Weekend Recap

This past weekend was one where I feel like we did a whole lot, but when I think back we really didn't do THAT much.

We kept it simple and lazy on Friday night.  Eric was going turkey hunting early Saturday so Friday was basically shenanigan-less. I had big plans to grill flat bread pizzas and I still do because I decided on a whim after looking through the week's grocery ads that we were going to have tuna steaks for dinner. The result was one of the prettiest (and delicious) meals I have ever made.  It was shockingly simple and I can't wait to make it again!  I am so ready for Eric to go on a tuna trip with his brother this summer so they can bring back some super fresh tuna steaks! This might be the first time I will tell him he better go catch some fish!

I was super proud of this gorgeous plate of food.  I used this recipe for both the tuna steaks and the dressing.  

The rest of our weekend consisted of taking in a little league baseball game, eating fresh oysters (Eric not me), hanging out at a crawfish boil (once again, Eric ate them I didn't), a fun Saturday evening with friends, sleeping in on Sunday, a little house cleaning out, a quick run, puppy dog walks, Sunday dinner with friends, and lots and lots of basketball.  I don't even want to think about how terrible my brackets are this year.  It makes me want to cry.  On the upside, there have been some very exciting games, so I can at least enjoy the games while they are going on.

Clockwise from top left: 1) Have I mentioned how much I adore my new shirt?  It makes me smile.  We just need to work on Peanut's posing skills so he doesn't look like I just snatched him up.  Note to my photographer (ahem, Eric): make sure to have the dog's attention, too, when taking a photo of your wife and the dog; 2) Hawk and his buddy Ringo.  These two played ALL DAY Saturday.  I didn't think it was possible for two dogs to play that much fetch, but they did and loved every minute of it; 3) Our first peach cobbler of the year (not made by me).  I am so ready for summer so this can happen more often; 4) Saturday night we went to a crawfish in the booming metropolis of Notasulga, AL.  You know you're in the country when you head down a driveway lined with cows.  This one had several who happily posed as we drove by.

This week is going to be jampacked and lots of fun! I am so excited about it! I just hope that my excitement doesn't make it last twice as long, but hey it's already Tuesday so I must be doing something right!

High Five for Friday

1

We made it to spring!  I didn't even realize until I was driving in to work this morning that today is the official first day of spring.  Although it has felt like spring around here the past couple of weeks, we can now officially complain if it gets cold again.  The fog this morning kind of killed the springy vibe, but check out this beautiful sight I got to see earlier this week.  One of these days I am going to get up on the weekend early so I can watch a sunrise like that WITHOUT having to look back at the road every 2 seconds.

2

I guess the spring bug bit me early this year (or maybe it was because I actually got the flower beds weeded last weekend) because I am in full on flower planting mode.  We had carseat clinic at work this week and it just happens to be right next to the Farmer's Market which just happened to have a gorgeous array of beautiful flowers that were calling my name.  We had a couple of cancellations at one point so I ran over to take a look, and low and behold 3 little beauties jumped in the back of my car when I headed home. I ended up getting a Butterfly Bush, a Mexican Petunia, and a Reiger Begonia.   I have been talking about planting a Butterfly Bush for several years and have just never gotten around to it, but they other 2 were new for me (and my Mom AND my Grandma which was a total shocker).  They are absolutely gorgeous and I can't wait to see how they like our yard!

Reiger Begonia                                                      Mexican Petunia

3

I mentioned yesterday, the NCAA Tournament has started and my brackets already look like someone stuck a knife in them and just kept stabbing them.....there is so much red on them it makes me want to cry.  I usually pride myself in early round picks with some upsets here and there, but this year is not the case.  The upsets I picked have not happened, but the other games I where I was counting on the favorite to take care of business have seen the little guys pulling through. Maybe this means my brackets will hold up in the end? Maybe I 'm just telling myself that to save myself from admitting my brackets aren't my best work? That being said, the tournament has been quite exciting so far and I get to watch games ALL WEEKEND LONG.  I've already warned Eric and this is the one time of the year he will usually give up the remote and let me watch as much basketball as I want....until we're on game 4 or 5 of the night and then he usually hits a breaking point and we end up watching tv in separate rooms.

