Weekend Away

I mentioned in my Friday Favorites post that we were taking Friday off. I'm SO glad we did. We got some long overdue time away. We slept in on Friday just because we could. We did have to get up by 7 to make sure Bailey got breakfast in time (she has to eat at least 1 1/2 hours before daycamp). We took our time getting ready  and making sure we had everything we needed. I had packed most of our stuff Thursday before we got home, so we didn't have much to do. We dropped Bailey off around 9 and went to breakfast. We decided to go to Eggspectations a few minutes down the road. We've been wanting to try this place for a while, but we just haven't for some reason. I guess breakfast is a meal we usually have at home. They serve their full menu all day. Josh actually got a breakfast meal, which is not typical of him, especially if we find a place that will serve a burger for breakfast! 

I got the "Brioche Beauty", a grilled cinnamon roll with fresh fruit and yogurt. With a mimosa of course. Delicious!

 Josh got the "Eggwhat?", corned beef hash with potatoes, eggs and fresh fruit. Also delicious.

Both of our breakfasts were absolutely delicious! I used to always get something sweet for breakfast, now I'm always torn with something sweet and savory. Luckily, I have an amazing hubby who doesn't mind sharing. All of our food was great, but those potatoes were SO good! I love potatoes but I've been trying to cut down on carbs, so before this little trip, I hadn't had any in a month! I made up for it though :-).

After breakfast, we headed to Happy on Hooves in Hampstead, MD. I love driving to the more rural parts of MD. It's just so peaceful and beautiful! It reminds me of home. I was SO excited about doing this. I had horses growing up, but I haven't ridden at all in at least 8ish years or so. We got there and we met Mandy, the owner. She is super nice. She's the only person who runs the farm and she said she had sold 1400 Living Social vouchers for the deal we had! That's crazy. Anyway, we got there and met our horses. Both our horses are retired show horses. I don't have any pictures of just my horse and I since I had the camera. I didn't think about having Josh take pictures on a phone until just now. Oh well, it's OK.

 Josh and Marco. He's a big boy! He's a 12 year old Oldenburg.

 That's Mandy on Kat, and Josh and Marco. The dog is Daisy. She decided to come along with us. She's a sweetie.

I was riding Sadie. She would fall behind a little while we were going downhill and run to catch up when we were going uphill. I kind of let her go at her own pace.

 Daisy catching up after she stopped to do some sniffing.

 So pretty, I bet this ride is really gorgeous during the Fall.

 I could live here, but I think Josh would get bored. He said we would have to have a farm and lots of kids to keep us busy.

 Josh on Marco and me on Sadie. She's such a sweet girl! She's a 10 year old Quarter Horse. If you look really close, you can see another horse in the background, that's Kat's baby. He's only 2, so he's not ready to ride just yet. 

 This is Mandy's pet goat. She said she's just like a dog. I had a pet goat growing up too, so this brought back some memories for me. :-)

We had such a great time at Happy on Hooves! I'm sure we'll go back at some point. We want to take my dad when he comes to visit again. I know he would love to ride again.

After we left Hampstead, it was time to go to our next destination. I didn't know where we were going, but I kept guessing along the way. My only clues were that we were going to another state and we had about a 3 hour drive. We were planning to watch the second half of our game against UVA. We never found a good stopping point. We finally decided we would just go to a sports bar and watch the end once we got to our destination. We were driving South at first, so I thought we were maybe going to VA. Then, we started going North. My next guess was New York. I was really excited. I've wanted to go back to New York since we went a couple years ago. However, I knew Josh hadn't planned anything past our hotel room, so I wasn't sure how New York would turn out. There's just SO much to do. If you're only going for 1 night, you definitely need a bit of a gameplan or you'll be so overwhelmed when you arrive, you won't know what to do. 

 Going over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I was pretty sure we were going to New York at this point. 

