Steak Night!

The baby has been extremely temperamental about the foods I can eat, look at, think about, etc. for the past few weeks.  I'm finally starting to settle down, and had a massive craving for steak.  So we were patient for a few days and then tonight Eric and I had a date night at Texas Roadhouse.  Yum....

Look!  I can eat salad and bread!

Mmmm, steak and beer!

Steak!

Double Date Day

This afternoon I had a date with Mom and Papa to see Final Destination 5 in 3D.  We did the Fork and Screen and had some lunch with our movie.  We all thought it was really good - and they made awesome use of the 3D.  I ended up going on half.com and buying the first four movies (for less than $10) as soon as I got home.

Then in the evening, Eric and I had a date at the KC Improv Comedy Club.  I got an email for four free tickets and we brought Steven and Alison with us.  We saw Bert Kreischer - he ended up telling us a bunch of stuff of the top of his mind, none that he had done in stand-up before.  Afterward, we hung out in the parking lot for a few hours.  Many laughs were had!

Mom and I were purchasing our tickets to Final Destination 5... While standing in a puddle of water surrounding the electric ticket machine... 

I caught this awesome picture of the pups before we left for the comedy club.

Mega Update!

We are really enjoying married life and have been finding ourselves going out more often, and spending plenty of time with friends and family.  It's also been a rough couple of weeks for some of our friends - it makes me feel guilty about what we have, but I know everyone has their ups and downs.   

P.S. I don't have pictures, but Eric, Brian, and a group of their friends are running a weekly radio show with awesome music courtesy of Brian, and conversation from all of the boys.  So now he's spending Tuesday nights broadcasting, and I'm hanging out with Jen and the kids!  

 Jack and I on the new Sky Ride at the Kansas City Zoo - it goes over the zebras and giraffes.

This giraffe was too short to reach the trees and too tall to reach the grass without aerobics. 

Our friend Moonshine came to visit for the weekend! 

We went barhopping with Alison and Shawn - we had a pitcher of Woodchuck!  We went to The Pool Room, had pizza at Rudy's, then Kristie joined us at Harbor Lights, and we finished the night at Perkins to visit Tera! 

Yea yea YEA!  We've got Eric's car paid off!!! 

He's obviously excited!

 Eric's car is paid off and we've made $578 of progress on the next debt in line.  I wasn't thrilled at the nominal progress over the past 16 months - so I raised the minimum payment on it!  Now we're saving all of our snowball money for Eric's car upgrade and potential future baby money - and we'll get back on the snowball when both of those goals have been realized.

Addy says "Look!  I know how to use an armrest!" 

We've been going through a heat wave recently - this HVAC van advertises by showing the temperature inside the van, and the heat index outside... 70* in their van, and 116* outside!!! 

Leslie and I spent a day together - Deanna Rose, swimming, and then a treat at Smallcakes.  They have a deal where you get a free cupcake the first and tenth time you check in on FourSquare.  I had cookies and cream, and Leslie had lemon. 

 Tonight we went out to dinner at Outback, that means bread!  We had three loaves between us :)

Again - Eric is sooooo thrilled for his steak!

I really AM so thrilled at having crab legs for dinner (and my tiny fork)!

Day 312: New Job & Movies

Today, I got to meet more of the teachers I will be working with next year, including the intermediate grades special education teacher.  We discussed room arrangements and case loads, and we all seemed to work together really comfortably.  I will be working with Kindergarteners, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, and Kelly will have 1 Kindergartener who she is familiar with, and the 4th and 5th graders.  I really can't wait to start doing more work with my new school!  Though I am sad to be leaving my kids and coworkers again (I transferred schools at the end of last school year too).

During the day, Eric and Nathan went to a driving range in Lenexa.  Nate introduced Eric to golf last fall, and now we've acquired a set of Paul's golf clubs for Eric to use.  They had a good time, and now Eric is very motivated to try out the range just a mile or two down the road from us.

After I got out of work and meetings, we met Molly, Nate, Mom, and Alan at the AMC 30 for a night at the Cinema Suites.  Cinema Suites is a theatre for adults 21 years or older, where they serve full meals and have a full bar.  They also have leather recliners with a swivel tray for each person.  The recliners are operated with buttons instead of a lever, and make this awful NNNYYYYYYEEEEAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH noise when they go up or down.  We saw Hanna, a movie about a little girl raised as an assassin.  It had a lot of holes in the plot, but I thought it was really good.  The food was great too, but the parmesan fries were sub-par.
We had a great week with lots of chances to hang out with Molly, Nate, and the kids!  Have a safe drive back to Michigan!

This is an excellent little finger puppet roll that one of Molly's friends made for Cash, I love it!

All of the finger puppets went to bed!

This is how rich people watch movies!

 Thanks for coming to Kansas, Molly & Nate!

Thanks for suggesting Cinema Suites, Mom & Alan!

A proper date!  

