Family Game Night

Family game night with the Bedell's started about a year ago.  We realized it was crazy that we all lived within two hours of each other and still only got together for holidays.  Monthly family game night was born.  We rotate houses each month and the game is up to the host house to come up with.  Some past games:
Cranium, charades, poker, apples to apples, halloween mummy wrap.

This month... Aunt Nancy and Mark got serious.  Game night is now themed.  The bar has been raised just a little bit higher....

We got to their house and the sign on the front door reads:

Welcome to M & N Diner

Early Bird Specials 5pm-7pm

The evenign was diner themed.  Dinner was meatloaf, boiled potatoes, peas.  We even ate off "chinette" plates (heavy duty paper plates).  The game for the night....

BINGO!  Not just any bingo, Aunt Nancy and Mark created body part bingo boards online.  Best of 7 games.  Prizes for top 4 players.  I managed to win one game  but was not in the top 4.  Tom won a candle for us to take home though!

I also decided that drinking wine from a chamapgne flue makes everything seem fancier!



Dinner for One

When Tom's at work it seems silly to cook for one.  I don't really enjoy spending time in the kitchen so I am always trying to think of quick and easy dinner meals. 

Buffalo chicken dip is my favorite go to.  Cream cheese, chicken, hot sauce, ranch dressing,.  Yummm.  It has protein and it takes less then 10 minutes to make.... perfect.

That was last Wednesday.  On Thursday I went back to my elementary school days for this favorite meal....

Pizza bagels!!!!!

yummmmmm.

Ellicot City

After not seeing Ashley in waaaay too long we finally met up in Ellicot City for a lunch date!  The day started at Starbucks (which makes perfect sense if you know either of us).  Then we explored downtown Ellicot City and had lunch :)  Happy to ahve found a fun halfway point for us to meet in the future!

Sewing

And I thought I would never need to know how to sew.... I did a pretty good job too.  The shirt and button have successfully survived going through the wash once already!

Christmas Condensed

It took me until Martin Luther King Day to get tired of looking at Christmas decorations... I had a 7 page paper to write, and a friend I was meeting for lunch but I still got a a decorations rampage at 7:30 in the morning.  I gathered all the decorations and put them on the dining room table.  Then I realized how dusty my house was and had to spend some time cleaning.  FINALLY I got around to the paper that needed to be written... after all that... still made it to lunch on time!

I'm a little embarassed to say that the decorations stayed like this for another week until I finally boxed them up and brought them to the basement....

Exercise mania!

Ugh... on my drive home I was talking to Erin and was trying to think of reasons not to work out. But it was nice out. And there was almost no traffic. I got home around 5. After being lazy and cuddling on the couch we finally got up to take the dogs for a walk.

When we got back we did a work out for time... 5 rounds of the following:

5 pull ups (with a chair for me)
10 push ups (I did all 5 rounds with real push ups not girl ones)
30 crunches
40 bicycles
20 squats

I finished all 5 rounds in 11 minutes! (About 2 minutes before Tom!- although he was doing 10 pull ups and 20 push ups)

Hooray! He'll be at work tomorrow... hopefully I can motivate myself to work out on my own....

But I DON'T WANT TO!

So Tuesday I was on my way home from work... Tom was on night shift.  I had already started thinking of reasons why I could not work out before I even got back to Baltimore.  I should walk the dogs instead, its too cold, its too dark.... I DON'T WANT TO.  In reality, there was no reason not to work out.  Traffic was light and I was going to be at home around 5:15pm.  I considered going for a run but it was already dark and I didn't really want to run alone.

By the time I got home, I had convinced myself that I had to work out (thank goodness).  i did level 2 of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred.

For those of you, like me, who have this DVD but have never made it past level 1.... Level 2 is so much harder!  I really enjoyed the workout.  And its only 20 minutes so it was pretty easy to talk myself into doing it. 

After a quick shower, I made chicken quesadilla's for dinner.  I measured out the salsa and chips I had with it so that I didn't go overboard.  Not a terribly healthy meal, but quick and easy!

