Bring on the Chilly Bumps

Yes Alisha that's for you :).

It feels like fall - like yesterday we had on our air conditioning, and today I'm kind of wishing the heat were on! Instead I'm just enjoying all things fall.  Like wearing my Uggs even though it's only 47 out and getting a new pair of boots! My old ones were pulling apart from the soles, and they only cost 19 dollars so I don't feel too bad about replacing them :).  And that was all before 11 this morning!  I also drank a lovely irish cream latte and about licked the cup it was so delicious, but since I was at an establishment instead of my house and I was with friends from work I refrained haha.  Then it was off to the post office and grocery store which stressed me out - too many people shopping on Saturdays!  So I headed home to finish baking some pumpkin snickerdoodles I had started last night.  Guys, these cookies are so, so yummy.  And now we're sitting watching football and eating cheezit duos while Spencer waits for the dough to rise on a batch of homemade cinnamon roles.  I'd call that a pretty good saturday.  Ooo and we still have thai food to look forward to tonight at Libby's bday party!!  Man I am spoiled and apparently my life most definitely revolves around food :).  I guess there are worse things life could revolve around haha.

 

I really need to switch over my drawers so that they aren't full of shorts and tank tops, but right now the couch is feeling pretty good and looking at fall outfits on pinterest is calling my name.  Oh and I also started cleaning out the attic - that might have to get finished another day too ;).  I have for the record changed some of my candles from coastal se blue to a fall cinnamon color.  That's about as far as I've gotten in saying goodbye to summer.

 

Oh and I almost forgot GO CARDS!!!! :)

 

Be Prepared To Be Jealous

Check out the new table on our front porch!! Compliments of my lovely husband :).  Who would have known he could build such amazing things?!  I think it looks like it could be out of the Restoration Hardware lookbook which is currently the "book" I'm ooing and awing over.

 

 

A little zoom in on the detail . . .

 

 

 

And look, even the benches are lovely!

 

Now all I need to do is figure out how to do a centerpiece that won't blow away and Blitzy won't eat :).

Peaceful Fall Nights

Something about the weather changing is making me okay with just staying home and resting.  Could also be that the venturing out we did do this weekend to run errands consisted of not finding what we needed and feeling like everyone on the road was in a hurry to kill someone! So back to the comforts of home. Our house smells deliciously like fall thanks to a "Leaves" candle.  The name does not do it justice.  It smells like cider and mulled wine and baking pumpkin bread all mixed together.  Lovely. Tonight I made chicken taco soup (I know, I know mom I have finally decided there is something redeeming about soup - for the record though I'm pretty sure I will never like bean soup, even if it is only on principle haha), and we sat out on our front porch on the new table and benches Spencer built from his dad's old cedar fence posts.  When it's not dark out I'll take a picture so you can see how awesome and restoration hardware like it looks :).  Then I tried a poached fig recipe (weird) while Spencer ironed and we listened to The Milk Carton Kids and now we are reading - okay Spencer is reading, I was reading till The Smartest Guys In The Room started putting me to sleep.  It's actually a really fascinating book about the fall of Enron, but I can only handle so many pages at a time that require me to really pay attention to business details!

Now for a little Colorado photo fun.  I know, I know it's almost a month late, where has the time gone?!


Here's me thankful I made it up the pass alive all by my lonesome.  I might not have been smiling if I knew the way down was an hour and a half of gravel roads and no cell service!  Good thing I trusted my instincts and it made it to Taylor Park safe and sound to meet the rest of the gang. 

My attempt at being artistic.  Our lovely host Roy had the most chill dog every, Panda.  Well most chill ever unless you tried to pull out his matted hair, then he was vicious, not that I would know :).  Roy also owns the cabin we got to stay in.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  And there was no cell service and no TV and no internet which was also beautiful.  And there was a shower which was also beautiful.  I know, I know not true roughing it, but what can I say I do like to wash my hair after a long day of hiking or four wheeling . . . more on that later!

The view after our morning hike up the hill above the cabin.

My handsome hiking loving hubby and half of his mom haha.