 I was wrong! I started to think Atlantic City was a possibility when we were only about 15 minutes from our ETA and I started seeing signs for Atlantic City. Josh wouldn't tell me though. Parking isn't very abundant here, so we decided to check into our hotel and go to the bar there to watch the rest of the game. We were staying at The Chelsea. Josh explained his hotel selection strategy to me as we were finding our hotel. He pointed out all the hotels he considered then told me why he didn't pick them. He also considered Tropicana, Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza. I don't remember is reasoning for not picking the Trump hotels, but he didn't pick Tropicana because they didn't have any rooms available with a king bed. Silly hubby, I don't need a king bed, I'm going to sleep on the same half as you anyway. Haha. I did get a couple pictures in our room, but I wish I would have gotten more. I LOVED how it was decorated. 

 Super comfy bed!

Our view. We actually never made it out to the ocean though.

Anyway, we found our hotel and checked in. As soon as we got our stuff in the room, we went down to the bar to watch the end of our game. It was happy hour anyway, so it was perfect timing anyway. Well, we thought. Apparently this was a fancier bar and there were no TVs. It looked really nice, but we didn't stick around. We were determined to catch the end of out game. We ran back to our room and crossed our fingers that our TV had the right channel. After bypassing all the silly hotel pay-per-view stuff, we finally found our game in time to watch maybe the last minute. We won! 

We were starving, so we started looking for places to look. It was Restaurant Week and we were going to have a nice dinner later that night. We picked a place and made reservations. Once that was settled, we went out to find something to hold us over. We went to Tropicana since it was closest. There are lots of shops and restaurants inside this hotel. We actually didn't know it was part of the hotel when we went in. When you walk it, it's decorated like you're outside. I only got one picture, and it's really too dark to make anything out, but here it is.

After considering a sports bar and a Cuban place, we decided to eat at Ri Ra's Irish Pub. While I was looking at the menu, I decided I didn't want a fancy dinner later, I wanted to have dinner NOW. Haha. I mentioned it to Josh and he said that was fine and we would cancel our reservations for later. We were both starving so we got an appetizer of potato cakes. AMAZING! Josh ordered fish and chips and I got pork chops with homemade apple sauce and colcannon cakes. I didn't know it, but colcannon cakes are pretty much potato cakes with cabbage in them. I didn't even know there was cabbage until I just looked it up. I found a recipe and I think I'll try to make it this week. You couldn't taste it at all, all the food was so good!

After dinner, we walked around Tropicana a little bit more. It was like walking through a couple blocks outside. We finally found the casino and walked around it a little bit. We brought nice clothes to dress up in. Luckily we walked around before going back to our room to change, because people were in normal street clothes for the most part. We did go back to change, but we stayed in normal clothes. After that we went to Trump Plaza. We were both pretty disappointed with this place. We expected it to be really nice, but it just looked so dated compared to our hotel and Tropicana. We didn't stay long and went to Caesar's. 

 Is this the real Caesar's palace? 

We stayed at Caesar's for quite a while. This is where we finally gambled a little bit. Josh had planned on playing a little bit of poker. Before we even checked into our hotel room, we decided on an amount we could spend on gambling and agreed to not go over that amount. That way, we didn't have to worry about losing a lot of money then losing even more to get it back. Josh had originally planned on playing some poker but decided against it once he realized how expensive it would be. I thought it was $10 per game, which would have been completely fine. It was actually a minimum $10 bet. Josh explained how poker and betting worked and said that he could easily lose $200 in a hand, which may only last a few minutes. We decided to forgo that experience this time. Haha. We walked around a bit more and decided to play some video poker. Josh taught me how to play and we both had a lot of fun. 

We each played $5. I lost all of mine, but Josh won enough to make up for both of us!

After he won this, we decided to try a different casino. We went back to Tropicana and each played $5 again. 

Again, I lost all of mine, but Josh won enough to make up for both of us. We played a few more times and we ended up coming out $10 positive! Not too bad!

Tropicana was a bit nicer, it felt a little more like a club. We actually liked Caesar's a little better from the gambling standpoint. They were much more generous with their drinks.

We ended up gambling until around 1am and we were hungry. We went back into the area with all the restaurants. Well, at 1 am, all the restaurants are night clubs. We ended up going to a market where we could make our own plates, it was kind of like a buffet. We also bought some water. We ended up paying $5 for a liter and a half of water! Crazy! It didn't have a price on it or we wouldn't have bought it. We went back to our room and crashed. We slept in the next morning and got up just in time to shower and get breakfast before we had to check out.

