Ready for the Thrill

Ryan and I just signed up to run our first 5K together and I am pretty excited. We decided to run in the Thrill of the Grill 5K held at the Central Market in Plano, benefiting the Plano ISD Education Foundation. My goal is to run the 5k in under 30 minutes. Not a huge goal as I do it all of the time in my workouts, but there is a large difference for me running on a treadmill indoors and running in a large crowd of people outdoors. Now this race isn't as large as say the Race For The Cures held around town, but last year they had around 900 participants. The best part? The race registration fee also gets you in to a breakfast buffet with live music. All in all, I think this is going to be an awesome event!

To Welcome March

I think I may do this on our family blog. It will keep me posting every day for the month of March, but it isn't overwhelming because some of the answers are really short. This was originally posted to Tumblr, but I think it is a better fit for me to use it here on the blog. Look for my answers to these coming March 1.

Austin PS

I made this cute little sign for Henry. I thought it was pretty cute! One of Amanda's favorite songs to sing to her son is 'You Are My Sunshine' so I thought this would be a great addition to his nursery.

Austin, TX...Yes Please!

So this past weekend Ryan and I set out to visit our friends in Austin, Texas. They just had the cutest baby in the entire world and we were so excited to meet him. There is a show called Man vs. Food that Ryan and I are watching all the time, so we decided to visit restaurants that had been featured on that show. For this trip that included Salt Lick BBQ, Fran's Hamburgers and Amy's Ice Cream. All three were great!

Salt Lick was the BEST BBQ Ryan and I had ever had. That is saying a lot as we are from Texas and have eaten quite a bit of BBQ in our time. As you can see, we both REALLY enjoyed ourselves!

Dinner was filled with brisket, sausage, ribs, potato salad, coleslaw, beans and the best dang BBQ sauce I have ever had! The fact that Salt Lick is BYOB didn't hurt either. I absolutely love this place and we will definitely be going back soon!

After having such a ridiculous dinner Friday night, Ryan and I both got up to run 5k the next morning, so that we could continue to eat of course! On the meal schedule for Saturday were Fran's , Amy's and Central Market. At Fran's it was a jalapeño burger for Ryan and a bacon cheeseburger for me. We tried to be somewhat healthy by splitting fries. Ugh! Still artery clogging, I know, but so good for a little hole in the wall type place.

Amy's was next to add insult to injury. Ryan had something called Chewwy-Baka (duh!) and I had something called Bloody Sword (to this day that name makes no sense to me). The C-B consisted of coffee ice cream, peanut butter, Heath bar and pecan praline sauce. The Blood Sword consisted of mexican vanilla ice cream, coconut, cameo cookies and pecan praline sauce. Both were a-ma-zing!

For dinner that night, we decided to bring CM to Mike, Amanda and Henry's house so they didn't have to get out. We had so much fun visiting their new home, catching up, having dinner and meeting the cutest baby boy in the country. Ryan and I miss them more than I think we realized and more than they may know. I can't say enough how fun it was to see them, even though we just hung out and did nothing. It was a great, great night!

(See! Cutest boy ever! I told you!)

As a random side note, while we were picking up dinner at the CM, I really needed some bottled water. I decided I would buy whatever was cheapest because all the bottled water is really the same anyway, right? Look what crap they have in Austin...

Yes, this is water you are supposed to buy to support UT students and it is in the shape of the tower on campus. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great to support college students, but this is the cheesiest thing I have ever seen. I think TCU needs to sell water in a bottle shaped like a Horned Frog. Now that, I would buy a case of!

Until next time Austin, which hopefully won't be long, because I am missing little Henry already...

RIP Hazel Basil

Remembering my favorite little girl. Most recent to long ago. Hazel = LOVE.











I miss her terribly...

Mom's New Book Cover

Not sure I'm a fan. Okay, I take that back. I am 100% sure I am not a fan.

Here's to hoping they will change it!

Super Bowl Canadian Style

On Sunday, we were supposed to be in Austin to visit our friends the Morrison's and their new baby Henry, but unfortunately were were snowed in. Because we had nothing else to do, we decided to go ahead and watch the Super Bowl.

Ryan and I aren't really big football fans, but we did go to my parent's house to watch the game. Now if you know my parents, you won't be surprised by the next picture, because they are just awesomely fun people. But, how many of you have had your parents make Jello Shots before?

Yup! Those are Strawberry Daiquiri Jello Shots. Yum! This was only the beginning though, to a night filled with artery clogging food.

Poutine. For those of you who have had this Canadian delicacy you know how terrible it is for you. My only guess is that Canadians need to put on mass amounts of fat to stay warm up north. Poutine consists of french fries, topped with cheese curds, topped with brown gravy...as you can see below.

The cheese curds were absolutely amazing! Sherry, Ryan's boss at ClubCorp, brought them back for us from her trip to Wisconsin.

Overall, it was a fun night of food, family and football.

(Me + my parent's cat Izzy = love)

Iced-In Pizza and Pie Night

Since I have been snowed in for five days now, count them FIVE, baking has taken over my life. The snow was really coming down yesterday, to the point we had to cancel our trip to Austin. Dang it!

Anyway, even though the office was closed, Ryan decided to go into work. I figured that since he was already out, he could pick me up a few things at the store. So last night Ryan made homemade wheat pizza crusts. My pizza was BBQ Chicken and Ryan had just regular chicken with tomato sauce.

For desert, I made a banana cream pie. I kinda cheated and had Ryan buy a pre-made graham cracker crust. As much as I like baking I hate making my own crusts, graham or regular pie. Anyway, I layered bananas on the bottom, pudding type custard in the middle and whipped cream and bananas on top. It was pretty darn good! I even used skim milk and had Ryan get a reduced fat crust. Anything to still be able to bake but not gain any more iced in the house and can't get out to run weight!

Snow, Or Should I Say Ice, Day

So it is the first official snow day of the year. One in which both mine and Ryan's offices both actually closed for the entire day. Unfortunately with a day like this it is bitterly cold outside and everything outside is ice, not snow so much. This makes it so dangerous out there. I am just hoping that everyone that can stays home and stays safe today. I'm not sure how long this stint of snow/ice will last either. It isn't supposed to be above freezing until Friday and they are saying the sun might not come out any time soon. This snow day may turn into a snow week.