MIA & random

Well, I am absent this week, and that will definitely continue until I finish this house project.

Tim ripped out our fireplace last weekend and we have been busy reconstructing and repainting and whatever else comes up along the way. It has been a hectic week.

After our vacation posts in the near future I will post about the fireplace or lack there of!

I just gave blood for the first time, it wasn't too bad after they finally found my vein. Ugh!

Tomorrow night we are having a block party at our house. Should be fun with all our neighbors.

I think that's it for now, hope to be back next week!

Vacation: Leg #2 STL Days 1&2

We arrived in St. Louis approximately 1 hour before the Cardinals/Indians game was to start.  We quickly checked into our hotel, got sunscreen on Cooper and began our walk down to the stadium. 

It was a hot day, and we had really good seats, right in the sun!  But in all seriousness, they were good seats, right at first base.  Cooper brought his glove so that he could try to catch a fly ball, but unfortunately, none came our way, the closest was about 15 feet from us.  

Here are a few pictures.  Love my boys.  We all had our baseball attire on, I had a cardinals shirt on, Tim with his Indian’s shirt and Cooper with his Scooby baseball shirt.

After the game, we met up with Holly and her family.  We ate dinner at a nice local place called Fitz’s and it as so good to finally meet Holly!  I think of all of my bloggy friends, she is my closest, and I talk to her the most.  My mom always asks me about “the girl who comments on every one of my blog posts” now I can tell her how awesome this girl is in real life!  Her kiddos, Haven and Olive were super cute and her hubby Chris was very nice also.  Holly put together a busy bag for Cooper with a sticker book and gummies and all kinds of other goodies, how sweet was she?!?  So nice!  Our boys were a handful that night, I was thankful for our two great husbands to chase the boys around.  I loved meeting you and your sweet family Holly! 

Monday, we went to the Anheuser Busch tour and drank some beer.  We then went down to Delmar Loop and walked for awhile, taking it all in.   We went to Pi Pizzeria and then hit up a great little cupcake place called The Cup.   We ended the night swimming at the hotel and getting some rest.  After a big Sunday and long day Monday it was time for some much needed rest for Cooper, and US!

Stay tuned for some more pictures and days 3&4 recap.  Leg 3 still to come after that. 

Have a great weekend folks!

Vacation: Leg #1 Camping

There will be three legs to this vacation.  And some legs may be broken up into different parts.  That I haven’t decided yet.  I’ll have to go through pictures before I can say for sure. 

We first went camping with my mom, her husband Shawn, and my brother and his family.  It was a good time.  It was very hot, so I was glad we got to go on the boat, because the water gave us much needed relief from the heat. 

The first day my brother’s fam wasn’t there except for my nephew Layne.  I was glad he was there so he and Cooper could play together.  The boys don’t get to do that nearly as often as we would like. 

But first, there was baseball playing with Nana.  Cooper is OBSESSED  with baseball.  From the moment he wakes up in the morning until he goes to bed at night, it’s baseball this, baseball that, so as soon as we got there, he decided it was time to play baseball with his Nana.  Layne sat back and watched the fun.

Once we got camp setup, we took the boys for a walk.  We didn’t quite know where we were headed we just wanted to walk, so off we went, and stumbled upon a beach.  The boys played in the water, splashed their Nana and had a good time.

The next two days after my brother arrived, we went boating and played and ate way too much.  It was a good time.  I haven’t been in a lake or an inner tube in a long time.  Great fun!  Cooper had a great time driving the boat.  One downside, when Mom, Larissa, Casey and I were out in the inner tube, we flipped it over and my Mom lost her glasses.  She got stuck wearing mine the rest of the trip.  On the bright side, she had just ordered those, and she didn’t really like them much, so she got to order new ones.  I guess the glass is half full.

Cornhole, beer, food, motorized cars, and Charlie Brown on the iPad.  What else could we all ask for?!? 

It was a great long weekend to start our vacation.  We headed home Saturday evening and had to get packed for vacation #2: STL.  I’ll start working on that post soon.  Have a lovely day!

Couch to 5k

Couch to 5k.  I’m doing it.  I have a love/hate relationship with it, but I’m doing it.
Right about now, I should be working on Week 6, Day 1.  Literally right now.  I’ve scheduled this post to occur while I’m on Day 1 of week 6 because I am hoping that I haven’t given up yet.  

I hope I can come back to my computer and that I’ve done it.  You see, this has been difficult for me.  I have never been a runner.  I have never (that I can remember) done an 8 week program that builds upon itself like this one.  I mean yes, I’ve done training for sports, and exercise programs before, but nothing that builds every 3 days.

I have the bluefinapps Ease into 5k app and I love it!  They aren’t paying me for this endorsement so I’ll keep it short.  I love that it allows me to choose my own music, that it gives me alerts for being half way done, as well as when to switch from walking to running etc.  Here are a couple of screen shots.

I didn’t want to pay for the GPS part of the app, so I use RunKeeper.  I generally start it up a minute or two before I start the C2 5K so it’s a bit off of 100% accuracy, but it’s close enough for me.

Here are some screen shots of the RunKeeper app.

 

It’s cool for me to be able to take different routes around my neighborhood and once I get home I always examine what I’ve accomplished.    I learned about the couch to 5k program from Mama Laughlin and most recently Caroline.  I look to these girls along with my local buddy Aly for inspiration. 

I have running a 5k on my goals for 2012, and I’m more than halfway through with my training at this point.  

Have you ever done a training program like the couch to 5k?  Did you succeed?  

Hope you have a fabulous weekend friends!