Day 307: Buffalo Wild Wings Date Night

We had some extra money left at the end of our food budget for April, so we decided to go out for dinner.  We were set on going somewhere on Mass St, and wanted to go to Jefferson's because we hadn't eaten there before.  However, Jefferson's is closed for remodeling or something right now!  Lame!  So then we went to Bob's BBQ, which was just about to close for the night!  Finally we ended up walking from the north end of Mass to the south end and finally settled into our Mass St. favorite, Buffalo Wild Wings!

Though, it wasn't a Tuesday or Thursday wing night, so we had to branch out and order off the rest of the menu!  We had a great server - the cooks forgot the sides on our wraps, so we ended up getting an extra (FREE) side of potato wedges, our favorite!  Wahoo!

Then we went home and I got started on my Easter preparations... Orange Jello Wedges!  I found them online a few weeks ago and thought it would be really cool to do.  It ended up taking a lot more work to scoop the oranges out of their peels, but worth it in the end!

Yea!  Buffalo Wild Wings date night!

Delicious teriyaki wraps, fries, potato wedges, chips and crazy hot salsa!

Scooping out orange peels!

 We ended up with a ton of orange pulp and two tall glasses of orange juice...and a slice of orange for my Blue Moon!

Jello oranges!

Day 300: Follies and Our 300th Day Married!

Wow, 300 days of blogging, awesome!

Tonight was the Lawrence School Foundation's Annual Follies. Acts from various schools in the district performed fun, talented, and political shows. Prairie Park did an dance that falls into all of those categories. Our music teacher began a solo act which we interrupted with a flash mob and modern dance routine demonstrating the public schools as being a broken machine.

The purpose of the Follies is to raise money for teacher innovation grants, and they do that through sponsorships and tickets to the show. Seats included Biggs Barbecue and free wine and beer, hooray! A coworker and I each had 3.5 beers before going on stage and I only missed my mark once in the dance!

Eric got off work just before intermission, and the door people let him in for free because the show was half over. So he got to join me in the free drinks and second act. We had a really good time, good enough that Eric drove me home and we left my car at the public library!

Jen & I have buddied up this year, Follies was a good chance for us to hang out!

Prairie Park's Machine Act

Prime Numbers Act

Hallelujah Act

It's My Life Act

Day 239: Quadruple Date

This morning Ashley found a set of tracks to Grammy's tree that helped keep her feet dry when she visited it before church.  Then Eric and I walked through the tracks after church.  Ashley thought the tracks were from Helen, who was snowed in Kansas City last week and brought a new ribbon for her tree.  But I had to make fresh tracks last Sunday, after Helen had visited.

It made me feel better that people are visiting her.  I got pretty mad this week when Eric and I were talking about babies in the future, and I got really mad that she won't get to meet our kids.  I settled for saying we would have to bring our future children to her and tie and blue or pink ribbon on to let her know what we have.

After church, we headed out to Kansas City with Paul and Deb to meet Steven, Leslie, Phillip, and Edie for brunch at the Beer Kitchen.  It was pretty expensive, but also a really nice atmosphere and the food was great.  We had parmesan truffle fries with smoked bacon and roasted garlic aioli sauces as an appetizer, then a turkey turkey sandwich - turkey with turkey bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado.  Yum!

Quite a few people have trekked out to Grammy's tree in the past two weeks. 

Andrew playing with my Powerpuff Girls Silly Bandz.

Everyone at the Beer Kitchen.  You can see beer bottles hanging from the ceiling in the background!

Steven enjoying his "Razzle Dazzle" with saison, raspberry vodka, and blackberry puree...very manly!

Day 184: Six Months Later

I can't believe we've been married for six months already!  But I must say, we're both glad to be through with the wedding planning!  We were even blessed with a whole day together - which is rare because I work week days and Eric works and goes to school nearly every day of the week.  The day started off by waking up at 6:45 am to drive out to Olathe to babysit my cousins, Emma and Zayne.  I had fun playing Just Dance 2 and Sing It with Emma while Eric played Lego Harry Potter.  Zayne got home from a sleepover later in the morning and we all went out for lunch at Wendy's and to see "Mastermind" at the Palazzo 16 Theater.  When we got back home, I played New Super Mario Bros. Wii with Zayne while Emma watched Eric play some more Lego Harry Potter.

We almost took a nap when we got home, but ended up hanging around the house playing Wii & PS3 until we left to go to Lawrence for the date portion of the night.  We finished up our last Christmas shopping and went to dinner at Peking Taste.  Mmm, Chinese food!  Then we toured the Christmas light displays of Lawrence.  Zachary Stoltenberg set up a display that is timed to 20 minutes of Christmas music, and the KU Rock Chalk Chant.  It was really fun driving through the neighborhoods of Lawrence and listening to Christmas music!

This neighborhood has lights strewn in geometric patterns and the lights go over the street too.

Zachary Stoltenberg's Christmas light display.  So very cool - check out his videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/zstoltenberg

This is the other house in Lawrence that times their light show to music.  

Mass. St. lights up beautifully at Christmas!