee Training

On May 11^th I was able to attend a training that was a very difficult topic to discuss and a very moving experience.  A Victim’s Plea: Meeting Expectations is a training provided by the Denise Amber Lee Foundation.  Our training was presented by Nathan Lee, president of the foundation, and Ryan Chambers, a public safety instructor.

Lt. Haight doing the introduction and talking about the certification proposal

Nathan Lee is the widower of Denise Amber Lee who was murdered on January 17, 2008.  She was just 21 years old and a mother of two small children.  A random stranger named Michael King abducted, raped, and murdered Denise.  The most heartbreaking part of the story isn’t that she was a beloved wife and mother.  The most heartbreaking part is that the 911 system failed Denise.  If it hadn’t, she might still be alive today.

While this training was very emotional, it was also very professional.  There was a balanced mix of the personal story (as told by her late husband Nathan and as we watched the story unfold on a network television show) and of the professional aspect of being a 911 dispatcher and the experiences in public safety as told by Ryan.  The hardest part to watch was at the very end when we watched a video set to music of photos of Denise, her husband, and her kids.  That really tugged at your heart strings.

Denise’s father worked for a local police agency, the same agency that failed her.  Denise fought hard and several witnesses who suspected something was wrong didn’t call police.  At one point Denise even called 911 after getting a hold of her captor’s phone.  Finally a witness called 911 with really solid information.  As a dispatcher, and working for a 911 agency for six months, I would have broadcasted that information the second I had it.  Sadly, it appears the dispatchers working that day didn’t get along.  And they let their personal tiff affect giving 100% service to their caller.  The only opportunity to intercept Denise, who was tied up in the backseat of her captor’s car, never happened because the information was never given to the officers that were in the area looking for any green car that might be a match.

It is very sad to think that Denise could be alive today if it weren’t for the mistakes made that fateful day.  The Denise Amber Lee Foundation has made it their mission to get education out to dispatchers all across the USA.  Several states, including Idaho, do not have any type of certification for dispatchers.  If you are a hairdresser in Idaho, you are required to be certified.  However, you can answer emergency calls and get help to a person during a crisis without having to hold any type of certification or without keeping up with any type of continued education. The Idaho PSAP Standards and Training Committee are currently working with the legislature to change that.  We are hoping that really soon we will have a certification in place and a requirement for continued education. 

I was really thankful I was able to attend this training.  If you have an opportunity in your area, please do so.  To learn more about the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, visit their website at: http://deniseamberlee.org/