Girls Trip!!!

So, I know I have been terrible lately about posting. I was going to post about going to the Dave Matthews concert on September 11th, but I was waiting on Amber to send me the pictures she took there. I still haven't gotten those. I will post them when I do. We had a great time, though. It was the first time I actually sat in seats at Super Pages/Smirnoff/Starplex, whatever the heck that place is called these days. It was a lot different than sitting on the lawn. It was nice to have a little more personal space. :) It also didn't end up raining like we were expecting which was nice. He played my favorite song of all time too- Lie in Our Graves!! I am obsessed with that song. I still remember listening to it in Heather's old Mustang hanging outside of Jared's house in high school! Too funny! I also remember listening to it at the pool overlooking the ocean in Cabo when I went with my family in college. I told Koy that he has to play that for me on the beach at some point in our lives or we are over! : ) Ha ha!

Anyway, on to the current point of my post. I went with 5 of my very best girl friends from college to Chicago last weekend. I had never been before, and we had a blast!! We got there on Thursday and left on Sunday, but it was definitely not enough time to do everything we wanted to. Thursday night we went to dinner at a place called Hub 51 which my cousin later informed me is one of the "it" spots right now. We just went there because a door man at another restaurant told us to check it out. Their food and drinks were pretty good, and they played awesome music! They had a fun little lounge/dance club downstairs as well where we had some more drinks. Then on Friday, we had lunch at Millennium Park and checked out the different sculptures and stuff and met my cousin for a bit. He just moved there with his GF recently, so it was nice to catch up with him a little. Then we went to the Navy Pier and sat out on the water. It was sunny and gorgeous! The only hiccup there was when Nicole got pooped on by a bird. It was disgusting but pretty funny at the same time. Poor Nicole! Lea got in town that night, and we went to a really good Italian place called Carmines for dinner. I had amazing lasagna! I don't remember the last time I had pasta before that. It was definitely worth it!

Navy Pier

The Bean in Millennium Park

Then, Saturday we went to the Cubs game, which was so much fun! I didn't realize how old and small Wrigley Field is. It was so cool! There really wasn't a bad seat in the place. Our seats, however, were shaded and it was so cold, so we decided to take over some hopefully empty seats out in the sun. It was much better in the sun! We enjoyed some beers and great baseball food like pretzels, hot dogs, and nachos. We left a little early since it was still pretty cold and headed over to a sports bar across the street. When the game was over, the big TV screen raised up to reveal a DJ and the place turned into a hard core dance party at 3:00 in the afternoon. It was awesome!!! We forced ourselves to leave after a little while, though, and head back downtown. That night we went on a night-time boat tour of the harbor. It was really pretty and we met some people who went to high school with Tony Romo! Pretty funny. Afterwards, we wait for over 2 hours for some famous Chicago deep dish pizza at Giordano's. From what I remember, it was definitely worth the wait! A few of us had to leave on Sunday in the early afternoon so we didn't have time to do any sightseeing before we left. We didn't have time to do everything we wanted to do like the architecture tour or go shopping, so I guess that just means we will just have to go again sometime soon. Now on to planning our next girls trip!!

Sarah eating her bison hot dog- me- and Lea

Heather, Amber, and Nicole at the Cubs game

Being silly after the game in our free Cubs hats

Me and Nicole Saturday night at a random little Irish Pub.

Another Reunion

Last Thursday night, I met my old friends Kellen and Allison for dinner at Gloria's in the Arlington Highlands. We grew up in the same neighborhood and were pretty much inseparable until about High School. We still know what's going on in each other's lives through silly things like Facebook, but we hadn't actually all three seen each other since my sister's wedding back in 2005, and we didn't get a whole lot of time to talk even then. So, when I ran into Kellen after our 10 year high school reunion a couple of months ago, we decided it was long, long over due to plan a time to catch up with each other. So, that leads us to last week. It was so much fun seeing them and getting caught up on each other's lives. They both look fantastic and seem to be doing really well. We are already talking about planning our next dinner for sometime in October. Hopefully it will work out. I really missed these girls!!