 

My handsome hiking loving hubby pushing down a dead tree.  Boys will be boys :).

Four wheeling!!  So this looks pretty tame right?  Wrong.  We definitely ended up going up the side of the mountain and right when we were on the edge of the tree line it started hailing!  So we huddled around under the last few trees and got soaking wet with freezing rain.  After that we still had to make it up the mountain and then back down again!  It was so wet I couldn't even see out of my visor and my pants were soaked through and I couldn't feel my hands half the ride down and we almost got run over by some crazy dirt (mud) bikers who thought I was an expert at steering my four wheeler up the side of the mountain.  The view at the top was totally worth it though.  And like I said getting to take a nice hot shower when we finally made it back was pretty awesome too :). 

Probably the coolest ring bearer I've ever known.

The cute couple whose wedding was the whole reason - make that excuse - for going to Colorado in the first place.  I mean, come on how cute are they?! :)

 

And the lovely view I had of the river Spencer and his dad fly fished on while Gena and I read.  If you're looking for an easy, gratifying read, you should get Plainsong.  It's written by a guy from Salida (where the wedding was) and it was one of the most understated and yet redeeming books I have read in a long time.

 

Spencer and I came back from the trip with a rekindled love for hiking.  We took two "easy" 3 or 4 hour hikes while we were there.  At least they were easy according to the online sites.  The first one was not easy!!  But it took us up to the continental divide and to, two really pretty lakes nestled up against the mountain on the tree line.  We had a nice little picnic of Nut Thins and apples and wished we had gotten up early so we could lay in the sun by the lake.  We also wished we had brought Blitz, she would have loved it!  So now we've decided we want to make hiking a regular thing, only problem is we live in Oklahoma, hiking is not really a state past time.  We did hit up Turkey Mountain last weekend though and we're thinking Arkansas mountains sometime soon!  Anybody know any other places to hike? Other than redbud which won't let you bring your dog - lame.

Happy fall to all.  Wow on that awful cheesy note I think I'm going to head to bed! 

The Beautiful Noise Of . . . High Pitched Screaming

It is so hot today.  I want to work in the yard.  I want to go places.  I want to enjoy the great outdoors before the fall gets crazy and it's Thanksgiving and Christmas before I know it.  But, it's 108 degrees out, and it's making me feel so worn out!  So instead I'm listening to the new Avett Brother's new CD compliments of NPR's first listen while reading about canning and preserving - oh and talking to Alisha, that made me a little less ho hum haha.

So Saturday we decided to have a little cookout, well okay not really little.  Little would be like Spencer and I and a friend, instead we had a bunch of our neighbor friends including the Brennans.  We kind of like to all act like we are still in college and now we just have really big dorm rooms across from each other and on campus jobs that pay enough for us to stock the fridge with things that didn't come from the C-store. I digress.  But for the record, living within walking distance of the people that stood in your wedding is pretty awesome.  Hint, hint all you who are not here, you should probably just move on over here ;).

So we had these lovely girls over also.  And they are so loud.  And so full of life, and it was making me remember why I love little kids.  I really do!  And I don't mind the screaming, I think it's music to my ears to think they are so full of life, so excited about things like coloring books that also have Cinderella and Ariel stickers!!  Oh and styrofoam guns.  Yep they completely took apart the game cabinet and found our "Cash and Guns" game, complete with fake guns.  Let the party begin :).  They kept running around shooting eachother, well all except lizzy who kept the gun in her mouth most of the time, so now I have one gun full of teeth marks ;).    Sorry for the poor quality of these pics, apparently four moving girls in the evening light of our house is something the iphone still can't handle.  Maybe generation 6 will get that one right haha.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay I promise next time I'll put pics of Colorado.  And tell our funny ATV story, but for now these lovely little girls with guns will have to suffice :).  Happy Labor Day.  Hope it's full of brauts and watermelon and cookies.  Okay okay cookies are random, but I've thinking about making them so they are in my head.  I think I'll get on that and actually make some!

