Friday Favorites!

This is my first Friday Favorites post in lots of Fridays! It's hard for me to not try to include all the good things that have happened to us since my last post, but I'm going to try to write individual posts about the big things :-).

1) Sleeping in - I rarely stay up really late or sleep past 8, even on the weekends. Last weekend, I slept in with Josh both days. I could probably count on my 2 hands how many times that has happened since we've been married. Granted, it was because I was sick and I had to take Nyquil so I could breathe through the night. It was still nice though :-).

2) Bailey - Since Josh and I got back from vacation, we've been spending more TOGETHER time with Bailey. We had gotten into the habit of just one of us taking her on walks. We would both take her out to play, but we rarely went on walks with all 3 of us. She was so tired for the first couple of days after we got home, she was SO well behaved. We decided we wanted to keep her tired forever (seriously, it's not possible, Haha.). We both missed her so much, so we both wanted to be with her on her walks. So we've been walking her together in the mornings before work and most evenings after work (when it's not raining). We had been mostly throwing toys out back for her to get exercise, but we've stepped up on the walking since she gets exposure to more things that way. We still don't see as many people and other dogs as I would like (we usually see MAYBE 1 dog on the morning walks and just a handful of people), but it's better than none. She is behaving better, apart from chewing up her bed (this is the second bed she's ruined). I should have taken a picture of her crate, but I didn't. She's fascinated wit zippers and likes to unzip things. When she found all that fluffiness inside, it was like the biggest stuffed toy ever, so she was in heaven I'm sure.

3) Alex - Wednesday of this week, our UPS lady came in and told me we had a little fawn outside our back door. I went out to look at him and he was SO tiny. I have no idea how long the poor little thing had been there, but he was sick (I won't go into details, but it wasn't very pretty). Another co-worker and I decided not to call animal control, we didn't know what they would do with him. We found a wildlife rescue to take him to. We decided on Frisky's. We put him in a box, stuck him in the back seat of my car and drove him over. We were calling him a girl, but we still named him Bambi. When we got there we found out she was actually a he and he's about 2 weeks old. Our UPS lady was worried about him, so she stopped by again just to check on him (so sweet)! She said she had named him Alex, after the street we work on (Alexander Bell Dr). Hopefully all is well and he'll be fine.

4) Brewing Supplies - For our anniversary, I got Josh a wort chiller (it cools the wort down faster, so there's a smaller chance of contamination). We also decided to get a second brew kettle. Josh wanted to get a larger one. I consulted friend who is also a homebrewer (10+ years, so I always go to him with our questions) and he pointed me in the right direction. It's more than we were planning on spending, but we won't be replacing it any time soon. He's still using his original one and he said it looks like new. I love that we can drain from the bottom of this rather than pouring it from the top. We'll be brewing the full 5 gallons in this kettle and it will be nice to not have to lift and pour 5 gallons! We can also add a thermometer later, which we will definitely do. We'll be brewing tomorrow and our new kettle won't be here yet. We may use it some time next week though! We have our next 3 batches planned out, so there will be plenty of opportunities to use it. We can brew 2 batches at the same time now too. I'm pretty excited about that since brewing a batch takes several hours.

5) Anniversary Dinner - Last Friday, we went out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We decided to make dinner together at home on our real anniversary (more about that later). Our appetizer was just OK, it had prosciutto, duck (I've had duck before and I like it, I didn't like this, it was kind of like duck bacon...no, not even bacon, because bacon is delicous...I don't know how to described it, but it was smoked and it had mroe fat than meat. I wasn't a fan.) and wild boar. I was excited about the wild boar, but when it came out it was sausage. And it just tasted like sausage. I think Josh was excited about all the meats. Haha. I wanted the crab and artichoke dip, but Josh said he wasn't feeling it. The pita bread that came with the meat was delicious though. Haha. I got a burger (with some DELICIOUS mac n cheese instead of fries) and it was SO good. Josh got a crabcake burger and it was also very good. We both got some local beers that we enjoyed. They had apple pie eggrolls on the menu for dessert and that sounded amazing to me. I was full, but I ordered it anyway. I wasn't thrilled about it. The eggrolls were small and I could barely even taste the apples, and the ice cream they came with was SO salty. Our entrees made up for the not so amazing appetizer and dessert, so we still really enjoyed our meal. It was so nice to just relax and unwind from the week together.

6) Lazy/Productive Weekend - Last weekend we got caught up on things around the house we had put off during our first week after vacation. Neither of us was feeling well, so we weren't really up for cutting grass and washing laundry. We got a lot done, both on the house and our personal goals. We had plans to go out to eat dinner Saturday, but we had just gone out for dinner on Friday and we just didn't feel like it. We decided to just throw a pizza in the oven and watch movies until way past our bed time. It was pretty awesome :-).