High Five for Friday

As of today I have officially made it through an entire week in my 30s unscathed.  This third decade of my life thing is shaping up to be a piece of cake....I'll let you know how it all turns out in 10 years or so. =) For now I will leave you with my Friday 5.

1. The Dress

There's been quite a stir over the internet the past 18 hours over the color of this dress....what do you think?  Is it white and gold or blue and black?

via

I am declaring the dress white and gold, even though the person who uploaded the photo has since uploaded pictures to prove that it is indeed blue and black. White and gold forever and ever Amen. Update: I have come to the conclusion if you look at the dress like you would look at a Magic Eye picture it does look blue and black.

2. Ice Cream Face

I've mentioned before how much Hawk loves ice cream...he get's it from his Mama. I sat down for a little late night treat last night and had a feeling I was being watched.....

How could I not share with that sweet face?!  He always makes sure to be right next to me so he's available to clean out my bowl when I am done.

3. Shake that Tambourine

We are 1 week away from the start of our dance competition season and I am stoked!  We're having a "dress rehearsal" tomorrow morning and I feel like a dance mom trying to make sure all of the last minute details  are done.  My goal today?  Finish the tambourine for one of my dancers' solos to Rollin' on the River.  Anyone have any tips on how to get a shiny tablecloth to stick to spray painted Styrofoam?  I am trying Mod Podge and hoping for the best.

4. The Bit

My parents gifted me a FitBit for my birthday this year and it is the best!  I have become slightly obsessed with hitting 10,000 steps a day.  I was looking at my steps over the past week and realized that I get in 80% of my steps after 3:30pm (when I leave work). I knew I had a sedentary job but geeez!  I can now literally see how people gain weight working a desk job. If it weren't for dog walking and working out at night I might not clear 5,000 steps a day.  Hopefully the weather will warm up and dry up so I can get back to afternoon walks at work.  I'm not saying I am not super competitive about "winning" against my FitBit but I had 9,200 steps the other night so walked around the house for about 5 minutes so I could hit my 10,000. Eric told me that was cheating.  I told him cheating would be shaking my arm up and down to hit 10,000, as long as I am walking I'm good!

5. Donut You want to be my Friend?

I had to walk to the bank this morning in 35 degreee (but sunny!) weather so I rewarded myself and my friends with a box of sunshine and smiles because it's Friday and that's how I roll!

We Know How to Party

There are some days at work when I feel like I just want to throw in the towel and head to the house, but I don't because we have bills, and a mortgage, and we like to go on ski trips like the one we went on last weekend.  So when I feel like my head will explode if I get one more email, I turn to my WBFFS (Work BFFS - although we totally do things outside of the office).  I have been truly blessed to have a small group of friends who I can confide in, complain to, and celebrate with at the office which is extremely important considering how much time we spend there every week.  We keep each other sane when we're at our wits end and in my humble opinion, we're a pretty fun group to hang around with.

One thing that we always make sure to do is celebrate the milestones in each others lives: weddings, babies, and of course birthdays! Since I was at a conference on Friday (my actual birthday) and out the following Monday I was not expecting much birthday celebrating, so you can imagine my surprise when I walked into my office and saw a Speed Limit 30 sign on my door.  I had a moment of panic as I had a flashback the previous year when one of the girls came back from her Honeymoon and we saran wrapped her desk/office supplies and filled her office with balloons.  Thankfully I did not have to dig out or unwrap my desk, but I did have a tent of caution tape and birthday signs galore.  And then to top it off they all surprised me with a birthday cake and we all had a mid-morning cake break at 9am because that's how we roll.

For the record, 30 has been pretty good to me so far.  To be honest, aside from feeling much more intelligent and wiser than I did a week ago (HA), it doesn't feel any different than 29. =)

Ski Trip: Ober Style

As I mentioned yesterday, we eventually made it to Gatlinburg so here's the rest of the story....you can read the first part of our adventure here.

So excited we finally made it!

Lucky for us the ice melted early Saturday morning and we were on the road by 9:30.  Unfortunately 1/5 of our party was a couple of hours behind us and had to turn around and go back home Friday night due to the weather.  Since they were planning on going home on Sunday anyway they abandoned the trip all together.  What we hadn't thought about was the couple riding with Eric and I was supposed to ride home with them on Sunday.  After a quick detour to rent a car for them in Chattanooga to send them back home in we finally pulled into Gatlinburg about 2pm.