Bucket Lists

It is beautiful in Tulsa today.  80 and breezy at lunch time.  Last week it was 115 and sauna like at lunch time.  Ironically, I'm fighting off a cold today.  Who knew, colds and sinus issues in August.  So I've been ordered by my kind husband who takes better care of me than I would myself, to not run a million errands today and to just rest.  So I ran one errand to get our co-op food and called it a comprimise :).  Blitz and I are just sitting out on the front porch enjoying the glorious day.  Now if only I had a porch swing bed like thing that I've seen on pinterest . . . hmm maybe I need to add that to the bucket list.

Okay so the other night Spencer and I were talking about bucket lists.  What do you guys think, do they need to be realistic goals? Like things you think you can actually accomplish, it would just take a whole life time to get to all of them?  Okay this is vague, I'll just tell you our lists so far and you can judge if they are unrealistic haha.

Spencer
- go scuba diving
- be a part owner or an owner of a business
- be asked to speak at a conference

Jenny
- drive an aston martin (not own one, just drive one!)
- hike northern Ireland (thanks to Evelyn!  which by the way we saw her and Scott last night and it was wonderful.  I just wish they didn't live so far away!!)
- see the Grand Canyon, okay this is actually on both of our lists, how convenient :)
- have a kid, also on both of our lists, again convenient ;)
- have a backyard we can enjoy (I know you're thinking, what in the current state it's not enjoyable?!)
- be able to access 800 million dollars of credit instantly - okay so this is where I started wondering how realistic do the bucket lists have to be.  So the CEO of our company can access that much money just by picking up the phone, how awesome would that be?!  So I'm putting it on my bucket list.  Probably not appropriate, but you never know right? ;)

Okay that's where we got to the other night.  For the record I had been thinking about it for a couple of days before I sprung it on Spencer that we should talk about our bucket lists, so I had more time to brainstorm :).  I'm sure we'll keep adding as we go.  Any new things on your bucket lists lately?

I'm off to read some more Ray Bradbury.  I just finished Illustrated Man this week, and I loved it.  Short stories may be my new favorite thing.  They don't require you remembering what you read last night while you were falling alseep ;).

A Series of Mostly Unfortunate Events

Okay first off this title is really probably misleading, I thought of it when we were driving back from OKC this weekend and at that point I felt like it had been the weekend of unfortunate events, but since then things have improved :).

First off, check out Michelle!!  And baby Sophia Jane, well at least the imprint she's leaving on the world so far.  So weird that my high school buddies are old enough to have babies, which means that somewhere along the line I became old enough to have a baby.  So odd.  Okay, okay I know people have babies when they are 14, but seriously?! Ready to have childern? When did that happen?!!  I can't wait to meet little Sophia and see what great parents Michelle and Simon will be :).


Woah, so I'm just figuring out how to shift my pictures around, I know, I know I'm so behind in technological advances. Maybe someday I'll learn the powers of the internet haha. Okay so the series of mostly, or at least partly unfortunate events.

  So this weekend we decided to take a little tirp to OKC to see Spencer's grandpa.  We had missed a family reunion a few weeks back while we were in Boston and he's just moved into a new retirement center, so we wanted to go check out his new digs.  Right after work on Friday (which meant I had to give up beers with my coworkers!! I know such a sacrifice haha) we headed out on the turnpike towards OKC.  We had dinner reservations at 7:30 at the Park Avenue Grill, a fancy pants place all the oil tycoons hang out in the old historic Skirvin hotel downtown.  We were driving along listening to standup comedy compliments of spotify (good thing Spencer knows how to use technology!) and all of sudden the highway came to a stand still.  There was no sign of any construction though.  We inched along for awhile and eventually came to a few hundred yard stretch that had been put down to one lane.  No construction, no signs, no nothing, just two guys standing by a couply hundred yards of blocked off highway.  At this point we're thinking not so nice things about the turnpike authority in our heads.   