Snow!

Not the sight you want when leaving a staff meeting on a Monday and are facing an hour drive home.  Thank goodness 95 North wasn't that bad!

Oh man...

Oh NO!  

Not what you want to see when you get in the car to go to work and you're battling a hangover.  Stupid tires.  Looks like I will be buying my very own mini air compressor (see previous post about the cool new gadget).

Out on the town

So I have a wonderful husband.  My favorite thing to do is sit at home with him.  When I do go out, its usually with him.  If I do go out for a girls night, I usually try to schedule it on a night when he works.  I figure, he's already gone two nights a week for work, so when he is home... I want to be home with him.

That being said... last night a friend of mine wanted some company to a friend's going away party.  I asked Tom if he minded and he was glad to get rid of me for the evening (football was on).  So last night I went out for the first time in a long time solo.  Christine picked me up at 9:30 (usually I am in bed by then...).  We headed to the going away party and then to stalking horse in Fed Hill.  It was a great night!  (Although this morning was a little rough....).

I work out so that I can eat...

On Friday we actually made it out for a run.  About 3 miles (a little break for a block or two of walking- Tom's request... not mine).  It felt great.  Plus it was about 50 degrees out so we didn't have to be all bundled up.  After the run, I did crunches while Tom called in our Chinese food order.  Yummmm.  I think the only reason I work out is so that I don't have to feel bad about consuming foods that might not be the best for me (but taste delicious).

Same thing happened on Saturday.... we headed to the gym at 7:30 am (after taking Tom's car to get his emissions tested... it passed... THANK GOODNESS!).  We ran for a little bit, about two miles.  Today's run was much faster.  Tom and I were competing for speed.  I topped out at 8 MPH for a half mile... Tom made it up to 8.5 MPH.  After the run we went to starbucks for breakfast.  Then I worked at the front desk from 9-1pm and Tom took a group fitness class at 10am.

At 1pm Hannah, Tom and I all headed to Mick O'Sheas for BRUNCH (which is in my opinion... the best meal ever).  I went with the Powerhouse Turkey sandwich and mimosas!

Hannah went with the mimosas as well!

Another friend showed up and the four of us had a blast.  I was the driver so I had a little less fun then the others... but a great way to spend the afternoon.  After checking out all their specials Hannah and I have plans to go back on Wednesday for 20 pizza and pitcher of beer.  

Running... or rather walking.

Well..... we didn't quiet make it on a run today. The dogs were bonkers when I got home from work so we opted for a 3 mile walk with the dogs instead of a run. MUST. RUN. TOMORROW.

Cool new gadget

My front drivers side tire has the unfortunate habit of being low every so often.  Usually in the winter.  Winter is not exactly the season when I want to be searching for an air machine in our neighborhood at 6 am on my way to school.

This morning when I got in the car (after very little sleep... see the previous blog post) my low tire pressure light was on.  If I was a normal person and worked somewhat close to home this wouldn't be a huge deal... but my commute is about an hour each way.  I checked my purse and only found two quarters.  That meant driving out of my way to get to the Hess gas station with free air.  When I got there the machine was broken.  Of course.  I drove all the way to work with the light on.

I was hitting up one of my teammates for quarters at the end of the day.  After giving me a dollar she tells me she has a portable air compressor thing in her car that plugs into the cars cigarette lighter and asked if I want to use it.  Ummm.... YES!

I need to invest in one of these as soon as possible!  

Nothing good happens after 1 am....

I haven't spent much time reading anything other than textbooks since starting a graduate program last year.  Part of this is because I love to read and can get a little obsessed when I am reading a good book.  In a Yankee swap gift exchange over Christmas break, I got a Barnes and noble gift card. I used it to buy The Help.

I watched the movie while we were in NY and LOVED the movie.  I will probably end up buying it and watching it 10 more times.  So going into reading the book my expectations were high.  I have to say, after the first few chapters I was still thinking that the movie might be better.  Then it got good.  I mean real good.

