Week 30

This week's excitement was going to the zoo with Dean's mother and nephews! We wished we could have stayed longer but we had a wedding to attend to that night. I braved the Skyfari again and we got some great pictures of the group. :-)












7.23.09 - 7.29.09

Week 28 - Green Monster

For those who know me well, know I love to cook and especially try new recipes. I've been on a health kick lately (officially down 10lbs as of yesterday, thank you very much!) and I've heard a lot about Green Monster Smoothies lately. I did a Google search about them and found lots of recipes, but the great thing about these smoothies is that you can pretty much take any smoothie you usually drink and add a handful of spinach (or kale). I know, it sounds gross but I swear you cannot taste the spinach at all! So for lunch today (7/12) I made myself my first Green Monster with one cup of fresh (raw) spinach, one cup skim milk, one tbsp all natural peanut butter, one sugar-free fudgsicle, and one cup of crushed ice (from our ice maker). And below was my result! Sooooooo delicious!



After a pretty crappy Tuesday (not worth getting into), we got a good pick-me-up! We both won a 2nd place prize in one of my sweeps. We each won two sets of movie tickets! In today's economy and with current movie admissions, this is a great prize. Two free date nights! Now just gotta win some free dinner... ;-)

Thursday (7/16) my cousin Megan and I had an impromtu girl's night while Dean celebrated at a coworker's going away party. Megan and I ate our favorite fajita quesadilla's at LaMesa and were good girls and did a two-mile walk afterwards to burn some of it off! LOL



Friday night (7/17) we redeemed one set of the tickets to see 'Away We Go'. It ended up being an even better deal because the theatre was offering a $5 concession pass for $4 and when we handed them our voucher we asked for a concession pass, well the movie voucher is for $24 dollars and our movie total came to only $18, so they included the $4 in our voucher. So we ended up getting a movie and concessions for free! Anyway, the movie was soooooooo good. We highly recommend it.

Saturday Dean went golfing and I went running (4-miles, woot!). That evening we joined his mother Kathy and friends down at Lewis and Clark landing. We had dinner at Rick's Boatyard, walked the Pedistrian Bridge, and enjoyed the Playing with Fire concert series. Dean and I left a little early because it was such a beautiful night and our noisy neighbors are gone so we decided to enjoy a fire in our firepit and just have some us-time. :-) Very romantic, and very needed.




7.12.09 - 7.18.09

Week 23

This week was rather uneventful. Dean leave for Grand Island on Sunday and had to deal with a lot of rain. Below are some pictures from his field work.










On Saturday, Mary, Megan, Russ, and I went down to Lincoln to celebrate my sister-in-law Molly's 30th birthday at Venue.











6.7.09 - 6.13.09

Week 21 - M.I.Z....Z.O.U.

On Sunday we celebrated my cousin Brennen's high school graduation in Lincoln. It was great seeing family again.












Dean went golfing on Memorial Day and I had plans burn some videos on DVD and some other projects around the house but I came down with something pretty bad and was out of commission all of that day.

Thursday through Sunday we were in Columbia, MO for Chad and Sherry's 40th birthdays. We had a great time spending time with our family... even got to run on Mizzou's football field for awhile during their party!











5.24.09 - 5.30.09

Week 20 - Walking to Iowa

On Sunday Dean, Kathy, and I journeyed back downtown to take a walk along the Riverfront. We walked across the newly built Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge that leads to a park in Council Bluffs and after walking back to Omaha we had lunch at The Old Mattress Factory. Once we returned home Kathy and Guy packed up their belongings and headed back to Lincoln. We had a wonderful time hosting them for the weekend and hope to have them over again soon. :-)



Woohoo! On Monday I finally won a prize in a sweepstakes. I won one of the daily prizes that T.Marzetti Dressings was giving away in the Backyard BBQ sweepstakes--one of 23 bocce ball sets! Too bad we already have one, but it's worth $100 so it'll be a good Craigslist item! :-) Funny thing is that I took about a week-and-a-half break from entering because I was burnt out on entering, so this is great motivation on my first day back!



On Friday and Saturday, Dean and I decided to try painting for the first time in our lives. I gotta say, we're pretty good at it! We painted our master bedroom a beautiful shade of blue. Before the walls were white and had a border--the border removal proved to be the hardest part.

