Quiet Weekend...

Matt scheduled a softball scrimmage on Friday afternoon so I enjoyed a long workout after work before heading home. After we both got home, we decided to head up to Tanner's for some Keno and good food. I've always enjoyed Tanner's atmosphere, but hated the fact that smoking was still allowed inside because they had Keno. So, even when Omaha went smoke-free, Tanner's was not yet. However, it is now completely smoke-free and I can go again without walking out smelling like an ashtray and feeling like I inhaled a bunch of smoke. Given that we hardly saw each other last week, it was nice to sit around and play quarter Keno and enjoy a great cheeseburger. We also watched the Olympics (men's platform diving) on the big-screen.

Yesterday we headed to the Farmer's Market for a very productive shopping trip. We picked up an eggplant that looks incredible, some frozen tamales, a couple of tomatoes, some homeade salsa, and a new chalkboard to hang right outside of our kitchen. We have been looking for something to hang on the wall below our stairs as it is kind of a random space and not suited for a pictures or anything like that. However, the chalkboard will be perfect in that location.

We spent some time last evening at Lowe's purchasing supplies for a project we will be working on in the coming weeks in our guest room. We had all of the instructions, but still had to wander around looking for all of the supplies. Perhaps someone can explain to me why different wood products are sold in different lengths. We had to purchase 1X2's and 1X3's in 8 foot length pieces, and then two other products we needed in 7ft long pieces and 10 ft long pieces. However the walls we will be using all of the products on are 8 3/4ft long and 10 ft long. Luckily, Matt thinks he can ask the shop teacher at school to cut all of the wood for us as we do not have any sort of saw that will cut it nicely. Hopefully, we can get it cut this week and then work on the project over the long weekend.

Today, we decided to make some pulled pork for sandwiches for this week. We have done this many times before in the slow cooker, but have always covered the pork in BBQ sauce when cooking. We decided this time to cover the pork in root beer when cooking it. We started the pork this morning and let it cook on low all day. I made potato casserole and then pulled the pork, added some BBQ sauce, and enjoyed. It was really good! Matt and I were not really sure what we would think of the root beer, but it provided just a little bit of sweetness and was almost like cooking the pork in a thin molasses. And the best part is that we have pulled pork to eat for the next couple of days.

We enjoyed a quite day at home today. We only left to go work out before lunch. Matt mowed the lawn and I did some laundry, but it was nice to enjoy a quiet day alone. Matt will get busier with softball in the next couple of weeks (he has two tournaments next weekend alone) and then in mid-September I begin traveling, so we are enjoying some time together now.

I'm headed to bed - it is supposed to get into the low 50s overnight so we are planning to turn the AC off and open up the windows!! I love this time of year!

Weekend Recovery...

My houseguests have left and I have finally recovered from the weekend and have time to update. I got up early on Friday morning and headed for some pampering and a pedicure. It was absolutely wonderful. I have extremely ticklish feet and some parts of a pedicure are torture for me, but the scrubber that the girl I go to uses is really gentle and doesn't tickle at all. So, it was an hour of pure relaxation and a great way to start my day. Then I headed to HyVee, grabbed a decaf, non-fat iced caramel macchiato, and picked up all the items I needed for my salad and dessert for Friday night. Well - everything except for a yellow pepper, which looked horrible at HyVee so I had Matt pick one up for me at Target.

I spent all of last week craving chocolate pecan pie (which is strange considering that I had never had chocolate pecan pie before) so I decided to give it a try for dessert of Friday. The recipe for the pie was fairly easy, but I wanted to try making homemade pie crust for the first time. I checked several different recipes before finding one I felt comfortable with and gave it a try. I found it to be easier than I expected and will likely never buy pie crust again. The crust turned out flaky, buttery, and really good - and the filling wasn't bad either. I also made lemon bars and Matt made homemade vanilla ice cream. I was really excited about trying a salad recipe I found with lettuce, red pepper, yellow pepper, onions, artichokes, blue cheese, and a really good viniagrette dressing. It turned out really well and I'll definitely keep it on my list to make again. The artichokes and blue cheese made a really interesting flavor combination.