We stopped at Applebee's to watch the majority of our game against UNC. We had a pretty good time. We were obviously disappointed, but we played a good game. We got back on the road to go pick up our Bailey!

By the way, Bailey was on vacation too. She got to stay at Camp Bow Wow while we were away. She has never boarded before and she's only stayed the night away from us once with a friend and another dog. We wanted to board her for a short time before we put her in for a week. I'm glad we did. They have webcams so we can watch her play while we're away. We were only able to check in on her once since we were so busy, but I really like that we can. She was really happy to see us Saturday evening and she was SO tired and calm. I love when we take her there!

We had an absolutely amazing weekend! I'm really glad we took a 3 day weekend for this trip. We were really tired when we got back, so it's great we've had Sunday to relax and recover from traveling. 

Friday Favorites!

1) Surprise gift - I got a package in the mail from my mom. It's nowhere near my birthday so I was a bit surprised. She sent me this necklace just because. My mom is a Carolina fan (I know, we all have our faults), so it's a big deal when she gets State stuff for me :-). Thanks Mama!

2) Orchid - Josh had to work again last weekend. When he came home from work, he had this mini Orchid plant for me. I LOVE Orchids, so I'm really excited about it! 

3) Passport - My new passport came it! My face looks really fat in the picture, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Haha. I didn't think I would get my old passport back, but I did a few days later! I was so excited because now I still have the stamps from my trip to Australia and our honeymoon!

4) Short Week - Since Josh has been working a ton of hours and we haven't had the chance to spend much time together lately, we decided to take today off together. Yes, I have the day off and I was still up at 6:30. I just couldn't sleep in. We're going horseback riding today then we're watching our basketball game at a sports bar. GO PACK! THEN...I have ANOTHER surprise waiting for me. We're going somewhere...and I have no idea where it is.

5) Wolfpack Win - This is always a good thing. The Pack won their first round game in the ACC tourney! Unfortunately, the game was at 2, but luckily I was able to keep up with the first half at work and make it home for the majority of the 2nd half. Today, we should be able to watch all of it! Yay.


6) 11 Years - Today is our 11 year dating anniversary! It has been a wonderful 11 years and the time has just flown by! It almost makes me feel old when I think back to when we first started dating. It doesn't seem like 11 years ago! Haha. I am so fortunate to have found the perfect guy at such a young age. We have grown together so much over the years and I know we'll continue to do so. Love you hubs!

This is us when I was in 9th grade...or maybe 10th?

A Little Football Season Prep

I wanted to wait until our season opener to post this, but since I hope to be AT the season opener and I'm just not that patient...  

This is Bailey's latest trick. Touchdown! 

She threw her hands up like this one day when she was really excited and wanted a toy. Josh had the idea of turning it into a trick. We played around with a few ideas and finally decided on touchdown! I'm SO glad we did. 

One morning I decided to give it a shot. I started off by getting her to high five both hands at once. This took a few tries. From there, we moved farther away from her then transitioned our hands from the high five position to the touchdown position. It only took a few days to get it right consistently! The clicker really comes in handy for tricks like this. The only thing about this trick is that you have to get her excited or she won't put her hands up that far. That's why I sound so animated. She does this trick better for me since high pitched voices get her really excited. 

Happy Birthday Bailey!

This post is a week late, and it's going to be picture heavy, but Bailey is already 1! Her Birthday was last Sunday.

She's definitely come a long way since the first time we met! She went from being a skittish little puppy to an outgoing human lover! She loves everyone and other dogs. 

We've had some great times with Bailey during her first year!

I wish I could make her this little again...just for 1 day.

 Her first trip to the park.

 She still does this :-)

 I love her silly faces!

 Bailey's first trip to visit the family.


 Getting her first NC State collar

Moving into our new house.


She had her first visitor in our new house.

 She became a STAR puppy

  

She visited NC State for the first time.

