Birthday (x3) week...2011

Last week was ridiculous... even more ridiculous than the same week in past years. (I think it's because it's been the first time that my family has all been in town for bday week since I was in high school?!?!) So here's a recap on birthday week 2011. Warning: No pictures. I was having too much fun to document it :)

On Monday, August 8th, Matt and I headed to Ankeny for dinner with the Brubakers (check out their fun family blog here) and the Marsdens. Unfortunately, Clint actually wasn't able to come because Norm (their puppy) wasn't handling the noodles he found at the dog park the previous day. (Luckily Gable was fine even though he tried the noodles too. Unfortunately he's already been introduced to a variety of people food.) It was a fun night filled with great conversations and lots of laughs! We probably stayed out too late though... especially given our busy week ahead.

On Tuesday, August 9th, I turned 27. It's kinda weird to say that... 27. It sounds older than I feel. After work, Matt and I decided to celebrate by a visit to Adventureland. It had been a couple years since we'd been there and our trip to Okoboji reminded us of our love of rollercoasters, so why not?!?! It was a really fun date night. Kinda took me back.... back when we had just started dating we went there with some of our church youth group friends. We did really well with our selection of rides until our second to last one of the night. It was a little too "spin-ny" so it's good the park closed shortly after we got off.

On Wednesday, August 10th, we went out to dinner at Mama Lacona's for my dad's birthday (well, they brought out free birthday dessert for mom and I too). Grandma, Jackie, Becky and Matt were all in attendance too. We followed up the delicious Italian food with presents at mom and dad's house. Jackie got to open presents too so it felt very reminiscent of Christmas. I got some really cool gifts which I'll eventually get around to posting about.

On Thursday, August 11th, we celebrated Mom's birthday by seeing a show at the Funny Bone Comedy Club. The comedian, Willie Farrell, is actually a local Des Moines-ian and was hilarious. There were a couple times I was laughing so hard I was crying. He plays off the audience for most of his show and we were sitting close enough that he started talking to my dad which was cool. One of the funniest parts was when a man sitting in the back hollered out to Willie because he wanted to talk about his work... which was selling mouse traps. lol. But what made it worse was that he was just so incredibly drunk and kept trying to say more and more; he didn't get it when Willie tried to segue-way into a different joke. Eventually this man got to spell out the website address of where people could go if they wanted hand-made mouse traps... not even a second after the man finished yelling out the web address, another patron added " slash redneck". The crowd went wild. It was so hilarious. Even Willie cracked up and couldn't add anything funnier to the joke.

On Friday, August 12th, Matt and I headed over to Amy (Matt's half-sister) and her husband, Geno's, home. Geno's 50th bday was on Saturday and they decided to have a happy hour at their place. It was nice to be able to help them celebrate. Tricia (Matt's other half-sister) and her husband, Robert, were there too and only live a block away. They have a 9 year old vizsla, Ruby, so a meeting between  the two vizslas also occurred that night. Pics of that to come.

So that's birthday week 2011. It was amazing and jam-packed. I was exhausted by the time we finally hit the weekend but it was so worth it!

Stacy's having a baby!

Stacy and I met our freshman year of high school. We were both awesome french horn players and our friendship grew from that connection. :) Back in March when Matt and I were in Omaha, I got an exciting phone call from Stacy. Her and her husband, Matt, were expecting a baby! So excited for October 26th!

Last month Stacy was in town and decided to expand her registry to include Babies R Us. And I got to go along. It was a super fun day but I had NO IDEA how many decisions a soon-to-be mom has to make! Here are some of the pics from our day together!

Checking out the bouncers with her mom

Apparently baby swings have gotten super complex

Testing out the gliders with her sister, Brit

New body pillow for a better nights sleep

It's good for feeding once the baby gets here too.

He or She?!?! Can't wait to find out in October!

Gable update!

I know you've been wondering about Gable so here's some pics of him over the last month. 

This is a sand volleyball court in a park near our house. He gets to run around here at least every other day. And boy does he love it. He really goes crazy running around in the sand.