My mom's birthday party was a big success. It was a fairly small party, just my family, the Hoodys and the Witters. Matt's parents decided to not attend so Matt and his brother came over for a little while, but left before we ate. Brenda got her new fridge delivered about 2.5 hours before everyone was scheduled to arrive. Her old one had slowly been losing the ability to keep cold. Brenda felt that the situation was likely aggravated by the fact that they lost power in the storm in June and the fact that their fridge was over 20 years old. I headed over early to help her set up as her afternoon was a little topsy-turvy. We enjoyed great food (including fabulous bruchetta from a local Italian take-out place that I will be visiting soon!), with great friends. I didn't arrive home until almost midnight!

We got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Farmer's Market with Matt's folks. I don't know what they really thought of it, but I enjoyed it as always. I picked up some fresh sweet basil, fantastic tomatoes, green beans, and we picked up some of the pre-made enchiladas that we love to keep on hand because they are easy to warm up when we don't feel like cooking. We grabbed some breakfast at the Parthenon. I had an elephant ear that was perfect - flaky, sweet, wonderful. I also enjoyed a fantastic cup of homemade root beer.

The farmer's market was really our only excitement during the rest of Matt's parents visit. We cooked them dinner on Saturday night and my parents joined us for dessert. Then we took them to Summer Kitchen Cafe for a great Sunday morning breakfast. They left soon after breakfast and then my mom, Sarah, and I took my grandma to see Momma Mia! It was a cute movie and I think Grandma enjoyed it.

Work has been crazy the past two days. I've received more emails than I can keep up with and I am trying to get everything set for travel this fall. There are just not enough hours in the day. I'm hoping to get completely caught up tomorrow, but I will likely have to shut myself in my office to make that happen.

I'm exhausted today so my post will likely not be too long. I had a terrible case of insomnia last night and definitely remember 1am coming and going before I finally fell asleep. Needless to say, the 6am alarm was not very welcoming.

I'm not sure what caused this as my weekend was pretty calm. Matt and I went out for Date Nite on Friday. We decided to eat a Granite City, one of our favorites when we lived in Lincoln, but we had not yet been to the one here. The menu is different and my favorite salad, the buffalo chicken one, is gone. I had to settle for a dinner salad and a cup of Cheddar and Ale soup. Matt really likes their Chicken Parmesan and must have been craving it because he didn't even look at the menu when we got there.

I went to work out on Saturday morning then met a friend for lunch, shopped for a baby gift, and went to the baby shower. It was incredibly hot out on Saturday - we defintely experienced a typical July day in the midwest.

Matt and went to see Hancock on Saturday night. I was aware of the basic plot of the movie, but was surprised by the direction it took. I won't give any more away, but I thought it was good. It is funny, serious, and a little dark at times.

We had family dinner at my parent's last night. Jim and Matt were both missing so we invited Grandma along. We enjoyed my favorite Cajun Shrimp and had pound cake, peaches and ice cream for dessert - the first good peaches I have had this year. We also pulled out old family pictures and had a great time looking through them.

Although tomorrow is Tuesday I will not be posting my new weight because Mackenzie and I will be at the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Qwest. I have never seen/heard DMB in person and I am really excited. However, I checked my weight tonight to see where I was at, and I am expecting a good number on Wednesday when I check in!

I'm headed to bed - let's hope that tonight is a better night than last night!

A distraction from the destruction...

One of the reasons the damage to our house was a little stressful for Matt and I was the fact that we were scheduled to leave Saturday morning for a short trip to Kansas City to see our friends Andrew and Amy and to go the the Cardinals vs. Royals game on Saturday night. After determining that out house was not in any danger of further damage (no ceilings falling in, nothing hanging off the house, etc.) we decided to go ahead and make the trip. We did not get out of town as early as we had planned on Saturday and it took us a little longer to get out of town than we anticipated because there were many traffic lights that were still not working and traffic was backed up. Andrew and Amy were spending the weeknd with Andrew's parents, Charlie and Judy, at their house in Lathrop, MO. We arrived in time for a late lunch at El Guapo, a little, hole-in-the-wall, Mexican restaurant about 10 minutes from their house. We have eaten at El Guapo every time that I have visited Andrew's parents - which is fine with me because the food is really good. After lunch we hung around the house for awhile, Matt and I took a ride in the 1928 Model A Ford that Andrew's dad is restoring, and then headed to KC to the ballpark. We saw a great game - especially since the Cardinals were 0-4 in the series until Saturday night and actually won the game. There is nothing better than an ice cold beer, an order of nachos, a nice evening, and enjoying a great baseball game with good friends. Oh, and seeing Amy almost get into a fight with the really annoying girl who sat two rows in front of us was just the mustard on the hotdog for the evening :)

Here are the four of us enjoying the win!