We decided to opt out of skiing Saturday evening since the temps kept threatening to drop below freezing and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so after we got settled into the condo and made a grocery store run for the next morning we headed out in search of food. We ended up at the Chop House right smack dab in the middle of the outlet mall--I wasn't complaining =) We had an amazing steak dinner that was right on time and managed to sneak in a little shopping.  I scored a sweater for $7 from the Loft Outlet so I was a happy camper.  It was still early so we headed to a bar recommended to us by the concierge.  Every time we've gone on one of these trips I always ask the concierge for their recommendations of restaurants and hangouts...so far they have been 2 for 2 on their recommendations (last year the guy recommended Laundry when we were in Steamboat Springs). Bluff''s Bar and Grill was tucked behind the Olive Garden and the Longhorn Steakhouse in a very unassuming strip mall.  We were very pleasantly surprised when we walked in and saw a very laid back but modern looking place with lots of tables and my favorite part: an entire section with bar games to play.  They had 3 pool tables, shuffleboard, corn hole, and even a ring game (that was broken but any place with a ring game in totally legit in my book).  I've never been much for the bar scene because you stand around in the dark, yelling over loud music, and all there is to do is drink.  I told Eric I might actually want to come to a bar regularly if we had one like this near us.  We spent nearly 3 hours there before calling it a night.

BTW I totally dominated at shuffleboard, sign me up for a Senior's cruise!

Sunday morning Eric and I were up early--we didn't even have dogs to wake us up--guess that's a sign we're getting old, and he cooked an amazing breakfast for us before we headed to Ober Mountain for some snowboarding and skiing.  We were a little anxious driving up the mountain, and not just because there were crazy tight switchbacks without guard railings most of the way up, but because the rain that had fallen all day Saturday had melted what little snow had fallen in the area Friday night.  We had no reason to worry because the slopes had a nice 4-5 foot base of snow they had been working on all winter.  We had a blast snowboarding and skiing.  Ober was a quite a bit smaller than the slopes we were on last year in Colorado (obviously), but it was perfect because we could get separated on runs and all meet up at the bottom of the hill.  It was much closer in size to Sugar Mountain where we went the 2 previous years (recaps here and here). We played on the slopes all day and made the most of our single day of boarding.  I think we finally turned our boards and skis in around 7 when we were completely worn out and soaked to the bone.  

Our ski crew

 Left: the bottom of the hill (before the fog rolled in). Right: Top to Bottom: Repping the little bro's Alma Mater with my Michigan Tech t-shirt that I always wear when I go snowboarding; Katie's nose got cold toward the end of the day so Eric graciously swapped head gear with her...doesn't he look precious with her ear warmer on?

 Clockwise from top left: The view from the lift, it got crazy foggy as the day went on and you could barely see the ground below at some points; Our first trip up the lift!; the boys up ahead of us...as you can see the surrounding snow was almost completely melted; the girls on the lift!

Trying to take a group picture while the guys threw snowballs at us.  

Upon the recommendation of the bartender at the ski lodge we ventured down the mountain to a restaurant called Cherokee Grill in the heart of Gatlinburg. I was a bit steaked out from the night before so I was glad they had a variety of delicious dishes. I had their Maryland Crab Cakes and they were to die for!  We decided the best part about this place was their side dishes: baked spinach mac and cheese, steamed broccoli with beer cheese, and Neva's potatoes (twice baked) were our favorites, but the best thing we had was a cup of boursin cheese that one of the guys got to put on the steak.  I think we all had a dip of it...I added to to my potato and it was amazing. 

After we'd stuffed ourselves silly again we headed back to the condo.  We had high hopes for the evening since it was our last night there but we were all exhausted and our full bellies had us in coma-like states when we got back.  It was probably for the best since we had to head home early the next morning. Little did we know, Gatlinburg had one last surprise for us when we woke up...a beautiful light falling snow the morning we left.  

We had such a wonderful time and I only wish we could have spent a couple more days there. Eric and I were saying we wish we could go back again this weekend.  That one day of snowboarding only left us hungry for more and we are already thinking about next year!

Birthdays are the Best!

Sometimes no matter how well you plan, your plans will get derailed. When this happens, you usually have 2 choices: you can sulk and feel sorry for yourself or you can pop open a bottle of Sangria, find an empty hotel lobby and play Celebrity and Phase 10 with your friends and enjoy yourself.  The latter is what happened to us on Friday night.  For my birthday, we decided to take a weekend ski trip getaway to Gatlinburg, TN with a group of our friends.  We headed out of town around 2pm, hoping to make it to TN by dinnertime. However, we were not counting on Winter Storm Quantum covering North Alabama with a blanket of ice...while we were trying to get from South Alabama to Tennessee. Long story short, we made it to the booming metropolis of Fort Payne (home of a little country band called Alabama..you may have heard of them) and found ourselves in the last 2 available rooms at the Holiday Inn Express, so I'm basically an expert at life now. Since the impending ice storm had everything but the Waffle House shut down in town we spent the evening playing games in the hotel lobby. It was a birthday I will never forget and I am so thankful that I had a wonderful group of friends to spend it with to made it that much more special!

Getting the weekend started off right!

Just an old 30-something couple!

The good news is that we eventually made it to Gatlinburg...just a day later than we had planned...more on that tomorrow!