It's rare to get of pic of Gable like this. He either wants to eat the camera or is busy eating something else. 

 

Best buddies. (Please disregard my sweaty, just-walked-Gable-in-90-degree-heat look.)

See. He doesn't like to sit still for long.

I think he was trying to eat my hand here.

Such big floppy ears. And he must have been hot - his tongue doesn't normally hang out like that. 

Aww. This is why we're head over heels in love with him!

Due to the heat, Gable finishes every walk with a drink of cool water / dip in the pool.

"Seriously mom. Quit taking pictures of me."

"Feed me!"

Bed time. 

He starts the night in our bed and then when we're ready for bed he goes into his kennel.

Mil. wau. kee.

Back in June we took a fun little vacay to the land of cheese... Wisconsin. My cousin Stacey lives there and my aunt Peggy and uncle Steven were visiting from New Jersey so my family drove up from Iowa. Plus my aunt's sister, Julie, and her husband Dick, live in Milwaukee too. It was a fun, relaxing weekend. Friday night we all went out to dinner at Cafe Hollander in Tosa Village. They had delicious food plus a hundred types of beer on the menu - no joke. And for those of you who know me, beer isn't really my thing but I find a few that I really liked.

On Saturday, Matt and I tool a walk down to the Tosa Farmer's market in the morning. Then we enjoyed some pool time before heading to the Lakefront Brewery Tour at 2:30pm. 

Milwaukee has a lot of breweries that we could check out but rumor has it that the Lakefront Brewery tour is the best. And it definitely didn't disappoint! It costs a few bucks to take the tour but you get big drink samples and get to take home a pint glass at the end! Here's a few photos of us having fun that Stacey & my sisters took. 

My aunt's sister, my aunt, my mom

Geez, it was sooo sunny out!

We enjoyed dinner on the patio at a mexican restaurant. Unfortunately we didn't plan out our drinking too well since we went beer on the tour followed by margaritas at dinner... after dinner we were pretty much exhausted and called it an early night.

 

tequila shots for these 3!

The fun continued on Sunday with brunch at Julie & Dick's. Then a trip to the Milwaukee Art Festival at the Milwaukee Art Museum. There were some cool pieces of art there but only Stacey ended up purchasing anything... well, actually Peggy purchased a print for Stacey for her birthday. You can kinda tell in this pic I snapped, but it was super foggy down by the lake and we couldn't get any pics of the museum. We also did lunch dinner lupper downtown too. 

Monday morning we did breakfast at a cute little local cafe and then stopped at the lake before the drive home. 

Overall, we had a great trip! And I'm impressed that we all survived the 5.5 hr ride together. 6 adults in a suburban is a lot!

Fabulous Friday Night

I had high hopes to write a few very overdue posts about our vacations so far this summer but it obviously didn’t get done. My excuse is Pinterest (and leaving my camera cord at work). Wow is that website addicting! Not only is it fabulous to be able to “pin” images that I like from other websites, but I could did spend hours looking at others “pins” within Pinterest. It’s so easy to use and so neat to have all your favorite images organized, everyone should join. I can’t even imagine how wonderful it would have been to have had this site when I was planning our wedding. So enough about Pinterest, it’s not the only thing I did this week…and if you’re an active blog reader, I’m sure you already know all about it.

I started the weekend off with a perfect girls night on Friday. I headed to Jordan Creek Mall after work where I treated myself to a pedicure after work. I went with a coral color for my toes -- Conga-Line   (I thought about showing you my actual toes but Matt makes fun of them because they’re short and stocky (vs his long and gangly ones) and I couldn’t take a good pic that I wasn’t self-conscious about showing). But as you can see, Conga Line is a fun color. Plus the salon I went to has the massage chairs so it was fabulous.

