Thankful

As you can see we have had an eventful weekend. Last night we headed to Athens for Matt's friend's wedding rehearsal & rehearsal dinner (and wedding today of course). Matt was the soloist for the wedding. We had a great time last night and stayed in the Hampton Inn which was actually a really great stay. Until this morning when we tried to go across the street to the Walgreens. We went to turn left across two lanes of traffic. First lane stopped for us to get by so Matt went.. car coming very fast in the second lane. We both saw it, I screamed very loudly. The most terrifying thing ever. We are both fine and walked away without a scratch. I can't believe it. I am so thankful for our safe car that saved my life and probably Matt's as well (I was in the passenger seat). You can see the 3 airbags that deployed and saved my life. Windshield cracked, passenger windows shattered. So thankful. Thankful for my husband. That was about 11:30 this morning. We spent the next two hours getting the car towed and being picked up by Matt's friend Steven who drove us around town as needed until Matt's parents arrived around 2 to take us to the church so Matt could sing in the wedding at 3. So we are down to one car for the week.. debating on getting a rental. The car will take a few weeks to repair (IF it's not totaled) but in the mean time my sister is letting us borrow her car when we go to Augusta next weekend and bring it back with us. Thank you Erin!!!

Us at the wedding

Also thanks to Matt's parents we made it back to Atlanta in time to see a live show with Alton Brown from Good Eats. It was so awesome! A little too long for us though.. after 3 hours we finally left b/c we are so exhausted. Looks like it's time for bed now.. please learn from our mistake not to turn like that when someone lets you go!! (of course we have heard that too but who pays attention to the warnings?)

How to clean your house in 30 minutes a day

I feel like there is an article with this title in every women's magazine I read. And rightfully so since we are always searching for the magic answer to keeping the house clean. I have come up with a new way for our household. I'm on week 1 and so far so good.. but we'll see how it's going in a few weeks :) So I split my house into 5 chores.

Empty trashcans
Laundry
Family room & dust the house
Kitchen
Bathrooms and floors

Sunday through Thursday I tackle 1 chore each night, then I get to stop. So anyway that's my plan and I'll let you know how it goes. It doesn't keep the house 100% clean all the time but it keeps it clean enough and enough so that I could clean up the rest pretty quickly if someone was coming over.

In other news, there were terrible storms around here last night. The power in our guest room and office was knocked out. It didn't trip any circuits in our breaker so we are kind of at a loss for what to do. We tried some stuff with the breaker today to no avail so we are going to call an electrician in the next few days. Hopefully it will be an easy fix. The list of things we have fixed gets longer and longer...

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to run 15 miles. I have new socks and new shoes that I am really excited about. However, it's supposed to rain tomorrow morning, all morning :-/ And my left knee has a nice case of runner's knee. I'm reading up on it online as to what to do but ultimately I'm sure the best thing is to take a break from running, which isn't an option. Either way I have tomorrow off of work :)

Happy almost Friday!

Nothing too exciting to report

Hmm.. Saturday evening at 6:45. Looks like I'm not doing a whole lot! This week was pretty uneventful, but I did get my haircut which I always love. Every 4 months I get it chopped off and then let it grow until I can't stand it anymore and then chop it off again. I prefer it short like this but it's far too expensive to keep it this way. Also went and saw Bobby Lee Rodgers again.. I think it's the 11th or 12th time we have gone to see him but the last time was probably a year ago. He was amazing as always but since he didn't go on until around 11 and it was Thursday night, we had to leave before he was done. I got in bed at 1am and up again at 5:30am for work on Friday.

Last night we took it pretty easy since Saturday mornings are my long runs. 13 miles this morning! That's half the marathon!! I think I actually went 12.9 and it took me 2 hours 52 minutes. I am an incredibly slow runner (that's 13.3 min/mile) but today felt great and I really enjoyed the run. This week I added in Chastain Park in my route which I loved. Matt rides his bike along with me to keep me hydrated.. he'll go buy gatorade when we run out of water.

Then we came home and took short naps.. short because my dad came into town and hung out with us for a few hours. We just ran some errands to get some things I needed and then he took us to Gabriel's for dinner! SO yummy. Especially the mint brownie. So now I am stuffed. Oh and speaking of dessert I made peanut butter cookies last night.. definitely had 5 of those today. It's a recipe that I have made my whole life with my mom and they are yummy.

We don't really have any plans for tonight.. personally I want to fall asleep right now. Might go see a movie but then I'd probably fall asleep. Ahh exciting married life, haha. But I am perfectly content staying home most nights, I'm very much a homebody. So here's to another night of relaxing.

Blogging shortage

I think I need to be more diligent in my blogging. At least I haven't stopped but since I'm not writing as often my entries become way too long! But if you are still reading I guess that is a good sign :) Let's see.. past two weeks..