Stephanie’s Baby Shower

The baby shower was on May 5th, (I’m only a month behind!!)  and it was a great time.  Steph’s mom and I had been preparing for almost 2 months for the big event.     

We decorated the place to the nines.      Here are a few pictures. The gift table had a banner above and below with “Congratulations Stephanie” with different colored elephants.  That was a fun banner to make.     

Above the food table we hung a clothes line with Kampbell’s onesies and three maternity photos that I had taken a few weeks prior.     

The picture of the entire room below shows everything.  The 20+ tissue pom poms, yellow tables with vases (baby bottles) & flowers cake table with streamers behind it.  It was so much fun to decorate and make the room come to life!    

Once the guest of honor and other guests arrived, we ate lunch, played games and got to the gifts.  Stephanie had lots of fun opening up the gifts.  One below is of Steph, her mom and me.  It was so fun and Stephanie and Kampbell got lots of good stuff!!! 

I had the best time throwing this baby shower, and I hope that I’ll get to throw another one in the future!  I think in another life I was a party planner, cause this was way more fun than I have in my day job!

Meal Plan Monday

Well, I’m on vacation this week, but I wanted to share the meal plan that we had last week (the one where I was too busy to share this with you). 

• Grilled Chicken, boxed mac and cheese and green beans. 
• Dashing Dish Lasagna Roll-ups –
• Dashing Dish Honey Parmesan Chicken Poppers
• Dashing Dish Italian Stuffed Peppers
• Spaghetti
• Individual Chicken Pot Pies

We did pretty well with this meal plan, we did 5 of 6 of these and so that is a major score to me.  I loved the Italian stuffed peppers.  Definitely one of my favorites.  I added some low fat cream cheese into along with some crushed red pepper into my sauce and it was delicious! (the rest of the fam had meat sauce)
I think that’s about it, hope you have a great week!!

New Stuff

Once upon a time….. My stepdaughter and her husband came over to our house and told us our couch was looking a bit dated and that they thought we should get a new one (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)…..

Yeah, that’s right, they wanted our couch when they moved into their new place….  So, we went couch shopping.  It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t anything we ever had expected to do on a random weekend day. 

And guess what…. Yup, that’s right, we bought one.  It’s huge!  Pictures are below.  We bought the brown one, and the ottoman that we bought will be brown too, not the charcoal color.  It should be delivered when we get home from our vacation.  Woo hoo! 

What I love most about this couch/sectional is that it truly is 3 pieces of furniture that can be put together as a sectional or separately as a couch, loveseat and chase lounger.  Exciting!  The loveseat is armless, and the couch piece is a standalone couch.  Our plan is to put the couch with the loveseat and then separate the chase lounger in another part of the room.  Then one day – I might get tired of it and separate them.  And you know what?  That’s ok! 

Pictures below.  Aren’t I a lucky girl?

No, that is not my house, it is the showroom of the furniture store, and soon enough a copy of that thing up there will be in my house!

Have a great weekend!

Morning Fun

I love mornings with Cooper.  When I used to go to the gym before he woke up, it was one of the hardest things of my day.  Cooper is in the best mood in the morning (usually) so I didn’t like missing that time with him. He is all smiles in the mornings.  We play and he gives me so many hugs and I just love it.  I literally eat up time with him in the mornings.  So, when I started the couch to 5k program, I started doing it outside in our neighborhood in the mornings instead of going to the gym.  Score!  I got my mornings back with my boy.

Now I only go to the gym when I do strength training 2 days a week.  Its great. 

One morning this week I was getting him ready for the day and I just thought he was super cute so I had to take a few pictures.  I hope you enjoy.  (yes, he loooooves giving the monkey on the wall high five!)

Happy Wednesday!

Miscellany Monday & Weekend Rewind

I’m linking up with Carissa today, I haven’t linked up with her forever, so I’m happy to be here!

…..I’m going to share a few musings of my weekend…. 

• John’s Famous Stew – Tim has been wanting to take me there forever.  It’s a 21+ place, so we don’t often have the opportunity to visit this little hole in the wall gem in downtown Indianapolis.

Tim and I decided that we’d order a bowl of their famous stew and a fried pork tenderloin sandwich with fries.  Oh goodness, that tenderloin was amazing.  Take a look at this thing, it’s huge!  The stew was eh.  I didn’t care for it.  Tim loves it, so he ate most of it as I gobbled up 1/2 of that tenderloin down there.  Yummo!

• The Flying Cupcake – After dinner, we headed to another local favorite, The Flying Cupcake.  We’d never been there before, but it was super cute and we just had to pick up some cupcakes for our awesome friends (Erica and Mel) who were watching Cooper, and Steph & Ryan and us of course!   The second picture is the interior of the place, it was so cute, too bad there were so many people standing in there.

• Saturday was a birthday party for one of Cooper’s friends and our neighbor’s daughter Alexis.  She turned 3 on Friday.  Cooper had such a great time.  I forgot my camera and I was just too lazy to walk home to get it.  I then headed to Cooper’s daily sitter’s house to help her paint.  She recently purchased a new home and she’s redoing everything inside before she moves in so I volunteered to help. 
• Sunday – was church, then all kinds of fun.

Cooper and Julia (another sweet neighbor girl) riding along in the wagon.  Super cute!

Then there is my little ham.  What a cutie pie.

Playing baseball around the house.

I just couldn’t resist a picture of all three of my guys in their hats.  Handsome guys!

Cooper had to dig deep into the toybox to get a specific ball…..

How was your weekend?  What Miscellany things do you have to share today?  Link up with Carissa and share with us!