4

I made a deliciously superb dinner this week that I had to share because it's not nice to keep such wonderful concoctions to yourself.  Mom gave me a suggestion for a Pinterest recipe she found called Easy Greek Chicken Bake from this blog.  I tweaked mine just a bit.  I marinated my chicken over night in a Greek seasoning marinade (1 TBSP each of Greek seasoning, olive oil, water, and lemon juice) to give it a little extra flavor, and  swapped the roma tomatoes for halved grape tomatoes.  This dish was absolutely delicious! I will be making this again and again and again.  It says to pair it with rice, but since we are trying to eliminate carbs as much as we can during the week I paired mine with Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Bacon from one of my most favorite recipe blogs, Plain Chicken. I seriously pin 3 out of 5 recipes she posts every week.  I told Mom that if Brussels Sprouts tasted like that when I was a kid I would have eaten them all the time.  She told me I was lying, which is probably true, I was Picky McPickerson about food when I was a kid. But seriously you need to make these 2 recipes.  They will make your taste buds sing!

5

I was so excited this week for the mail to come because my new most favorite short I think I have ever owned came in the mail!

Isn't it the best?!  It came from this awesome Etsy Shop and 20% of the proceeds go to animal shelters!  It's a win win if you ask me.  Just make sure you order a size up because I didn't and had to send it back to get a different size (which was super easy to do).  I ended up getting an XL which fits like most of my Medium t-shirts. I was so excited to finally have a shirt that expressed my feelings to toward life most days.  I mean who wouldn't want to hang out with these two cuties all day??

I sent this picture to Eric last night as I was walking out the door to teach dance with a caption that said, "Please take us on a walk tonight Daddy." I guess it worked because he said he let them play outside for at least 30 mins while I was at dance.

Happy Friday!  Now go watch some basketball!

March Madness....A Poem

I did a little something for today's post that I NEVER do.....I wrote a little poem in honor of today's momentous occasion: The beginning of the 2015 NCAA Basketball Tournament (for anyone living under a rock)  I am not a poet, nor an I a huge fan of poetry, but this one just felt right and the process was no nearly as painful as I thought it would be.  So without further ado:

March Madness 

 (to the tune of It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year [obviously])

It's the most wonderful time of the year,

With buzzers a-sounding,

Hearts will be pounding,

And the crowd, they will cheer!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's the hap-happiest season of all.

With trash talking greetings and tense pre-game meetings,

And can you believe they just missed that call?!

It's the hap-happiest season of all!

There'll be brackets for posting

and experts a-boasting

their bracket picks are second to none.

There'll be elaborate stories 

And tales of the glories

Of tournaments long long ago.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

There'll be much basketballing and a good bit of fouling

When the game is on the line!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

There'll be mascots a-cheering

Cinderella's appearing, 

Shocking everyone but their own fans.

There'll be bands playing fight songs

And fans up all night long, 

To make sure they get their team through!

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

There'll be heroes emerging and team spirit overflowing,

When the Final Four is near!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Even better than bowl season time of the year!

The absolute BEST time of the year!

A Beautiful Spring Weekend Recap

After the amazingly beautiful weekend we just had I am officially declaring it spring around here.  We could not have asked for a more beautiful weekend. Despite having quite a few things on my to do list, I managed to check off most of the items.

A few extra items found their way onto my list as Friday went on.....notice that nearly all of the items that did not get accomplished were the items that required me to be inside for prolonged periods of time, but when the weather is as nice as it was here "ain't nobody got time for that!" Those things will have to wait until next weekend when it's supposed to be rainy.  And no I didn't run all weekend, but I dog-walked all 3 days and spent about 3 hours on Sunday weeding our flower beds and hauling tree limbs to the backyard (and have the sunburn to prove it), so I'm going to use that as my excuse.

Eric spent as much time as he possible could fishing (what's new, right?), except for Sunday afternoon when we headed to Montgomery to visit his Dad.  He is still at the rehab facility trying to get back to where he can get around by himself. He said he's ready to go back home.  Hopefully he will improve enough in the next week or so that he can. On our way back we had a Moe's date, I think it was the most I've seen him in a week and a half, but I'll take what I can get!  I think the newness of fishing season has worn off and the lack of sleep is starting to get to him.  So maybe he'll cut back to fishing just 4-5 times a week for now. =)

Clockwise from top left: 1) the reason I don't mind him fishing so much.  We had our first fish fry of the year complete with Eric's homemade hush puppies (the only thing missing was him homemade coleslaw which was asked about by several people - myself included).  I am way to ashamed to admit how much fish and how many hush puppies I ate Saturday night.  Let's just say I splurged, like really splurged for the first time since Christmas and I didn't regret it one little bit.  2) I made the copycat Frosty Paws recipe for the pups Friday night and they LOVE it. I will post the recipe this week.  It's super easy and quite tasty (if I say so myself). 3) My flower beds are no longer covered in a thick layer of weeds and dead remnants from last year! It was a labor of love... 4) ...and I have the sunburn to prove it! To be honest I am just glad to have gotten some sun!