Last night Tom was on night shift and I spent my evening on the couch with a glass of wine and a delicious chocolate covered pretzel and my book.

 (side note: I love that Google chrome is automatically orienting my pictures the correct way as I upload them instead of keeping them how the original file is... thank you Google!)

Around 10 pm I convinced myself to go up to bed.  But I kept reading. 

At about 10:30 I talked to Tom and decided to finish my chapter before bed.

At 11:30  pm I actually put the book down and turned the lamp off.

At 11:40 pm, I was still awake and figured I might as well keep reading.

Around 12:40 am I had gotten through the next Miss Skeeter section (her parts are my favorite... I'm loving the romance between her and Stuart) and decided enough was enough.  I closed the book with only a few chapters to go and decided I had to sleep.

At 1 am I was still awake but did not start reading again.  Sometime after that I fell asleep.

At 5 am my alarm went off for my first day back to school in over a week.... what was I thinking?

Getting my butt in gear

After registering for a bunch of mud runs a month or two ago Tom and I decided to hit the cold weather running pretty hard.... at least that's what we decided.  In reality I think we have been running  a grand total of three times since then... but hey its better than nothing.

One of the mud runs, the Spartan Race, posts a workout of the day and sends you an email at 10 pm each evening with the following days workout.  Most of the time I laugh as I read the ridiculously hard workout while I lay in bed.  However, Friday nights email (with Saturday's workout) actually sounded doable so I hit the gym Saturday morning to give it a try:

12 burpees
400 meter run
11 burpees
400 meter urn
10 burpees
400 meter run

well you get the idea... this nonsense kept up until you got down to 0 burpees.

I did it!  And this spurred me to get back on the workout bandwagon.  Sadly I was feeling lazy and unmotivated on Sunday and Monday... but this evening I was feeling like I needed to do something.  Here is today's Work out of the day.  I modified it to look like this (because lets face it... a 5 minute plank was not happening... and if it was... it certainly was not happening 3 times):

10 push ups
2 min plank
50 crunches

10 push ups
2 min plank
50 bicycles

10 push ups
2 min plank
50 leg lifts

All of this was accomplished while watching one episode of How I Met Your Mother on netflix.  Pretty successful evening.  Tomorrow I'm headed to my brothers house to baby sitt my niece, but I hope to go for a 3-4mile run on Thursday.  We'll see....

Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was on the worst possible day if you are a teacher... Sunday. That means we had to work allllll week leading up to Christmas. I'm talking Monday-Friday. Yuck. Luckily my team does a "winter rotation" on the day before break... so our classes rotate through other classrooms to do winter themed activities.

The break was much needed however. We left our house on Saturday, Christmas Eve, at 4 pm (after Tom got out of work a little late) and drove the 2 hours ish to go see my family. Christmas with the Bedell's was a blast (from what I remember at least..... ). On Christmas morning we woke up and had a delicious breakfast of cinnamon buns, then headed off to NY. I highly reccomend traveling on Christmas Day. Traffic was a breeze. We got to NY and hung out with the family for the rest of the day. The rest of the time in NY was relaxing. We didn't get too see all of our friends :( but we did get to spend a lot of time hanging out with Tom's parents and siblings :)

We left NY on Thursday and headed back to my parents... Oh yeah, Bentley had been staying with them while we were in NY because we recently discovered that he is not entirely kid friendly... and if you know Tom's family, being non kid friendly is not an option! (So far there are 16 grand kids).

Upon our arrival at my parents we had a gingerbread house making contest with my brothers, sister in law, and neice and nephew.

Yes thats right... our house has a yard with pixie stick now and a cobblestone front walk.  We even have a mailbox and a snowman.

My husband ingeniously made a carrot nose for the snowman out of an orange jelly bean!

Me, Tom and John

And then one without John.... 

Grandpa reading Frosty the Snowman to Tick Tac

Tom being gross.

The evening was ended with a game of charades (which my team won... go Alyssa, John and Dad!)

We got back to Baltimore on Friday and enjoyed a nice long nap that afternoon.  Saturday Tom and I were both back to work.