Week 29

Dean heads back this week for yet another stint in G.I. Because of this we decided to go out for breakfast Sunday (7/19) morning since before headed off. We tried a new restuarant (to us) and loved it! LePeep is pretty close to our house and very reasonable and delicous! Dean had a french toast scramble and I had homemade oatmeal and these very interesting (yet scrumptious) english muffin "gooey buns".



The excitement this week was finding out that our good friend Stacy is engaged! Can't wait for the wedding next June!! Congrats Stacy! :)














7.19.09 - 7.25.09

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 27

The reason being this entry technically belongs in last week's post but since I just discovered this envelope a few minutes ago, I'm counting it as excitement for Week 27! Dean got the mail last Friday (7.2) and had it sitting on our kitchen table under some other stuff. I just looked through it and saw something from UPS addressed to me. Of course anything from UPS gets me excited b/c it's generally from a sweepstake... and this was no different! I won $50 to Regis Salons from Glamour! I love my current stylist so I doubt I'll go there for a styling but maybe some new products or hold onto it to regift--so friends start sucking up! ;-)



We finished reinstalling the shutters today and Dean got started on our new storm door (hopefully will be installed when he's back home in 10 days). Below is a picture of the final result of all our exterior updates this weekend. Ignore all the mud on the 'after' picture... that's how messy Dean gets in GI and what mess he brings home too!



The rest of the was fairly uneventful. On Tuesday as all the tv stations advertised, "the world said goodbye to the King of Pop" as a two-hour live telecast of Michael Jackson's memorial aired. A group of my coworkers and I watched a portion of the memorial over our lunch hour and one coworker even made everyone stickers. :-)


Also, my Aunt Peggy had emailed earlier this week informing us that at 4:56am on 7/8/09... the only time this would ever happen. Ironically I slept horribly this week and was awake around that time so figured I'd take a picture of the official US time documenting this.



7.5.09 - 7.11.09

Week 26 - Half Way There!

Wow, it's week 26 which means we're officially half-way through the year. How the heck did that happen?!

This is a cool week for it to be the half-way point! On Sunday (6.28) my work had it's Summer Outing at the zoo. Since Dean was out of town Stacy came with me and we went around with Ember, Kris & Parker. I got some great pictures! You can view all the photos here.













I'm hoping for better things this week. I just got a call from my dentist and they had a cancellation and got me in for tomorrow over lunch--now if I could just get in sooner for my filling!

Wednesday (7.1) has been going pretty good! I "get" to take a half-day and enjoy the gorgeous weather--although it's b/c I'm waiting for Service One to come fix our AC! I can't believe it has been a week since we've ran the AC in the house! Reminds me of living in the sorority. :-) While I was waiting for Service One, UPS dropped off an evelope for me and I found out that I won 2nd prize in a Teleflora sweepstake and won $50 to Macy's! And to make the day even better, Dean came back from his latest stint in GI today as well. Lucky him he came home to an air conditioned house!











On Thursday (7.2) We decided to do some more upgrades to the house over the long weekend. We painted our previous white shutters black and LOVE the new look! Here's a half-way progress photo (before we painted the upper windows.

On Friday (7.3) we drove down to Lincoln to have lunch with my brother (and family) from Mizzou, and my Dad and his wife. It was nice seeing them again. They're off to Walt Disney World in a few weeks and decided to make a quick trip up to Nebraska beforehand.

On Saturdays (7.4) we went over to Ember and Kris' house to watch the fireworks. Watching their lil' son Parker get so excited over fireworks (especially snaps) was so funny. We had a great time, enjoyed cocktails, smores, brownies, and chocolate fondue. Diet starts tomorrow!!

6.28.09 - 7.4.09

Week 25 - Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today (6/25) is one of those days were everything seems to go wrong. Our air conditioner busted and this week the heat index has been over 100. Our repair guy can't come over until next Wednesday to look at it... when I got home after work it was 92-degrees in our house! Luckily the basement is staying fairly cool. I finally got into my dentist to look at a tooth where a filling came lose, turns out that I have a new cavity where the old was one and it could potentially need a root canal. They can't get me in for a new filling until mid-August and I can't get in for a filling until September! Plus she thinks I need my wisdom teeth pulled, soooo yaaaaaay. Ugh.

I also just got word that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson passed away today. Farrah's death was expected b/c of her public battle with cancer but MJ completely shocked me! Ironically earlier in the day I had been discussing with a coworker who was going to be the "third" celebrity death since they come in three's and was completely silent when I got into my car about an hour later and started hearing the reports. No one saw this coming! At least, I didn't...

On a lighter note, on Saturday my friend Stacy and I went downtown to the Summer Arts Festival. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time catching up and browsing all the artist's work... and even getting yelled at by one of them!

























I borrowed my uncle's digital SLR for tomorrow's trip to the zoo and decided to take it to Standing Bear after the Summer Arts Festival. Every time I go running I see so much I want to take pictures of so I figured this was a perfect opportunity! You can see all the photos here.













6.21.09 - 6.27.09

Week 24

This week was a fairly average week for us, but with a sad evening. We both worked and survived the week as always, Dean came home from Grand Island on Wednesday, and we enjoyed Baja Fish Taco Thursday at our favorite resturant in town--Shuck's (inside Absolutely Fresh Seafood at 119th & Pacific). During Dean's time off he was able to attend one of the games of the College World Series. On Saturday we attended a funeral.














6.14.09 - 6.20.09

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