Crunch Time!

With softball done for the summer I am putting all of my effort into my CRIM training.  I admit that I have not been training like I should be, and I do not want to pay for it at the race in August. I am determined to up my regular running time to 60 minutes by the end of the month.

I have also set goal for myself to do 2,500 crunches this week.  I am pretty sure I could do more if I just sit down and do it, but I don't want to make my goal too lofty and end up getting busy toward the end of the week (like always) and forget about it.  So far I am up to 920, so I should make it, we'll see.

Maybe I will add some push-ups into the mix.  I am pretty sure I would be struggling to do 150 in a week so that would be a real challenge for me!

Weekend Recap: BBQ, Rainstorms & Vino!

Whew!  What a weekend!  After being out of town for the past couple of weekends, we said that we were going to take it easy this weekend.  Problem is, there was waaaaaay too much going on around here to sit at home and do nothing.  It went by pretty quick but we did so much it feels like Friday was years ago!

I should have known we would be busy when I came home Friday afternoon to Eric, the dogs, and few of his friends lounging in the pool.....the scheming had already begun and it was not even 5:00.

We started the evening at the BBQ cook-off downtown.  It was a big community event on Saturday, but the cooking started Friday and continued ALL NIGHT long.  Eric knew some folks cooking so we took some fish to throw on the grill and headed out.  We were not disappointed.  No BBQ (it was being cooked overnight so it was not even close to being ready), but we had grilled Amberjack and Conecuh sausage that delicious!

My hubby, the chef!

The Conecuh sausage cooking.  It was boiling in CocaCola, mustard, and apricot jelly.  Soooooo good!

We left there and headed to the a marina at Lake Martin to celebrate with Eric's friend who passed his PT Boards this week.  You can never go wrong with a celebration when it is on a deck at the lake with live music!

Saturday we were up and at 'em at 9:30 (a good 9 hours of sleep for us), which is by far the latest either one of us has slept in a long time.  I think these jam-packed summer days are starting to take their toll on us because we seem to be sleeping later and later on the weekends.  We got ourselves together and headed up to the river with some friends for a day of fun and sun.  We had just that for the first couple of hours.  We rode up the river to a sandbar where some of our other friends were hanging out.  It was great for about 30 minutes, and then the bottom fell out.  I am not going to complain about the rain because we desperately need it around here right now.  I just really wished we were sitting in the camper and not huddled under an umbrella in the sand.  After 30 minutes it finally subsided and we were able to enjoy ourselves.  Hunger eventually got the best of us and we decided to head back only to find our campsite completely bone dry....no joke.  It had not rained at all 15 miles from where we were when the bottom fell out.  

When we got back to the campsite we realized that our gas tanks for the grill were missing.  We are still not exactly sure what happened to them.  We are hoping someone borrowed them, but we don't think that is the case, which is a shame.  All we knew was that we were STARVING and had to gas to start the grill with, so we headed back to the house and grilled out there.  The puppy dogs enjoyed it because they got to play outside and swim while we ate. 

Sunday we decided to do something a little different.  We have heard that there are a few vineyards and wineries around this area, but we have never been for whatever reason.  Our friends we went to the river with suggested it on Saturday and I jumped at the chance.  Surprisingly, Eric obliged (he is usually not a wine drinker).  We knew of one not far from their house and set out to what we thought was Whippoorwill Vineyard.  My FSIL decided to come with us, too and we made an afternoon of it. We went in and walked around and started talking to the lady inside. When we asked her how long they had been open, she said told us 2 weeks.  That did not add up.  I finally picked up a brochure and we were at a vineyard called Hodges Vineyard and Winery.   We weren't going to turn down good wine so we had a very nice wine tasting.  Eric even found one he liked!  

Our favorites!

We left there with several bottles of wine in tow and tossed around the idea of going to find the Whippoorwill Vineyards, but in the end we decided to head back to the lake and save Whippoorwill for another time. 

We got back to the lake just in time for the bottom to fall out....again.  Which as I said, is ok with me because we needed it.  We stayed inside instead.  After today I am going to start stashing Phase 10 cards in our cars in case we ever get rained in again with a group of friends.  We settled on Yahtzee (it was either that or Scrabble Jr), and then stuffed ourselves silly!

I am ready to do it all over again next weekend!

Canine Intelligence

I often refer to our dogs as our "4 legged children" because they are so spoiled (by us AND our mothers).  No I do not think of them as tiny humans with fur, they are still dogs, but what puppy parents (who don't have actual children in the house) don't like to share puppy dog stories!?  With that said, here is one for ya.

Hawk, our lab, loves to play with tennis balls.  They are absolutely, hands down, his favorite thing in the world.  I am pretty sure he would rather play fetch with a tennis ball than anything in the world.  He loves tennis balls so much that we cannot keep them in the house because if he has one to play with he will do ANYTHING or knock over anything in his way in order to get to a ball.  Because he is an 80lb dog this can be a problem because he is strong enough to knock over a lot of things.  We like our house intact, and for this reason the tennis balls stay outside.  I try to keep a decent supply of them because he will chew on then until the balls breaking apart.  This is not a problem until he drops them in the pool and they sink (yes he drops his own balls in the pool so he has to get in the pool to get them).

Yesterday afternoon I let the dogs out like I always do. They ran around the yard, doing their business and whatnot.  After a few minutes I saw Hawk run back under the car port--not normal for him (if you walk under the carport he will lay down in the yard because he thinks he has to go inside).  I walked a little closer to see what he was doing and he had his front paws on the kitchen window sill.  This is where we keep the unused tennis balls.  I usually buy multipaks because he goes through them quickly in the summertime so we have a decent sized supply.  I kept watching and he grabbed the container of tennis balls in his mouth and dropped it on the floor.  He then put the container between his 2 front paws and started chewing on the lid, trying to get it off.  In less than a minute the container spun out of his grip across the carport floor and one of the balls rolled out of the container.  He ran right over to it, picked up the ball and brought it to me to throw for him!  I could not believe it!  It's one thing for him to know where we keep the balls, but to figure out how to get it down and know to pull the top off to get the ball?!?!  I couldn't do anything but laugh and throw it for him.  He was a happy camper after that!

Love this boy!

We have veggies!

Our "little" garden is still growing like crazy!  The tomato is clearly taller than its stand, the rosemary and thyme are growing like weeds, and I have 3 nice sized jalapeños.   Last time I counted we had about 14 or 15 small to medium sized tomatoes on the vine, all but one are still green at right now so they are still growing, but that will most likely change in the next week or so.  The only thing that is struggling is the cilantro.  I am not sure if it gets too much sun where it is or maybe I should have cut the little flowers off when they appeared, but it is really tall and stringy and almost completely dried out at this point.  I may will need a do-over with that one.  

We were gone for almost 5 days (if you count Friday and Tuesday which I worked but we traveled both of those days so I was not home at all) over Memorial Day Weekend and I was worried about them by the time we got home because we are in the middle of a heat wave right now and I did not think to get anyone to water them.  Oops!  They were all pretty pathetic but have recovered nicely.  

The garden.

On the bright side, I am pleased to announce that we have our first official harvest from the garden!  

We have a ripe tomato!  

The jalapeños look ready to pick, too, but I am trying REALLY hard to wait until I have a few more tomatoes so I can make salsa.