Waiting for Wilco...

We are sitting on the top of the hill at the Lawn at Riverside Park in Nashville waiting for Wilco to come onstage. 

Is it horrible that I really don't care if I see Bon Dylan?  I am all about Wilco. This is the fourth time Josh and I have seen them; Tulsa, OKC and Denton so far. 

It is an absolutely beautiful night here in Nashville and I am excited for the girls to see Wilco for the first time. 

We got downtown early and had dinner at the Rockbottom Brewery. The highlight of the meal was dessert. 

Yum!

Now it's almost Wilco time! 

Have a good night. 

Let's Start With Some Music...

We decided to spend the first night of our vacation in Tulsa. Not only were we dropping off the pups, we got to listen to some pretty amazing music. 

Tedder, mentioned at the top of the flier is my sister-in-law's amazingly talented boyfriend. He plays or has played the saxophone in three of the four bands that were scheduled to play last night. 

I had never been able to see him play before and I am kicking myself. The event was a fundraiser, raising funds for Ryan (boyfriend) and Jordan (sister-in-law) who are moving to Chicago in a couple of weeks. I would pack up and move with them in a heartbeat because I love Chicago, but sadly their new place is pretty small. 

Back to last night. 

The first band features a cello, banjo, saxophone (Ryan) and a rapper. I was skeptical but it worked and they were very good. 

This is Ryan, yes he was wearing a tuxedo, with the third band. He had never played with them before and he sounded amazing with these guys. 

Jordan had some her friends from Studio 7 Fitness, where she has developed some amazing abs pole dancing come out and perform during the show. She has sure come a long way from the eight year old she was when I first met her 21 years ago!

Carson with the worlds best mother-in-law. 

Josh and the girls. They enjoyed their first show. I think they are ready for Wilco tomorrow. 

We are almost to Memphis, had some serious traffic outside of Little Rock that slowed us down. 

More to come...

On The Road...

Blogging from the road. We have been on the road for approximately 16 minutes and we are already on the turnpike. 

We are headed to Tulsa tonight to drop off this guy. 

He is being amazingly calm with his sister Penny. They are going to have their own vacay at the Doggie Do in Grove with Aunt Connie. Fun times!

There is also a concert happening tonight that we are getting to see. Two birds and all. More on that tomorrow. 

For now its the open road. 

Well keep your fingers crossed its all open. 

Cheers to vacation and the next eleven days with the family, Wilco and the beach. 

I wonder if we forgot anything. 

Pre Vacation WIAW...

I have been seriously slacking when it comes to the blog lately. It is not there hasn't been anything going on, it's just that the things going on haven't been blog appropriate. As things develop they might become appropriate, until then let's start with a little WIAW.

It has not been a very memorable week of eats, lots of same old thing.

I have become quite the Pinterest stalker lately. I have been pinning a bunch of yummy looking recipes and then not doinganything with them. Until last week, when I made Bubble Pizza. The family liked this one, we made part of it vegetarian friendly (Read: no pepperoni) and I made some zuchinni chips to go with mine.

My favorite yogurt is still this Chobani key lime, so good with the graham cracker and white chocolate chips.

I introduced the girls to my new favorite beverage at Starbucks. Iced green tea. I will not bore you with all of the pictures we took before we got one with all three cups in the picture.

With softball over, I feel like our evenings are getting back to normal. Just in time for vacation. After spin class on Monday I came home and made some rissoto that I topped with roasted veggies. Tuesday night was leftovers and for some reason I decided to top the rissoto and veggies with a fried egg. I don't eat fried eggs very often anymore, but every once in a while I can't resist. It might not look fabulous, but it was absolutly delicious.

I keep saying I am going to get back on track, but I mean it this time. There is still some interesting things happening in these final days of June, so check back to see what happens.

 

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WIAW, or What Did I Eat?

If you happen to be one of the couple of people that actually read my blog on a regular basis, I almost used handful but thought that might be a bit of a stretch, you may have noticed the lack of activity on this little corner of the net.

In short, live has been pretty in eventful (Read: boring) lately. Don't get me wrong, we have been pretty busy it just hasn't been what I would think people outside my household would find interesting. I do have some things to share but I thought I would see what I could put together in the way of an WIAW (aka what did I eat Wednesday) post. 

This was so yummy!  Baked (or nuked) sweet potato with roasted broccoli and Brussels sprouts and mushrooms. Just thinking about this makes me want to eat it again. 