5.17.09 - 5.23.09

Week 19 - Wicked Week

As you can probaby tell by the title for this post, the excitement this week was seeing the musical Wicked! Dean was spared from this one since this time it was a Girl's Night with my cousin Megan and Aunt Mary. Megan and I went downtown a little bit early and had a glass of wine at La Buvette, then we joined Mary at Stokes for dinner, and then onto the Orpheum for Wicked. The musical was fabulous! I highly recommend seeing it! Only thing I don't recommend is going downstairs during intermission and using the bathroom just off the stairs. I'll leave that private joke for Megan and Mary. ;-)


La Buvette


Orpheum

On Friday at work, to celebrate the May birthday, anniversaries, and new hires we were told we're having an Ice Cream social in the afternoon. Little did we know they called an ice cream truck to come and we each got to pick what we wanted! I chose the ever-so-delicous Choco Taco and we also got cute new coffee mugs. :-) Just what my day needed since I'm swamped and wasn't having the best morning.



On Saturday, Dean's mother Kathy (and her dog Guy) came up to spend the weekend with us to celebrate Mother's Day since we weren't able to last weekend. We enoyed the weather in the afternoon by hangin out on a our outdoor catches and catching some rays and then headed downtown to Lewis & Clark Landing for the first peformance of the Playing with Fire concert series.

5.10.09 - 5.16.09

Week 18 - Girl's & Guy's Day Out

I worked a lot of overtime this week and Dean did more yard work. On Saturday I spent some time with my cousin Megan and Aunt Mary at Village Pointe in the late morning/early afternoon, which was wonderful... We browsed through the Farmer's Market, had lunch at Paradise Bakery, and then did some shopping--I got some great bargains! Dean went to Lincoln in the morning to golf with some friends for Luke's bachelor party. Other than that, a pretty tame week. :-)


Village Pointe Farmer's Market


Village Pointe Mall


Luke's Bachelor Party Golf Outing

5.3.09 - 5.9.09

Week 15 - Easter

This week began with an Easter celebration at our home with Dean's family. We hosted dinner and an Easter egg hunt for his nephews. We didn't take too many pictures, but here is one of Dean playing horseshoes with Kobe.



On Thursday, April 16th we met up with Dean's friends Julie at BW3s. She lives in Chicago but was in Omaha for work. We had a great time, which of course resulted in some photos. :-) Dean can't handle spice as well as I can so he had to document that he took a bite of my Blazin' wings, which a BW3 symbol to prove where he was. He sent this to a friend, who responded with "I'd rather see your wife chomping down on something..." without your mind going somewhere nasty, we improvised where we could since we were out of wings. ;-)



4.12.09 - 4.18.09

Week 12 - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

It's only Wednesday and I've already dubbed this the week of 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'. Thus far it's gone in reverse so hopefully the end of the week will follow suite and will all be good stuff. :-)

The Ugly: Week 12 certainly started out with a bang! Quite literally! Three days into "Spring" Omaha had it's first tornado warning of the year (3/23). We had lots of hail, thunderstorms, high winds and tornadic activity around the area. Nothing as damaging as last June, but still eventful. Luckily it started after 5pm so I was home before it hit. I talked to Dean around 2pm and it had just hit GI at that point and he was sitting in his truck while it hailed and then it was over there. Anyway, here are photos from today. Ironically today was the anniversary of a fatal tornado back in 1913 that killed 150 people and injured 400!


View from our front porch


Our front yard.


Hail on our patio couches.

The Bad: Dean "accidentally" threw away my wallet with my credit cards and gift cards from by birthday and Christmas. On Monday after the bad weather I was doing some stuff online and needed my credit card for something, and so I went into our kitchen to find the bag I had my wallet in. A little backstory, I carry a large purse and since I had two gifts to distribute at the Legion on Friday I emptied the contents of my purse into a Target bag so I could fit the gifts in my purse. Luckily I took my license and main debit card out of my wallet to put into a wrislet for the night, however I put the rest of my wallet in the Target bag. Sunday evening Dean mistook the Target bag as trash and put in our trash can. Of course our trash day was Monday and I didn't discover this until Monday night. I spent the rest of that night calling my credit card companies. As sucky as this was, the silver lining is that I have been putting off closing my accounts at the bank I used before we got our joint accounts at Dean's bank and my original bank's debit card was still in my wallet so instead of calling to get a new card, I finally went in and closed all those accounts.

The Good: I got a funny text from Dean on Tuesday telling me to check his "sweeps" email address. Since I'm addicted to sweeps I created him a Yahoo address since you tend to get a lot of junk mail from certain sweeps. We, okay correction... HE won another sweepstake! First of all, I'm thrilled but I have to admit I'm getting jealous b/c I can't remember the last time I was the one who won stuff. ;-) The last win was a kick-ass baby monitor and now we have a year's supply of all-natural baby wipes and diaper cream. Dean mentioned in his text that it's "nuthin 2 big", however this is a highly rated brand and not too cheap--the average retail value of the year's supply is $350! So little by little we're getting closer to being prepared for a baby... just have to work on the obvious missing factor. LOL