Me, Kellen, and Allison

Me and Kellen

Kellen and Allison

Allison and Me

Phoenix's First Birthday!

My favorite nephew Phoenix turned one year old on August 4, 2010! I cannot believe he is growing so fast! It seems like just yesterday that I got to hold him in my sister's hospital room when he was only a few hours old. He is at such a fun age, though. He's been crawling like a maniac and pulling himself up on everything for a while, and now he's just starting to walk. I haven't seen it yet, but Lauren says he takes a few steps each day. He's full of smiles and adorable noises trying to talk. It is so precious!

My sister and brother-in-law had his first birthday party at their neighborhood pool on the Saturday following his actual birthday. It was blazing hot, but it actually turned out really well. There were probably 40 or 50 people there, and everyone swam and talked, and it was a great time! Lauren's talented friend Lacy made the cake in the shape of a surfboard and beach ball with sand and water underneath. It was so cute!! Phoenix was not too fond of the cake, though. Lauren tried to get him to eat the beach ball part which was supposed to be the "smash cake", but he was not too interested. He doesn't like solid foods at all yet. I'm sure he'll come around soon, though. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures on my camera, but my mom did. So, I'll post more once I get them from her. She is such a proud grandma and took about a million pictures! :)





Can you tell that I am a VERY proud aunt? He was only a few hours old here. So tiny!


Here's the birthday boy on the actual big day!

Adorable birthday cake

The River Continued

This is the picture that I bought on Riverfotos.com that I couldn't open on my laptop at home. I sent the confirmation email to Koy this afternoon and of course he was able to open it without a hitch. Why are guys always good at electronic stuff? I'm glad I have him around to help me out with stuff like this, among other things! :)

One other random note, the swimsuit I am wearing in this pic is one I got when Lea and I went to Australia six years ago! I loved that swimsuit and it held up so nicely all these years until I was trying to get out of the river when we had reached the end and were back at the Rockin R Tube rental place. The current was taking me past the spot where Koy got out. So I got out of my tube to swim, and the current just kept carrying me downstream. I started going over lots of rocks and banging my legs up and my bottoms got stuck on a rock and almost came off of me! They didn't end up coming all the way off, but they did get a nice hole right in the middle of them. Ha ha! I guess it's finally time to throw that suit away. :(

Potential Wedding DJ

Koy and I met with a DJ last Monday night when we got back in town. He is with a company called i Entertainment based in North Arlington. Koy knows him from college so we set up a meeting to get a feel for their services. I loved him! He was super friendly and funny and had great ideas for the wedding reception. He, of course, is one of the more experienced DJ's and so has the highest priced package. I'm not even sure what a reasonable price is, though. Does anyone have any recommendations of good DJ's in the DFW area that aren't super expensive? If so, please let me know. I think we are going to look around at a few other companies before making our final decision.

Road Trip Part 2: New Braunfels

After shopping and going to one last winery on Saturday afternoon, we left Fredericksburg and headed down to New Braunfels. We got "checked in" to the condo we rented on the Guadalupe River and got ready to go to Gruene. Neither of us had ever been before, even though we'd both been to New Braunfels many times, and I've always heard such great things about Gruene Hall and the Gristmill. So, we decided we had to check it out. We went to the Gristmill and had to wait about an hour for a table. The atmosphere was cool with all the picnic tables and a band playing country music outside while hundreds and hundreds of people waited for a table. We finally got seated and ordered, but were quite disappointed by the food. We got some sausage as an appetizer to start and it was actually really good, but my filet and veggies weren't very good and Koy didn't like his strip steak or veggies either. Maybe we just ordered the wrong things, though. We did get pecan pie and ice cream for dessert, which was pretty good. The pie had chocolate chips in it, though, which was a little weird. I think pecan pie is so incredibly good on it's own that you just shouldn't mess with a good thing.

