Friday Favorites!!!

Alright, I'm going to try to get back on track with this blog thing. This is sort of a Friday Favorites post I suppose, because today is my Friday!!!

Meeting Baby Jaden - Of course meeting our nephew and being able to spend the weekend with him was a favorite! I really enjoyed spending time with the family while we were home and I'm so glad we were able to go down to help out for a few days. I can't wait to see Jaden and the rest of the family again for Thanksgiving!

Keeping Baby Zach - I got to keep Zach for the day a week or so ago. It was an adventure for sure! I enjoyed keeping him. He's such a happy little boy. Bailey liked watching him and she has discovered that she likes the taste of spitup (GROSS! I know!). I loved having him for the day and I liked watching Josh interact with him too. It's nice practice, but I am mostly glad it was just temporary. I want to enjoy my full nights of sleep while I still can ;-).

Football Season - We have some major improvements to make, but I'm still hopeful for a good season. We'll be making our way down to Raleigh to see our Wolfpack take on Clemson. Hopefully it's a good one! Either way, I know we'll have a great time and I'm so glad football season is back!

Ferguson's - I don't remember if I posted about Ferguson's when they had their fire last year, but it's a restaurant back home that Josh and I LOVE. The owners are good friends and it's a small town staple that has definitely been missed. Well, after being closed for over a year after the fire, they have finally re-opened! Josh and I were able to stop by for an early lunch while we were in town last week. It was SO nice to be able to catch up and have a delicious Fergie burger!

Cherrywood Smoked Bacon - This may seem silly, but I LOVE bacon and we have found a new favorite. I grabbed this stuff last week and it is AMAZING! We've been eating it for breakfast ever since. I don't know if I can ever go back to regular bacon again. 

The Weather - It has been AMAZING! Cool mornings, warm afternoons, low humidity. It's beginning to feel a lot like Fall!!!

Brewing - We tried our first batch of all grain beer. We named it Fantasy Draught, because it was meant to be consumed at a fantasy draft party. The party fell through, so we got to keep the beer for ourselves! It's a pineapple wheat. Really nice flavor, but a bit lighter than we were hoping for, we're working toward getting better grain efficiency, so our beers should improve in that area over the next couple batches. The pineapple isn't really evident. You pick up the bitter from the pineapple, but not the sweetness. The sugars all got fermented out. The next time we do this, we'll chill the beer once we add the pineapple juice (or whatever sweet thing we're adding) so some of those yummy sugars stick around. In the end, it's not exactly what we had in mind, but still pretty dang good. :-)

We converted our pumpkin recipe to all grain and tried it for the first time. It's in the secondary right now, so we're not sure exactly how it will taste. It's close, but not the same. We will get a second go at it this weekend, and we know we need to adjust the mash temperature a little bit. I'm looking forward to seeing how both of these turn out!

Running - I REALLY slacked on training after we visited Raleigh, and I really thought it was going to do me in. Josh and I went to the park to train this weekend since they have some hills to run on. We went in planning to run 5 miles, but we stuck it out and ran the whole 6.2!!! I was so excited and I feel much better knowing I can finish the race! I'm not going to finish it in under an hour, which was my original goal, but I'll shoot for that next year.

I also got new running shoes. SO comfy! I had a Groupon for a local running store. These were a treat to myself for finishing my first 5K.



I'm REALLY going to try to post more often. Hopefully with more pictures that are actually mine. Haha.