Cinq Choses le Vendredi

Fun Fact: I was a French minor in college.  Unfortunately I don't ever get to use it because there's not much use for the French language in public health in Alabama, but I don't want to get too rusty so I decided to break a little of it out pour le blog. Let's get to it, shall we?

Un

I am proud to say that I made it through the first week of this dreaded losing an hour time change rather unscathed and actually made it to work early this AM. Whoop de do, you got to work early, you're 30 you should be doing this anyway...but seriously it's a really big deal because in addition to being time change week, Eric started his hardcore fishing season this week which means I end up taking over AM doggie duty [insert immature chuckles].  This adds an extra 5 minutes to my morning routine and for people like me who time their mornings to the second, 5 minutes is a lifetime. The view from my office was a little darker than usual, but I still absolutely love it.

 Yup those are streetlights still on. 

But it's totally worth it because guess who got to run outside in the neighborhood after work this week?! This girl!  And it was glorious until the end of my run when I gnat flew in my eye and I am pretty sure scratched my eyeball because it felt like there was something in my eye all day the next day. But it's all better now so I am ready to run again--with sunglasses this time. =)

Who wouldn't want to run when you have views like this to watch the whole time?!

Deux

Moose Tracks Frozen Yogurt from Publix....it's my absolute favorite - not too much extra chocolate ribbons. I like to chop up a Dove Hazelnut Crisp Dark Chocolate Promise and add that to my bowl. 

I know that I should be used to this while "being a grown-up" thing by now but every blue moon I have a moment where I think "Wow, if I were a kid I totally would not be able to do this right now, but I am a grown up and I am calling the shots, so I'm going to do this because I want to do it."  I had one of these moments last night at 9PM when I was fixing myself a bowl of fro yo. I mean I ate ice cream all the time as a kid, but a nightcap bowl of ice cream...on a school night? I felt like I was breaking all kinds of rules and it made that bowl of fro yo so darn delicious!.....and Hawk agreed.  Don't tell the puppies, but I found a copycat Frosty Paws recipe that uses peanut butter and vanilla Greek yogurt.  I got the stuff yesterday and I am going to make them some puppy ice cream treats this weekend!  

Trois

Last week I purchased a large bag of what I thought was cheddar cheese popcorn at Costco. When I got home I discovered that is was not popcorn, but corn puffs (think Cheetos Puffs but much smaller and made with white cheddar).  I was disappointed, so I brought them with me to work to see if any of my friends' kids would eat them.  Sometime in between asking one friend and her telling me her kids would not eat them and getting a chance to ask someone else I got hungry, what's new right? The bag was sitting in my bag, starting at me, begging me to grab a handful. So I did.  And I can't stop now.  I have become addicted to these tiny morsels of cheese, corn and air.  They literally disintegrate in your mouth and you're left with a blast of cheddar cheese flavor that makes my taste buds dance and then beg for another bite.  I am telling myself the fact that they are baked, gluten-free, and have no artificial preservatives makes it ok to eat larges piles of them at one time.  We'll just ignore the absurdly large 18 oz bag and hope it lasts at least a week.

Quatre

Yesterday I received a random mid-day text from Eric that contained a screenshot of a skillet with a meaty/leafy concoction in it:

But that was it. No recipe name, no link, no can you make this for dinner.  After some prompting I found out in fact that he would like it for dinner and that he had another screenshot of the recipe, so I had him send it.  In true male fashion, the screen shot only contained half of the recipe, but it did have the name of the dish.  A quick Pinterest search for Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls gave me the recipe and lucky for him I had almost everything we needed at home. Since it was a dance night there was no way I had time to make it for dinner so I did the next best thing and prepped it for him before I left.  I have done this before and come home to a still only prepped dinner, so I was hoping that he would take the hint and make dinner.

And he did! Now if I could just get someone to prep meals for me, cooking dinner every night would be so much quicker and easier!  As for how it turned out, he said it was great.  I skipped it because cabbage and ground deer burger just aren't really my thing.

Cinq

Before I went to bed last night I put together a to do list for myself to accomplish over the weekend.  Since I was out of pocket most of last weekend I feel like I have some catching up to do. Before I knew it I had a super long list. I did a couple of things as soon as I got to work this morning and pulled up my list to check them off, only to find that those things weren't even on my list. I have been known to add things to my list just to check them off (like write a blog post), but I resisted this time.

Now if I didn't have this pesky 8 hours work day to get through I'd probably be able to knock everything out sometime today, but I have a whole other to do list to check off there so I better get started.