Next was dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Megan and Tori. I totally forgot about my camera until the very end so this is the only pic I have to show for such a fun time. If I had remembered earlier, I would have taken a close of up my Skinny Mojito – it was amazing!  And of Tori’s Skinny Sangria – also delish. Speaking of delicious, how can you go wrong with ANY of the food at Cheesecake Factory! I always get kinda overwhelmed with their menu – I never decide what I want until the very last second when I’m ordering. Sometimes this can lead me to kinda freaking out and ordering weird things (just ask Matt about the Subway story), but not on Friday. I ended up with Stuffed Mushrooms and Chicken Croquettes. So savory.                  

After passing on dessert (dinner was just too good), Megan, Tori and I headed to the theater to catch Friends with Benefits. It stars Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake and I expected it to be funny but my hopes weren’t too high since the plot didn’t sound oh so original. Luckily, I was completely surprised to discover that the movie is actually a Romantic Comedy (not just a comedy) and was so much better than I had expected. I laughed, I cried, it was fantastic!

To top off the fabulous evening, there was an awesome heat lightning storm to the east of DSM that I got to watch all the way home. I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful evening!

Keens

Something very special was waiting for me when I got home from work today... my very first pair of Keens! I've been telling Matt I want a pair (he has 2) for a while now but their prices were scaring me away. $100 is a lot to spend on a pair of sandals that I wanted to walk the dog in. But last week we found the Balboa Keen in Dark Citron ON SALE online. Normally I wouldn't by shoes without trying them on, but I tried some other styles in various stores and 8.5 consistently fit. Plus they had free shipping and free returns too so I couldn't resist. 

I have to use a stock photo because my new ones are already dirty from wearing them on our walk tonight! lol! oops! I really like them already and here's why....

I didn't pay full price for them

No wet socks/shoes (like when I wore tennis shoes walking Gable through the park)

No sliding around (like when I wore flip flops so that my socks/shoes didn't get wet)

No stubbed toes

My feet can still get a little tan

I can wear them into the lake

Easy on and off in case I get rocks or sand in them from the lake

They are machine-washable

And... they are a fun color! 

If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited about my new Keens. :) 

Yes, I realize that I've been absent for awhile and this is the post I decide to come back with. But it's been busy here - Last week we were on vaca in Okoboji and this week has been hectic with work. I'll be back to post about our vacation soon!

pillow madness

Because we have fabulous new furniture upstairs, we don't hang out downstairs much. (Plus the nicer tv is upstairs too.) So I hadn't really noticed how terrible the pillows looked until I took the after pics for my post on the basement update. 

See how grungy they look?!? I don't think they looked quite as disgusting when the sofa and pillows were upstairs with a light taupe color on the walls. So I'm going to partly blame it on the new crisp white and grey walls which make the light sea green pillows look bad. 

I bought the sofa and loveseat from a friend of a friend when I graduated from college back in 2006. The family rarely used the furniture so it was in decent condition when I got it. But now we've been using it all the time and it's looking kinda worn down. I bought the pillows when I got the furniture because the pillows that came with it really made it look dated. The other pillow you can kinda see on the right matches the recliner - a hand-me-down from Matt's parents, I believe, so it's got a few more years even than the other pillows. Definitely time to replace those pillows... but what to replace them with?

Pam at BeColorful recently posted this pic when she featured skipper blue as the color of the week. It kinda reminds me of a (much) classier (and more expensive) version of our basement. I think it works because the pillows look good with the sofa AND the pillows tie back into the wall and curtain colors. Our sofa isn't as blue (it's got an 80's green and blue chevron pattern on it) but this pic is waaaay close enough to be my inspiration. So I was off to search for grey pillows with a price point of up to $25 per pillow. Here's what I brought home from Target yesterday...

All of them look leaps and bounds better than the old pillows, but I'm not really sure what I like best. I tried looking at each one on their own, and then I even considered getting 2 different ones for a little mix and match action (this is actually a stretch for my usual pillow buying style).

Hmmm... decisions... decisions... I kinda like doing the two different ones, but my concern is that most are the same size so it looks kinda funny. I also found a couple pillows on Overstock that I like too... These come in both 18in and 22 in which solves my mix and match issue. But will they coordinate with any of the ones from Target?

Help!!! What do you think would look good?