Ready for vacay!

I'm so excited that today is my last day of work before vacation. I won't be back for 12 days! Yay! Koy and I are going on a short little vacation in the Texas Hill Country. We are going to Fredericksburg for a couple of days and then down to New Braunfels for a few days. We leave tomorrow morning and are going to take back roads and visit some local attractions along the way. We are staying at a Bed & Breakfast in Fredericksburg and are looking forward to visiting the quaint little shops on the main drag and going to some wineries in the area. I also heard about a cool wildflower farm that I would like to check out. Then, Saturday, we are heading down to New Braunfels where we are going to float the Guadalupe River and go to Gruene to the dancehall and Gristmill restaurant which I've heard wonderful things about. I'm so excited to go to the Gruene Dancehall finally. I think that's one of those places that you have to go to at least once. Koy is not going to be thrilled about the country music, but I think we'll still have a great time! I'll post pictures when we get back.

I'm going to spend the rest of my vacation next week getting some wedding planning taken care of, getting my hair cut, celebrating my baby nephew's one year birthday, helping my sister with his birthday party, and relaxing by the pool if there's time left over. Cannot wait! Come on 5:00!

Adventures in Babysitting

Last Saturday night, Koy and I went to my sister and brother-in-law's house to babysit my sweet nephew Phoenix so they could have a night out. We got over there at about 6:15; they probably left around 6:30; and Phoenix was ready for bed by 7:00. We played with him for a little while. He crawled around and climbed up on the ottoman and sofa and tried eating blocks, you know the usual 11 month old activities. My sister said he would start getting fussy when he was tired and we could change his diaper, put on his pj's, give him his bottle, and put him down in his crib for bed. She said this would be anywhere between 7:00 and 8:30. Sure enough, right around 7:00, he started getting fussy. I tried to calm him down and play with him some more to make sure he was good and tired before going to bed, but it didn't last long. So, we started the bedtime ritual. He was not happy when we were changing his diaper and his clothes and he let us know it. He screamed and cried like we were torturing him or something. Right when we got the last button snapped on his little pj's and I showed him the bottle, though, he calmed down. He took his bottle and I held him on my shoulder for a little while before putting him in his crib. He was so sweet laying on my shoulder that I didn't want to put him down. I did eventually, though, and he was just fine in his crib the rest of the night. We watched him on the video monitor, but he never made a peep. What a good baby and a good first experience with watching him by myself (with Koy's help of course). He will turn one in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait for his swim party! Here are a few pictures of the sweet boy when he was still full of energy.

Martin High School 10 Year Reunion

So, this past Saturday, I attended my 10 year high school reunion in the stockyards in Fort Worth. So crazy how time flies! I don't feel this old, but I guess I am. I dragged Koy along with me, but I think he ended up having a pretty good time hanging out with my friends' husbands and boyfriends. They pretty much stuck together the whole time and avoided meeting too many old friends of ours. Ha ha! I think us girls had a better time hanging out with each other and catching up with a few friends we'd lost touch with. There was a little bit of drama once the alcohol had settled in with some people, but we still had a good time overall. We went out to 8.0 downtown afterwards too and saw some other old friends that didn't make it to the reunion, so that was fun too! There wasn't a huge turnout at the reunion, though, and there were definitely some people I'd hoped to see that weren't there. Hopefully they will make it to the 20 year reunion! I also hope to see some of these people sometime in between now and then. It's crazy how busy life gets and before you know it, 10 years have passed by.



















I need to get some pitures from other people because I didn't get very many good ones.

The Grape

Friday night, Koy and I went to dinner at the Grape on Greenville. We had been there two other times before, and I liked it both times, but this time, it was amazing! I had the bistro steak frites which was grilled beef tournedos, maitre d'butter, garlic-herb frites, bitter greens salad, and red wine demi. I substitued roasted sweet potatoes for the french fries, though. It was all so, so good! Koy had the grilled & glazed pork rib roast chop with apple-pecan-cotija napa slaw and roasted sweet potatoes. His was good too, but not nearly as good as mine. He agreed. Then for dessert, we had the warm cooper's farm peach crisp which was basically peach cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream. It was pretty darn good as well, but would have been even better with more ice cream and less lemon zest. Apparently, we think we are food critics now. :) It was a great dinner date to end the week! Here are a few pictures of us after we devoured our meals. I did get a pic of the dessert before we destroyed it, though. If you have never been to the Grape, I highly recommend you try it. It is fairly expensive, but worth every penny!

Recap

Well, I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I would do a little recap of my week. It hasn't been all that exciting, though, so bear with me. Monday night Amber came over to watch the Bachelorette with Lea and me. This week's episode was highly entertaining as usual! I think the fact that we have to pause it every few minutes to laugh and discuss how ridiculous all the people are makes it much more exciting than it actually is. I cannot wait for next week's episode, though, and the interview with Jake and Vienna afterwards. Why do I love all this trashy reality TV? Ha ha! It's such a guilty pleasure!

Tuesday night, Koy and I went to dinner with our friends John and Anna at the new place on Henderson and Capitol called Horne & Dekker. It was pretty good, but not anything spectacular for the prices. My chicken was really good and Koy liked his duck breast, but they were small portions and the whipped sweet potatoes were much too sweet for me with marshmallows on top. It was fun to try someplace new, though. Oh, they did have mad-libs style comment cards, which were fun to fill out. I wonder if this place will last longer than the previous restaurants in that location.

Wednesday night, I went to the 5:30 pm class at the gym and did overhead squats (OHS) and the beer gut assassin. For the OHS, we were supposed to work up to a heavy triple and then do three sets of three reps at that weight. I wanted to get 85#, but I could only do 2 reps at that weight, so my final results were 65#(3)-75#(3)-85#(2)-80#(3). Then the beer gut assassin was 21-15-9 reps of knees-to-elbows on the pullup bar, abmat sit-ups, and half moons (take a weight from the ground up over head and back down to the ground on the other side). I just used a 15# plate for the half moons and they still messed me up. I think the whole thing took me like 6:45. I had a hard time sitting/standing up straight after that.

Then, Thursday morning I went to the 5:30 a.m. class at the gym and did the workout designed for one of the trainers Mike's birthday. It was an 800 meter run followed by 12 muscle-ups, 24 deadlifts, 48 box jumps, and another 800 meter run. Ugh! It was brutal!! The first run was okay, but then I had to sub 3 pullups and 3 ring dips for each muscle-up so I did 36 of each with the purple band. Then deadlift was terrible. I'm always very weak on that lift anyway, but I was also already really sore from the half moons the night before so I ended up dropping weight from 85# to 75# and did sumo-deadlift instead. Then I used the 20 inch box for box jumps, but did mostly step-ups. Then the last 800 meter run was awful. I felt like I was going to puke the entire time! I finished though, in 23:30. I'm glad I went, but it was rough. I am definitely feeling it today. My shoulders and lower back are more sore than they have been in a long time.

I'm so excited for the long, holiday weekend, although we don't really have any plans. We may go to the pool some if the sun ever comes out, and I plan to hang out with my sister and sweet nephew at some point as well. Hopefully we'll find someplace to watch fireworks too. It should be a nice relaxing weekend. I hope everyone has a fun, safe weekend!