 What the?!! Who blocks off the turnpike for no reason?!! So we go a little bit further down the road and then the entire turnpike is closed and they are forcing off the highway and redirecting us back towards Tulsa without any kind of indication of what in the world they are doing.  Enter google.  We had seen some smoke up in the distance and our GPS on the beamer had been freaking out telling us we wouldn't get into OKC till late so I decided to do some looking around on el interent.  Arsonist.  Threw a lit newspaper out his car.  In a burn ban.  When it was 115 degrees out.  Literally.  And windy.  Basically a whole bunch of the road between us and OKC was burning.  Well the trees and grass were burning and driving through smoke is not advised.  So they rerouted us way out of our way, into no internet land, so no more searching on what was up and no more spotify stand up comedy, only us and our annoyingness since we were both hungry and grumpy and uncomfortable since we had decided to switch into fancy clothes in Tulsa to avoid being late to dinner.  Yep we drove the whole way in a suit and in a gold party dress and green babbles.  You can guess who wore what haha.  At least we arrived in style :).  Finally around 8:30 we arrived at the Scirvin, where thankfully they hadn't given away our reservations, that would have really been icing on the cake.

Okay that's the end of most the unfortunate events, so yes basically our unfortunate events revolve around not getting food when we thought we were going too ;).  Once we were there it was really, really nice.  The food was amazing.  Delicious fried green tomatos.  Devine pork medallions with dried cherries and apples and tomato chutney over hashbrowns.  I know the hashbrowns sounds weird but it was so, so, so good.  Spencer's rib eye and truffle frites were pretty tasty too :).  Oh and my fruity goose martini totally hit the spot after the too many hours in the car.  At this point we were both pretty tired, so it was off to the hotel room for a couple of episodes of HGTV and then wonderful sleep.  Too bad we told Spencer's grandpa we would meet him for breakfast at 9 am.  I could have totally laid in that bed all morning.  So comfy! 

 But since we did go to OKC to see his grandpa we pulled ourselves out of bed and headed over to pick him up for breakfast.  It was really nice to get to see him.  We got a tour of the retirement center and then it was off to the club house for breakfast.  We heard fun stories about Poppa and his wife and the RV they used to take to Colorado every summer for fishing and sewing and reading.  We heard about how she used to have to get all dolled up every day while in OKC but once they were out on the lake she roughed it with the best of them.  We asked about his current house and how they picked it out (they were doing an estate sale that day so we had driven by to look at it).  We heard about the house they lived in before that - one that they cleared the land for themselves and then helped designed the house that was built on the land. We heard about the family farm and how it was getting split up and how a brother died on the farm.  About how he didn't ever really want to do farm work, so he sold his piece of the farm.  I got distracted by these girls in the olympics doing crazy flips on the trampoline!!  We asked about what books he was reading, asked about the food in the retirement center, heard about how he mostly eats junk food and his doc said he's supposed to eat healthy but then when he's leaving the doctor's office she pulls him aside and says eat whatever you want :), we drove around Chesapeake's campus and talked about which would be worse, a giant empty huge skyscraper or a bunch of office building scattered over a campus all vacant.  Hopefully neither happens.  I'm glad we got to spend the morning with Poppa.

Wow.  This is getting long.  Okay so after seeing Poppa we stopped by and saw David and his parents ripping out wallpaper.  They are awesome.  I wish we didn't live in different cities.  I would love sitting at their kitchen table more often.  Then it was off to the Upper Crust for some amazing pizza!  We went with the special: meatball pie!  Then we walked in some ridiculously hoity toity shops with 240 dollar pillows and 8000 dollar couches I was afraid to sit on, but the lady insisted!  And 350 dollar belts.  I bought one.  Just kidding :).  At this point it was so, so hot and we wer ready to go home but not without some coffee!! I mean what Saturday trip is complete without a yummy latte or americano?  So we hit up elemental down in the hipster part of town and my latte didn't disappoint.  It was beautiful and really, really yummy.  The dark chocolate hazelnut we bar we split with our drinks didn't hurt ;). Seriously this was like the trip of delicious meals and delicious drinks.

Okay enough already on the never ending post :).  Two more pics for your enjoyment.

