Rain Celebration!

It rained!  It rained and we were so excited!  It rained Sunday morning and we were so excited!!

We were so excited that after we woke up and saw that it had rained Shane started cooking a yummy breakfast to eat outside on the deck.  It was glorious.  It was chilly.  And it was still sprinkling.

This is fried eggs, pulled pork, tomatoes and toast.  Oh yeah and mimosas!  That new smoker is starting to pay off.  Underneath the eggs is smoked pulled pork that was reheated in the skillet and crisped-up on the edges.  Does that make sense to you?  I don't know, but we use very technical culinary terms around our house.  :)

Dallas

Friday at about 10 in the morning, I made a split second decision.

I was driving to downtown Dallas to surprise a friend.  You see, my dearest friend Audra is in Dallas for a girls' weekend with her mom.  Audra and Rebecca have kept in touch since they met at our wedding and were planning on getting together for drinks  Friday night.  So I decided to show up on the fly.  Rebecca was in on the surprise, Audra had no clue.

This is Audra.  This is Audra after she regained her composure.  When I walked into the place, she looked at me, turned her head, then looked again.  Just stared at me.  Completely blank.  For about 10 whole seconds.  It was awesome.  Then she exploded with excitement.  

We later met for some of these.

And shared one of these.  

It was pretty much epic.  

Love you ladies!

Summer Reading

So these are the things that are consuming a little bit of my time lately.   I'm training for a Half Marathon.  Can you tell? 

raisin' pups

I hear that as dogs get older their appetites change.  I'm the person in our household in charge of making sure the dogs are fed.  Whenever we go out of town and have a dog-sitter it means I have to come up with detailed instructions on how to feed each dog.  You see having a dog who is about 8 and having another dog that lost 12 inches of intestines a year ago makes for interesting dog feeding.

During winter, Brown Dog gets 2 cups food in the morning and 2 at night.  This summer we figured out that Brownie tends to get a little chubby when it's not hunting season, so during the summer he gets 1 cup in the morning and 1.5 cups at night.  Meanwhile Belle gets 1 cup in the morning and 1 cup at night year around.  She's a little lazy.

Let me get a little more technical...  A little over a year ago Brownie ate something (rumors say it was a cat toy, thanks to the previous owners of our house) and had to have over 12 inches of his intestines cut out during a very expensive emergency vet visit while we were in Louisiana.  Because of this, Brownie now has to take a Prozyme powder in his food.  It's "an all-natural combination of enzymes in a palatable powder." ha  In other words, it helps his lack of intestines to digest his food.  We also put this in Belle's food, because it can't hurt.

Last summer after Shane spent endless hours re-sodding the back yard, we began to notice yellow circles in the grass.  Come to find out it was where Belle was, pardon me for saying this, peeing.  Apparently girl dogs have something in their urine that kills grass.  So Belle not only gets the Prozyme in her food but 2 Green Grass pills that "help reduce lawn burn."  She is also not interested in eating her food dry unless it's her brother's.  So after I put her food and all the ingredients in the bowl, I top it with enough water so the food floats.  She thinks it's amazing.

Some days Belle is still uninterested in the food.  On these days I get a "Jerky Naturals" cookie ("The Anytime, Super Nutritious, Soft and Delicious Dog Treats"), break it apart and sprinkle it in her food.  She thinks it's amazing.  And then I think, "My God, when we have kids will I have to sprinkle candy in their food to get them to eat it??!"  Then I think, "No, no, we will not be those kinds of parents."

And NO, that will not be anytime in the near future.

Amen, Good Night.

A Boat & Breakfast.

Last weekend we packed a bag and left on a jet plane.  Shane had a photoshoot for a client in Rochester, NY.  So, we flew from Tulsa to Chicago.

When I'm in an airport I like to sit near a window and look at what's going on out there.  It's nice to see when your plane shows up and I like to watch the guys load the luggage, or throw the luggage, whichever.  So on Saturday when we arrived at O'Hare, we had a while to wait before our next flight so we stopped in a little restaurant near our gate.  And we sat near a window.  And we ordered Stellas on draft.  And personal pizzas.  This was our first meal of the trip.  Little did we know what it would lead to.

So we finally landed in Buffalo, NY.  From there we picked up our rental car, and realized that Shane left his debit card in the restaurant in the Chicago airport.  Yes.  This happened.  So while driving to Rochester we took care of that little snafu.  

Did you know that Rochester is home to Kodak?  This is the Kodak building in downtown Rochester.  It's an amazing building and the entire thing is surrounded by scaffolding because they are in the middle of restoring the whole building.  What a landmark of a building. 

It's also the home to High Falls.  High Falls is located in the Genesee River which flows through town.  We had a great time in Rochester, catching up with old friends and drinking good beer, but on Saturday afternoon it was time to head a little further North.

So we hopped in the rental and drove to Niagara Falls.  We crossed the border into Canada where we checked into our hotel. Shane had never been here before and i had once when I was about 13 with my dad, stepmom, and aunt.  My only criteria for hotels was that it wasn't a Ramada Inn.  I had already stayed at a Ramada Inn in Niagara lol.  

The boy did pretty well. This was the view from our room.  Not too shabby, eh?  We were on the 11th floor of The Oakes Hotel .  Since we were only staying a night we decided to splurge a little.  Splurging equals hot tub.  :)

So once we checked into our room we decided to check out the falls.  We ended up walking A Lot.  We also bought tickets to ride the Maid of The Mist .  

See all the people in blue?

Here they are up close.  Everybody who buys tickets to ride the Maid of the Mist gets a "souvenir poncho."  It was about 85 degrees this day.  When they handed everybody the ponchos there was an employee yelling, "Don't put the ponchos on until you get onto the boat!  It's too hot!"  Well, you can see how well most of the people listen.  