I have been craving burritos for some reason. This one had a little blue potato, egg whites, roasted veggies from previous pic, spinach and a little cheddar cheese. It was a borderline fail though as we were all out of salsa. Oh yeah, and there was avocado...

I am posting this picture because I really want to eat this. I got a new vegetarian cookbook for my birthday last week and I fell in love with this recipe!  Now I just have to remind myself how to turn on the oven and actually make this. 

While I have been very unmotivated in the kitchen lately I did manage to get it together to make these Brookies. 

I have never made blondies, but this recipe with brownies/blondies all together is just amazing. 

There you have it. Can someone please tell me how to find my kitchen motivation?

Saturday...

I got up to meet Anne and Carrie at the Y for a nice Saturday run. My quads had been sore all week from our two morning runs and some weights, but I figured it might be a shortened long run bit it would still be a run. 

Boy was I wrong. 

We got through the first at a 10+ pace and it was shortly after that I decided irritation in my quad was not shared equally in both legs and could only mean one thing. 

I'm not 100 percent yet. 

So after a little over a mile I ended up walking about three miles. I was glad to not be responsible for ruining anyone else's run. Anne and Carrie went on without me and got in six miles. 

I finished up with some arms and then headed home. Not the morning I thought it would be but I am resigned to the fact that I want to run, but I don't want to run if it feels like crap. It seems like an eternity since my last really good run and it feels like it will be as long until I have another one. 

So I'm going to bike, spin, swim, get in some strength training and even try out deep water running. Am I bummed?  Sure. But crappy running is way worse than being sidelined for a little bit. 

We will be at the beach in a couple of weeks and I am hoping to be able to get a few miles there. I love running at the beach. 

Lunch today was awesome. 

Breakfast burrito with egg whites, potato, broccoli, spinach, cheddar cheese and avocado. Yum. 

Now Carson and I are hanging out watching the last two episodes of Revolution. 

Penny has been hanging out with us. 

Have a great Saturday!

Frozen Yogurt...

The Tweens had an appointment at the dermatologist this afternoon so I thought we would check out a new frozen yogurt place that we have driven past quite a few times. 

Our first trip to Earth Fruits Yogurt was a roaring success. 

I got a little dark chocolate, vanilla, salted caramel pretzel and something with Greek and fruit. 

Don't tell Cherry Berry but there might be a new froyo place on the top of my list. It was quite a bit cheaper (Josh aka Dave Ramsey will like that), and they had a bigger selection of toppings. 

The customer service was great too. Even when Camy broke the cookies and cream. Okay, she didn't really break it, but they fixed it really fast. 

I think we will be back here. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. 

Birthday...

I was excited to be able to run, after my two weeks off, on my birthday Tuesday. 

Sarah, Rochelle and Anne  all agreed to meet me for my birthday run. And they let me take their picture. 

Looks pretty dark out. Can I just say that true friendship is when your stay-at-home mom and teacher friends will still meet you at 5:15 am in the summertime to run. How did I get so lucky?  Might not be me though, might be the Oklahoma heat. 

So we ran, to Target and back, which is just under 4.4 miles, which happens to be my shortest weekday run in AGES. Man do I feel like a wimp. 

I threw in an extra walk break while everyone ran on, but they came back to meet me when they ran past a car that appeared to be broken down on a less traveled road that takes us back to the Y. They wanted to avoid a Ted Bundy-like situation as it all looked a little suspicious. Might have been the lighting. 

Even a less than spectacular run is still a good birthday run when you have been sidelined for a couple weeks following a month of absolutely horrible running. 

I did get to try out my compression shorts, or running Spanks as I like to call them. 

Sure wish they made me look like the girl in the picture, but sadly they aren't that flattering on me. It's gonna take some getting used to wearing them under my running shorts. 

I had a very in eventful day at work, until the girls in my office gave me some amazing treats for my big day. 

In case you were wondering, yes these were all eaten on Tuesday. I didn't share one truffle or the cupcake, but I shared the other three with the girls and with Josh. 

Camy had a softball game, so we spent some time at the ball field. I felt bad that we chose our spot based on the amount of shade more than the amount of the girls we could see. It has been damn hot. With the shade and the wind it was very nice. 

I will talk more about softball in my next post. It has been an exciting couple of weeks. 