Another Good: My nieces are in town!! I got an email on Sunday from Allison (almost 10-years old) and she said they're in town for Spring break (they live in Columbia, MO). We have arranged for Allison and Madison to come up to Omaha Thursday night and stay with us until Saturday... I cannot wait! Not sure at this point (Wed) when Dean will come home from Grand Island, so he might miss the girls. He was supposed to be done for the month on Tuesday but his coworker (who lives out there) his wife had their baby so now he's off the rest of the week. Dean ended up coming home on Thursday, the same day I picked up the girls. We had a great time between Thursday night and Sunday afternoon when they stayed with us. We played board games, the wii, went to Amazing Pizza Machine, BounceU, and lots of other things. :-) Here are a couple pictures from the time they were here:


Poor Maddy got cut off. :( We could see her in the refelction inside the booth but not on the print-outs.


The girls at Amazing Pizza Machine


The girls chose some fake moustaches as prizes at the AMP so we could take pictures with Dean since he obviously doesn't need a fake one. LOL

This really doesn't have to do with any of the 'Good, Bad, or Ugly' but I'm proud of my latest diaper cake so I wanted to include it. :-) This is for Dean's coworker in Grand Island who just had their baby.



3.22.09 - 3.29.09

Week 11 - Spring is Officially Here!

[knock on wood] I believe Spring weather is here--and hopefully it's here to stay! This Friday the 20th is the first official day of Spring, so hopefully I'm right! Today (3/16) it's suppose to be in the low-to-mid 70s so I cannot wait to get out and run. I spent a good amount of yesterday compliling my running playlist into one long MP3 with audio intervals telling when to run and walk in accordance to my Couch-2-5K program... I'm excited to get out and try it today! It was a lot of work but it will really help out--and I won't have to run w/ a stop watch! My cousin Megan joined me for my 'run' today and I must say the program really worked well. On the way back Megan and I took a breather and chatted a bit--it's nice to have someone to run with but I'm not sure how well our chattiness does for our exercise. If only we could figure out telepathy. ;)

On Friday the 20th, the legion in Ashland had a special catfish fry that my family attended. It was fun spending some more time together. The pictures of this week (below) are from the fish fry. Dean was hoping to make it but got behind at work and since he's still in Grand Island he wouldn't have gotten there in time.



On Saturday I had to run some errands, and of course while out had to buy Twilight since it came out on DVD. As I was walking away I passed the magazines and noticed that they had a copy of The Knot (the magazine I work on) on newstands so of course I had to take a picture (see below). Later that day Dean and I went to see 'I Love You, Man', which was great--I thought at least. And then we settled into our routine--Dean watched March Madness and I watched Twilight. :-)


Dean heads off to Grand Island again tomorrow but this week should be a short one--fingers crossed! However his co-worker that lives in Grand Island is expecting his first child at the end of this month so it looks like Dean will be going back for a bit after that happens. Oh well, it's good overtime. Gotta love silver linings. ;-)

3.15.09 - 3.21.09

Week 9 - Happy Birthday to Kendra

Week nine consisted of my birthday on March 1st, beautiful (running) weather all week, and a busy busy schedule. On March 2nd, my grandfather went to St. Ez's in Lincoln because he was having trouble breathing and stayed there all week to figure out what was going on. On Saturday the 7th Dean, Megan, Hannah, and I went down to see him since they were still keeping him there for awhile. He was very happy to see us and seems to be doing much better, but will still be there for a lil' bit longer. After seeing him we went to Yia Yia's Pizza for lunch and afterwards stopped by my favorite used bookstore in Lincoln, A Novel Idea. So anyway, the pictures for this week are from Yia Yia's (man I need a tan again!) :-)



3.1.09 - 3.07.09

Week 8 - Beautiful Weather

Nothing terribly exciting happened this week, however the weather has been gorgeous! I went jogging on Tuesday the 24th, walked with Ember over our lunch hour on the 25th, and my cousin Megan joined me at Standing Bear Lake for another jaunt around the lake that afternoon.



Dean left for the beginning of his Grand Island project on Wednesday as well. He should be home this Friday and hopefully the project will stay on track so that he's able to come home on weekends. The project usually goes through the end of March.

2.22.09 - 2.28.09

First Full Day as Mr & Mrs

Today consisted of pure relaxation! We spent the majority of the morning/early afternoon hanging out poolside at the Hilton (where else?!) As you can tell, dean was obviously worn out from getting married!!

All but four of our guests departed today, so that evening we enjoyed dinner at Roy's (Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine) with Kathy & George and Megan & Isaac. Can't beat an evening of sushi, their killer signature Hawaiian martini (featuring pineapples soaked in vodka), and above all wonderful company! All together it was a perfect way to spend our last day on Oahu.