Our lovely dinner tonight.  I wanted to work on presentation tonight for some reason.  Lovely tomatos mostly from our garden, plus grilled pineapple and honey, add to that some cheese and a loaf from St Louis Bread Co and just for fun I picked some fresh mint for our tea.  Yum Yum.  I know, I konw where's the chicken? Ha ha.

After dinner we took a quick trip to home depot to get paint samples for the sun room (pics to come soon!) and we saw this.  Oh yes a police car getting towed.  Is it bad part of me thinks this is so awesome?  Alright time for some sleep.  Remind me next time and I'll put down some ramblings on our bucket lists.  We've been working on them.  Here's a little hint:  mine may not be things that are actually attainable, but apparently I like to dream big :).

Whew! But In A Good Way

The last few weeks have been pretty busy.  So many activities, too little time.  But we've been having so much fun!  So even though I'm tired, I think it's a good - I really like my life right now - kind of tired.  Let's see if I can even remember what all we've been up to. 

Two weekends ago was Skeet and Jordan's wedding.  It was outside in July and it was so beautiful. They had a lake in the background and the breeze was blowing and they looked so cute and happy and YOUNG.  Okay I have to admit that I'm starting to feel just a little old.  Graduating seniors at TU now look like babies to me.   Here we are not looking so much like babies anymore :).



We had so much partying with all our church friends out on the deck, drinking lots of Riesling (sorry Skeet I drank more than my 1.5 glasses haha), talking all about life, about their kids and about how someday our future (hopefully) kids are going to force me to chill out some, about going back to school someday, about our crazy stages of life, about going to the next wedding in Colorado!!!  Sidenote:  we can't wait to go to Nick and Ruth's wedding in Salida!!  Bring on the non 116 degree weather and the mountains.  Another sidenote:  in case you haven't figured this out about me yet I really love vacations and traveling.  In fact when we talk about having kids someday I really think it is one of my biggest concerns - how are we still going to go on sweet vacations?!  I know, I know I need to chill out :). 



So let's see after Skeet's wedding it was partying with Amy and the moores on Sunday night, then yoga and Bible study and basketball on Monday night, then softball double header on Tuesday night,  Wednesday night I can't remember what we did, then a dinner party with three new couples we've met through church softball on Thursday(they are so cool by the way, super fun to hang out with even though we just met them!), then Lana Thai and Dark Night Rising on Fright night with the Moore's and Joni and Tim (more new friends!!) for David's bday, and then Saturday morning after sleeping in (i know go figure we were tired hahah) it was off to middle of nowhere Arkansas to see my sis and her boyfriend and all their fun loving peeps.

Arkansas was lots of fun too!  We had delicious food multiple times, lots of fun swimming and drinking beer and commiserating over how women with careers really don't have an easy go once they have kids.  Something needs to change there.  I think maybe we are at a critical mass, but the problem is someone has to the be the one, or probably multiple someones have to be the ones to push the status quo and ask for more flexible schedules and more flexible carerrs.  We are not men.  Even if the bosses like to act like we are.  Okay sorry tangent.  We also had so much fun driving around with Dan and Rach, listening to Africa with Dan's dog Rocky laying in my lap (why won't Blitz do that?!!), seeing all the beautiful back roads of Arkansas.  I see why people live here.  So much slower a pace of life.

Then it was back to Tulsa and off to the races again.  Yoga and basketball again on Monday night but no Bible study.  I needed to get groceries!! And not get home at 10:30!! As it was we still didn't eat dinner till past 8!  Last night was so much drama with my little - story for another day.  And tonight, well tonight we are hanging out with some of our favorite people in the world.  David and David and Kathryn.  You know those people that don't require you cleaning your house?  That don't mind your giant dog?  That help you grate cheese and find their own glasses and wine?  And then don't mind while you take a shower and work on blogging while they watch olympic reruns and weird you tube videos?  We love them.

One last thing.  I got yellow Tom's!!! And I LOVE THEM. Okay enough random accounts of our lives for one day, time to eat DMac's mom's cake and watch men's sand volleyball.  Is it ironic to anyone that the olympics are an excuse to sit on the couth for a month? :)