This is the picture I took of the American Falls while on the boat.  The boat where I put on my poncho.  

This is the picture of the American Falls that Shane Bevel took.  Can you tell who the pro is in our family?  Shane got several more awesome shots.  I however covered my face in the clear blue plastic poncho hood because I can't handle water being sprayed in my face and I can't see through my glasses then either.  Yes, I'm awesome.  The boat ride was really cool, there was lots of water.  :)

We hiked it back to our hotel room after that.  And I took a 3 hour nap.  Because that's what I do when I'm on vacation.  I nap.  I nap at home, too, but we won't get into that now.  

Did you know that during the summer they shoot fireworks every night from the Canadian side?  They also light the falls up the colors of the rainbow.  Did you know that the bridge that takes you from the US to Canada is called the Rainbow Bridge?  It is.  Did you know that they cut back the flow of water to the falls at night to make electricity?  They do.  Then they light them up for the tourists.  Personally I'm not a fan of the multi-colored lighting of the falls.  The white made it seem more natural.  ha.

Did you know that Niagara Falls is REALLY expensive?  When we snapped this shot of ourselves, we didn't know either.  

 

It finally hit us when we went to IHOP for breakfast Monday morning.  IHOP.  We were seated by the nice Canadians.  I opened the menu, saw the pictures and though, "wow, an omelette would be perfect!  Oooh!  A spinach & Mushroom omelette would be the Best!"  So I read the description....get to the bottom and see the price.  The PRICE.  $18.99 for a freaking omelette?!  That's right.  So I got a meal where I got as many options as possible.  The pancake combo with eggs, bacon and hashbrowns.  I saved a whole dollar on that one.  

And this is the $60 breakfast.  Shane's blueberries cost a little extra...

We got back to Tulsa Monday night.  So yes, we literally took a weekend trip to Niagara Falls.  lol.  And it was nice.  Will we go back?  Sure.  But we'll probably stay on the American side where it's a state park and far less touristy.  And probably not when it's the Canadian Civic holiday when all the Canadians are off work.  Yeah, we didn't know that one until right before we left.  :)

Peaches!

So, a new girl started at work last week.  Our team liked her alright.  :)  Hi, Jill!!
Then we learned that her husband's family has a peach orchard, Thompson's Peach Orchard.  And he brought us fresh-off-the-tree peaches!

And they were the sweetest peaches I've had in a long time....

When I say sweet, I mean that there was not even a hint of sour in there.  It was pure peach goodness.

Jill is also part Polish, too, so she's cool.  Thanks for the peaches, woman!

Training. zzzzzz.

So I went on my first "long" 3.5 mile run last Saturday with a group.  A friend of mine told me about a group that was training for the Tulsa Run that meets every Saturday at 7am.  The group is being headed by the YWCA.

Sidenote:  I had NO idea YWCA's had gyms.  Where I come from it was a shelter.  Period.  So I'm completely confused at the fact that the YMCA and the YWCA are both gym places here.

Okay, back to my story....  So I started my half marathon training last Thursday with some weights and I can't remember what else because I've been getting up soooo early lately all the days are running together.  Yes that was a run-on sentence.

Okay, back to my story, again....  So I did a lot of reading about how to train for a half marathon on Friday.  I've learned all kinds of things about diet and cross training that I didn't even know would be involved in this process.  I just thought I was going to be running.  Turns out I'm learning a lot about just generally staying fit and getting healthy.  I like that.  I like that more than I thought I would.

So we get these weekly handouts every Saturday:

It's a more simplified training schedule than what I had found during all of my research and that helped me come up with my own plan.  I guess you say that it helped me get a little less overwhelmed.  Because lord help me I was overwhelmed!  They also gave me a handout on nutrition.  Again it was a much simpler explanation of what I need to be eating and why.  Much simpler than some of the complicated books I was skimming in Barnes & Noble the other day.  Needless to say I found these handouts incredibly helpful.  Each week we'll increase the length of our long run, which is the end of my week... A GOAL!  I've learned a lot about goals as well.  As in the fact that if you work out without a goal you can lose your vision and get bored.... sound familiar?

Now I know that I'm not even a week into my training but just the fact that I have a goal in the foreseeable future is keeping my motivated.  I love that.

I also love that Sunday is my day of rest.

Something I don't love: the fact that I now have to exercise 5 days a week.

So I've been developing my own plan.  I've incorporated the handouts with other stuff I've read to step it up a notch.  It's a plan that's something simple that I can get the hang of and not get bored with.  After the long run Saturday, I talked to the director of the group about my situation.   About how I'm training for a half marathon in December.  Being that this training group is for the Tulsa Run, she assured me t hat this was going to be the perfect pace for me because once we get to the Tulsa Run then i can keep with the same increased intervals each week to be prepared for the half.  This was like a breath of fresh air.  It was what I needed to hear.  It also helped to hear that she had just gone through Half Marathon training herself.

She also told me that if I was going to be doing all of this training that I really needed to add yoga or pilates into my routine so i could stretch things out every week.  So, I have plans to attend a yoga class as the YWCA using my 7 free fitness days card.  You don't have to use it consecutively, so I'm going to use it for 7 weeks of yoga.  My current gym doesn't have classes, so this is great.  And who knows maybe after it's all over with I might join the Y(wca).  These classes also fall on my cross training yoga day, Thursday.  :)

So here's my plan:

• Monday: run (mileage increase each week)
• Tuesday: cross train (weights and elliptical/ spin)
• Wednesday: run
• Thursday: cross train (yoga)
• Friday: rest
• Saturday: long slow run with the group
• Sunday: REST!

Each week we are adding a percentage of mileage to our runs.  We also added hills to the routine this week.  

My calves hate hills.