After dinner, we headed next door to Gruene Hall. We sat outside and watched everyone two-stepping inside. It was so funny watching all the much older men dancing with all the young ladies there. Koy really doesn't like country music, so I didn't want to make him stay too long. So, we left after about an hour and a half. I think both the Gristmill and Gruene Hall would be more fun if you were with a big group of friends and had been drinking on the river all day. : )

Sunday, we went to lunch and then headed to the river. We did the 5 hour float, and it was a lot of fun. We had a few beers and just relaxed. I forgot how pretty it is down there with all the trees. ....Funny little story which my girlfriends that went to Tech will appreciate. So, we were floating and I was telling Koy that I wished that we could have pictures of us on the river and that they should have a company like party time photos in Lubbock and have someone walk around the banks of the river and take pictures of everyone and then you could buy the pics online. Well, seriously about an hour later, there was a man in a little hut on the river taking pictures of everyone floating by. He would take your picture and then throw you some beads that had the website riverfotos.com on there to know where you could go buy your picture. He was just like party-time Mike! So, of course, I went and found our picture online and bought it for freaking $12.00, and now I can't even open it because of the type of file it is. I need to get Koy to look at it to see what I need to do. I'll post it on here once we/he figures it out.

We got Rudy's barbecue afterwards and just hung out at our condo. We were exhausted and Koy was fried! I was a little burned on parts of my chest and stomach, but Koy's stomach and legs were completely fried. Poor thing!

Monday we went shopping at the outlet malls in San Marcos for a little while and then ate lunch at Black's Barbecue in Lockhart. We had heard such great things about it, and it was pretty good for bbq. I'm not the biggest bbq fan in the world in the first place, though, so I'm not the best judge of it.

We finally got back to the metroplex around 6:00 that night and picked up my dog in Arlington. It was good to be back, and I had the rest of the week off work to get some wedding planning and other stuff done. More on that later.

Road Trip Part 1: Fredericksburg

Koy and I went on a little mini-vacay to the Hill Country last weekend, and our first stop Fredericksburg, where neither of us had ever been before. We took back roads down so we would have a prettier view than all the truck stops on 35, and it was lovely. We stopped for lunch at a place called Koffee Kup in a little town named Hico and had a ridicuolously good cheat meal. I had chicken fried chicken with gravy and a baked potato, which was very good, but the best part by far was the homemade roll. It was so, so good! Koy had what looked like a great hamburger on homemade bread and onion rings, and the waitress also brought us out seasoned curly fries to try AND we had pecan pie and vanilla ice cream! I would drive an hour and a half or however long it took to get there just to get the homemade rolls and pecan pie again. In fact, we might just have to make it a tradition to drive out there once or twice a year to indulge! :)

After driving about an hour in the wrong direction, we finally made it to adorable Fredericksburg. We stayed at the Magnolia House Bed & Breakfast, and it was so quaint and comfy. The couple that owned it were so friendly, made a great breakfast the two mornings we were there, and recommended some very good restaurants in the area.

We got there on Thursday evening and ate dinner at the Cabernet Grill a little south of the main drag. It was really good and had a nice outdoor area where we sat and I fed the koi fish.

Then Friday, we went out to Enchanted Rock state park to check it out. It is a huge pink rock dome out a little north of town. We made our own path up to the top which ended up being a lot more challenging and took a great deal longer than the regular summit trail would have. It was a nice little workout, though. Once we got to the top and took some pictures of the great view, we made our way back down the other side of the rock on the regular trail, and it was a really wide, easy path down.

Later that day, we went out to a wildflower farm and then to a couple of different wineries. Both of the tastings we went to were kind of rushed, but we did enjoy a glass of wine out on the patio of one of the places which was very nice and relaxing. That night, we had dinner on Main Street at Navaho Grill, and it was amazing. I had a really good filet and spaghetti squash, and Koy had salmon and spaghetti squash. We also had some great homemade vanilla ice cream.

Then Saturday, we had to check out of the B&B by 11:00, and we did some shopping on Main Street, had lunch, and went to one more winery before heading to New Braunfels. There were a bunch of really cute shops on the main street, and I found some really cool mercury glass votive holders for the wedding reception. All in all, we loved Fredericksburg and will definitely be going back.