So happy birthday to me. One more year in my current age group and then I will get an extra 5 minutes on my BQ time. I'm still thinking I will be 80 before I can take that race off my bucket list. 

Why I Love My Local Running Store...

The Moore tornado on May 20th hit not too far from where I lived from 6th grade until I graduated from high school. My junior high was damaged and neighborhoods that my friends lived in when we were in school took direct hits.

I was excited to help my favorite local running store OK Runner distribute shoes and apparel to people affected by the storms. The shoes were donated by individuals and running stores across the country. The clothes were donated by Brooks and Moving Comfort. I love Brooks. I have been running in their shoes since my first 5k and I have been proud to be a Brook Fanatic for the last few years.

I have never seen so many boxes of running apparel in my life.

There was box after box of shirts, shorts and jackets that we handed out.

I never thought I would love Brooks more than I already did, but I was blown away by this amazing company and their generosity.

On Friday I took these clowns with me. Carson, Hailey and Camy helped all afternoon handing out clothes. They had a great time and worked very hard.

Trey, Jerry, Tim, Rochelle, Tiffany and me.

Rochelle and I went back on Saturday and helped fit people in shoes and help load up all the remaining shoes.

Tim and Gus, they spent two days away from their Norman and Edmond stores to help show Moore a little love.

It is exactly this sort of thing that makes me love my local running store. It's a local small business that organized this huge event, not the big chain athletic stores. It's the small businesses that are going to be there for their community when it counts.

Need new running shoes? I recommend you go talk to the people at your local running store, they are there because they love running and I bet they will take care of you too.

 

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Another Corporate Challenge...

This weekend was the 25th annual OU Medicine Corporate Challenge.

We were participating for the fourth time this year, and it was a tough year. We won our division last year, but this year I doubt we did a very good job of defending our title.

The weekend just started off all wrong. Friday afternoon most of the Oklahoma City metro closed down at about 4 pm because of the severe weather that had been predicted. The Friday night events for the Corporate Challenge were cancelled. I headed home a little after 3 pm, and found out a little while later that Camy's softball game was cancelled.

A little later, there was a little of this.

Zoey, Carson, Zach and Camy

Sid and Mimi (my sister's mother-in-law and her mom) were on their way to Edmond with my niece and nephew Zoey and Zach for a BBQ that we had planned on going to after the softball game. By the time they made it to Norman it was too late, the tornado that started on the west side of OKC in El Reno made conditions too dangerous for them to drive to Edmond. They originally stopped at The Riverwind Casino and we got ahold of them and offered our house and the empty space in our storm shelter.

They headed over and we had some pizza, some time in the storm shelter, and not long after no electricity. It's always fun to have unexpected guests, just wish we had been able to offer them some air conditioning and the ability to open and close the fridge whenever we wanted.

The power finally came back on a little after 7 Saturday morning. I ended up missing the women's mile that I had plans to walk at 8 o'clock Saturday morning. I did get up in time to see the 55 meter dash.

Kim, Jarred, Matt, Leighanne and Dennis

Afterwards, I headed home and Josh and the girls went back up in time for volleyball. I thought I was going to have to play, but we decided to go with the six players that did show up.

Jacob, Casey, Jeana, Louis, Chanda and Jarred

I did do the one mile walk this morning that Camy and Carson were walking as part of the Kid's 10K. We watched the tug-of-war this afternoon, and then this happened.

I traded shoes with Camy and made a couple of changes to our dodgeball team. Yes, that is one orange and one lime green sock. I honestly don't ever remember playing dodgeball as a kid, so I studied up on the rules. Seriously, there are alot of rules for dodgeball.

Let me say that we won our division in dodgeball last year. Since I was playing I am not at all surprised at today's outcome. The rules had changed a bit from last year, so it was the best of three games, and each game was 1 minute. It was also single elimination, so you had one shot to move on. While I survived our first game, we lost two in a row and were done.

Stephen, me, Casey, Tiffany, Jennifer and Jarred

No shame here. I think we got an unlucky draw, the team we played was pretty tough. On the bright side we did make it home by 5:30. Even though I wasn't out there the wholetime for three days, driving back and forth and the time we did spend out there was pretty tiring.

It is not easy participating in an event like this and not being able to run. I am glad that I don't have any scheduled events for the forseeable future. With a little over a week of no running to go, and I plan on getting some crosstraining and yoga in this week. It's either that or I am going to have to repeat "step away from the rice krispy treats" to myself over and over again.

 

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