Matt has been out of school between semesters (he starts back tomorrow). He has been working on the basement and also on his applications for Kennesaw and Georgia State to start on his bachelor's degree in January. He'll be graduating with his associates degree in December!

Two Fridays ago we had our annual Gas South Family Fun Day. This year it was held at Piedmont Park (was last year too) and basically my work day consisted of Matt and I hanging out with my coworkers and their family's from 10-2. Greatest work day ever.

We had a good number of friends over here last Saturday night for a potluck dinner. I don't have any pictures but I think Scott was taking some so maybe he'll post them over here. It was great seeing everyone and lively having two babies around the house! Mary, Tammie and the Mackowski's stayed later and we played a game called Acquire which was really cool if you are in the need of a new board game ;-)

And last night was the coolest thing of all. We saw Paul McCartney live in concert in Piedmont Park!!! Definitely the best concert I have ever been to. We weren't supposed to take cameras in, so we didn't, but of course a lot of people there had them. So these aren't my pictures but below are some of what we saw. He played for 2.5 hours which included 3 encores. (I really hate encores by the way.. just keep playing the music!) The song I enjoyed the most was Live or Let Die.

We were closer than this :)

And a video of Live or Let Die. I realize it's completely poor quality but you get kind of an idea of how exciting it was. (I didn't take this video). They also had fireworks above / behind the [HUGE] stage for this song that you can kind of see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcjVnl1Kxq4 <-- I don't know how to embed the video in my blog!

Not quite as exciting as Paul McCartney, but today Matt and I went to Patagonia to get me a new winter coat! I only really like one of my coats and none of them are very warm. I realize you don't need too warm of a jacket here in the south, but if you are me then you do. They are having a huge sale so this was 50% off!! Thanks to Crystal for telling me about the sale!

This should keep me nice and toasty all winter :)

Our First Anniversary!

This weekend Matt and I have been celebrating our first anniversary. We both agree it was a perfect first year to start out our marriage. Sunday, August 2nd was our anniversary and we started it off by sleeping in! We woke up ready to go exercise, ate breakfast.. and then went back to bed, haha. We woke back up around 10:30 and got ready for the day. After dropping Molly off over at Matt's parents house, we began our day with Taco Bell for lunch. Sounds funny I know but we both love Taco Bell and never eat it so we had that on our anniversary.

After Taco Bell we headed downtown to go to the aquarium. I used to go to the aquarium all the time when it opened and it was fantastic, I would always go when it wasn't crowded. One time that it used to not be crowded was Sunday afternoons. Apparently that isn't the case anymore. It was ridiculously crowded. And we ended up spending more money than we could have. I found out too late that if you buy a combo ticket (aquarium + Titanic exhibit) online it is $31.50. If you buy the ticket at the aquarium it is $34. If you buy the aquarium ticket outside and the Titanic ticket inside, it is $35 (which is what we did). What the heck? The Titanic exhibit was great but the rest of the aquarium was really too crowded to enjoy.

Us at the aquarium
This is awful, this is one of those obligatory photos they make you take to try to get you to buy them. Now you can view them online. This is us on the Titanic! We try to skip these but sometimes they just make you.

After the aquarium we walked across the street and checked into our hotel, Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Atlanta. As I opened the door to our room I was overwhelmed with the smell of cigarette smoke - ew!! I called downstairs and we got a new room right away, thank goodness. It was a really nice room and I'm glad we stayed down there. We relaxed for a while and then got ready for our dinner out at Lola. Lola is a restaurant I found online in Buckhead that specializes in bellinis and tapas. I loved it! I really can't wait to go back! We also had a couple on their first date sitting directly next to us so it was kind of funny to listen (I couldn't help it). "What's your favorite food? Seen any good movies lately? How many siblings do you have?" hehe. One thing I really liked about the dinner was that it lasted 2 hours and usually we are in and out way too quickly. After dinner we ate the top of our wedding cake! It was actually delicious!!

Ready for dinner!

Getting ready to eat the cakeYear old cake!Yum!!
What the cake looked like last year

This morning we slept in and then went and did some shopping. We found some great deals at Atlantic Station including a super cute pair of shoes for $2.99 :) After shopping we headed over to Matt's parents house to pick up Molly. Apparently she spent the whole time looking for us and whimpered a lot. Poor girl, we were so excited to see her. Now it's back to semi-reality. I have one more day off then it's back to work on Wednesday.

$2.99 shoes :)

Oh and for our anniversary Matt got me two gifts, one was a wall clock, pictured below. Apparently that is the 'new' traditional first year anniversary gift. He also had one of my grandfather's paintings framed but it is still at the framers so I can't take a picture yet.

We also went to Amicalola Falls on Saturday:

Molly also made the trip up and down the 400+ stairs

And last but not least, one year ago..