Weekend Recap: Dancing and Fishing All Day Long

I had really high hopes for this morning. Last year I somehow managed to dominate the "Spring Forward" time change and was early to work every day this week last year.  I'll just go ahead and say that I'm afraid this year will be payback for last year. I was struggling this AM to say the least, but I am chalking it up to the crazy jam packed weekend we had going on around here.

First of all it was absolutely beautiful here...like break out the shorts and short-sleeves and see if you can spend all day outside and start thinking about when you can uncover the pool kind of beautiful...ok 60s might be a little chilly for pool weather but I caught myself looking at that big blue cover thinking it sure would be nice to have it open soon.

I got to enjoy some of the beautiful weather, but the majority of my weekend was spent in an auditorium watching our dancers compete in the Inspire National Dance Competition. Our girls did great in their first competition of the season.  We had 3 high golds, 3 platinums, and 3 platinum elites for our scores, and in our division we received a 1st overall for one of our group numbers. Our soloists received a 1st overall, 2nd overall, 4th overall, and 8th overall in their age groups.  On top of that our girls received 2 judges awards, one soloist received the Best Personality award, and one of our group numbers received the Best Showmanship award.  Not too shabby for our first time out this season.  I can't wait for the next one!

The end of one of our group numbers.

This chaos is what it looks like between the end of the competition session and awards. This was just one of the solo sessions....the stage was completely packed out during the group number awards.

Since I was at the competition all day Saturday and 1/2 of Sunday, Eric had to find something to do with his time.  Lucky for him it was prime fishing weather and he took full advantage of it.  Some women joke about hunting widows, I consider myself more of a fishing widow.  He went fishing Friday morning, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, and again this morning. I can't complain though, he's pretty good at it. 

The boy knows how to catch a crappie!

As for the pups, they got to enjoy most of the weekend.  We made sure to get them outside as much as we could.  The end of last week got a little crazy (but so much fun!) with family in town for a couple of days and the insane cold snap we had on Thursday so their walks were non-existent for a few days. Peanut paid us back for not walking him by rolling in fish guts 3 days in a row.  When he did it Friday Eric decided to get rid of the guts that had been in a bucket in the backyard since NEW YEARS, unfortunately he dropped some and Peanut found them on Saturday AND on Sunday. This resulted in baths for him all 3 days.  He got 2 on Saturday because Eric tried bathing him in the sink with AXE body spray so when I got home Saturday night, Peanut smelled like fish guts AND a teenage boy.  I promise it smelled even worse than you are imagining right now.

You'd think as much as he hates baths he would learn his lesson....

Hawk of course just rolled with the punches and slyly begged for ice cream last night before bed.

He is most certainly NOT asleep...just pretending so that he can be extra close to me to lick the bowl when I finish my ice cream.

I am ready to get back into a normal flow this week, but with an extra hour of daylight in the evenings so I can possibly start pulling the field of weeds that has taken over my flowerbeds and maybe even squeeze in an outside run!  The possibilities are endless!

It was Opposite Weekend

This weekend we decided to do a complete 180.  Instead of our normal throw something on the grill/have some folks over/hang out until whenever we took a walk on the wild side: we stayed in, never turned the grill on, and watched Redbox movies, DIY home improvement shows and cooking shows to our hearts' content. As a result, we are chomping at the bit to paint/replace counter tops/replace cabinets and this week's menu has several brand new things I've never cooked on it....I'll let you know how things turn out. But first.....

Hawk's begging for ice cream is a nightly thing around here....notice the drool coming off the sides of his mouth in the picture on the left.  He waits patiently until I let him lick the bowl when I am done...every time.

Eric was still feeling the effects of whatever nasty sickness he picked up last week and was not his normal constantly on the go self. Of course he still managed to sneak in some fishing Sunday morning, and we went to some friends house for a couple of hours Saturday night. While he was getting his Dad settled back into his room at the rehab center on Saturday (he was discharged from the hospital Saturday morning so we are hoping he is finally back on track!) I spent a few hours at our dance team's "dress rehearsal" for competition.  Our first one of the year is this weekend and I'm excited!  We have a bit more work to do this week, but hopefully we'll have it all together by Saturday morning!

Clockwise from top left: My birthday present from out neighbors is the newest addition to the back porch decor; the Holstein Shortbread Cookies I made thanks to an episode of Farmhouse Rules; I put on a big pot of chili Sunday afternoon and after all of the food shows we watched felt compelled to "plate" my Open-Faced Frito Chili Pie Dog on a Pretzel Bun...I think I am onto something here!; I learned this weekend that it is possible to wear out the taps on your tap shoes...I have worn mine so far down that it has actually partially chipped off. :-/

I was hoping that all of this rest and relaxation would have me ready to go this week, but 5:30am is super early no matter how to slice it. Bring it on Monday!