The game was also a great win because the final score was 5-1 and the one run the Royals scored was scored during the 7th inning, which meant that we could take our ticket stubs to a Sheridan's Custard for a free sundae.

So, we stopped in Liberty on the way home for some hot fudge sundaes.

We spent most of the day Sunday at Andrew's parents house. We enjoyed a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast (yum!), played MarioKart for about 2 hours, and spent some time sitting by the pool after we had lunch. We headed back to Omaha about 4 because we had agreed to help my parents move some furniture.

When we arrived at my parents house, my mom showed us what they had discovered the morning when my dad arrived home from his trip (he was in Kentucky for the weekend) that the rest of us had failed to notice:

This is a fairly major support beam on my parent's deck just barely resting on the concrete block on the ground. All of us, including my almost 88-year-old grandmother had walked around on this deck before my dad noticed this.

Wow!

I stopped by work for awhile this afternoon for some peaceful work time before my busy week begins. This week shouldn't be too bad, but I have training for at least half a day 4 out of 5 days this week so I won't be able to get much quality work time in. I actually love working when the office is quiet - I feel so accomplished!

Anyways, my point was to mention that wall of our office is only windows, which is great for getting a great view of a beautiful day - unfortunately, those floor-to -eiling, wall-to-wall windows also face west, which means that post-noon everyday it really starts to warm up in here...especially in my cubicle because I face the windows. The last time I checked our thermostat said 85.5 degrees..I'm sure it is warmer on my side of the "wall" (the partial wall created by our cubicles). Let's hope it cools down by morning!! Oh - yeah - forgot to mention that the university practices energy efficiency and turns off our AC every weekend and evening.

Weekend...

Matt's parents visited this weekend. It was their first trip to Lincoln although they have been to Omaha twice before - once last Labor Day weekend and then again for the wedding. They arrived on Friday in the early evening after apparently taking the l-o-n-g route from Shelbina to Lincoln through Kansas. They brought the dog with them, which made the weekend interesting because we had to return to the hotel periodically to check on her. Luckily their hotel was literally down the street from our apartment. Yesterday we visited Morrill Hall - the University of Nebraska State Museum and the Tractor Test Museum on East Campus. We were going to go to the Nebraska State Capitol Building as well, but decided after the first two activities to take it easy for awhile (and check on the dog...). The Tractor Test Museum was actually really interesting. Do you ever notice how the most interesting things can be located right under our noses and we just pass on by without noticing? The Tractor Museum has about 25 tractors on display all that were tested at the University of Nebraska. Nebraska passed a law in about 1920 that would protect farmers in the state of Nebraska from buying tractors that did not meet their advertised expectations. So, they set up a testing center at the University of Nebraska to test tractors. Matt's dad loved it. Matt got some great pictures that I will try to post in the next couple of days - the cord for my camera is missing right now. My parents and Sarah drove down and had dinner with us last night at Granite City. I had buffalo chicken salad - it was good but I was disappointed in myself for not trying something new because I had the same meal the last time I was there. Matt had chicken parmesan that was to die for (I snuck a bite) and everyone else's food looked really good as well. I vow to try something new next time and not be boring by ordering the same thing every time. Even though we were pretty full after dinner, I took the opportunity to visit one of my favorite Lincoln stops - Ivanna Cone. Homeade ice cream to die for! I had my usual - a chocolate ice cream soda made with Ivanna Cone's delicious Dutch Chocolate ice cream. So, so good. Matt had Carrot Cake Ice Cream - ice cream with real carrot cake -frosting and all- mixed in. It was tempting, but I'll stick to my favorite!

Matt's parents left this morning after we had breakfast with them and Matt and I plan to spend the day inside. It is so cold out and we were on the go for most of the day yesterday that we decided to just enjoy a day at home. I have some work to do for class (I'm procrastinating at the moment) and I really need to clean out my closet and get my winter clothes ready to put away and start getting my summer clothes out. Unfortunately, the cold weather is not motivating me to get that project going today - I have zero interest in putting tanktops in my drawers when the temperature is not even above freezing. For right now, I'm just enjoying my diet coke, watching the Cardinals game over Matt's shoulder on his laptop - (as we can't get the games on tv here) and recording my thoughts on these recent events.