 She went swimming for her first time. This was not a favorite for her.


We had our first Christmas together.


She got some new kicks.

 She got to play in the snow!

Baby kisses!

 She met her little sister, Kenya (from a different litter).


We made the puppies wear Birthday hats so we could get a picture and act like they got to celebrate their Birthdays together.

Since Bailey came to live with us, she's learned so much. She's a smart little pup. She can be a bit stubborn and she doesn't care for some of the tricks, but if you have the right kind of treat, she'll happily do any of them. 

Tricks she's learned:
Sit
Stay
Down
 Off
High five
 Say Hi (wave)
 Shake
 Roll Over
Play dead
Say your prayers

Things we're still working on:
Walking - She does well for the most part, and she doesn't pull anymore unless she's really got to pee or she sees something (or someone) she wants. I'd hoped not to have to use her pinch anymore at this point, but we still do. She's still doing just OK with heel. When we walk her we either let her roam where she wants or we have her heel. We want her to know how to do both so if we're in a crowd or around a stressful situation (sirens, etc.), she'll know how to stay right beside us. She recognizes that there's a difference and that she's not supposed to stop and sniff things when she's in this position, but she will still go slightly ahead of us. Usually if we just tell her to wait she'll come back to our side, but sometimes we have to give her a little tug. From the beginning, we've been teaching her to sit automatically if we stop walking when she's heeling. She's pretty good at that, but she usually hesitates for a few seconds. We stop at intersections or when we cross a road and make sure she sits then too. We do this in hopes that she will stop before she crosses a road if she ever gets away from us. I know it's a long shot, but I think it's worth the extra effort just in case. We do the same thing before leaving our yard.

Separation Anxiety - It's gotten a lot better, but it's still there. I'm looking forward to not having to crate her anymore, but I'm afraid we have a bit before we're able to leave her in the house again.

Barking - She's become a very good watch dog...maybe too good. One of the crappy things about the proximity of townhomes is that she can hear the noises like garage doors, car doors, etc. from other homes so well. I don't think she's learned to distinguish the difference between noises at our house and other houses yet. She also likes to bark at dogs, cats and people when they're outside. If she sees other dogs out back, she will bark then ring her bells to ask to go out. We know she just wants to go out and play, but it's annoying and the other owners just want to let their dogs go to the bathroom and go back in. Another biggie is the doorbell. She barks like no other when the doorbell rings. The same goes for when the doorbell rings on TV.

I know we just have to be persistent and we'll get these issues taken care of. On a more positive note...

Here are some of Bailey's favorites...

Dog(s): Carter and Abby. She LOVES to play rough with Carter and chasing (and running from) Abby

Trick: Say Hi. This is her go to if she wants something.

Weather: SNOW, for sure. She loves the stuff. 

Toys: Anything that is stuffed or makes noise and bully sticks.


 I let her go crazy with a stuffed elephant last weekend. I decided I didn't want to sew this one up again, so I just gave it to her with a hole in it and let her have fun. My living room AND the State room looked like this when she was finished.

Show: Dogs 101

Hobbies: People watching, sun bathing by the windows, de-stuffing stuffies, annoying mom while she tries to work out, getting dirty

So, enough of the year review.
I wanted to do something special for Bailey for her Birthday, so I made her some treats. I gave her one Saturday night to make sure she liked them. She liked them, but they didn't like her. She had HORRIBLE gas, so I decided we would have to find a replacement cake.

The morning of her Birthday, we took her to the dog park. This was the first time we had been in months. She always gets super anxious and whines when we get close. She just gets so excited and she doesn't quite know how to contain her energy. Used to, when we first got to the park, she would be a little nervous about all the dogs and she would just hang around all the humans for a few minutes, then she would finally warm up and play with the other dogs. I can definitely see an improvement since she's been going to Camp Bow Wow. She started playing with the other dogs right away. I think she chased just about every dog there at some point.

Once we left the dog park, we needed to pick up a few groceries. Josh went to Costco while I took Bailey to the pet store next door. I saw these really cute cookies and decided I could get one of those as a replacement treat. Isn't it cute?

I picked out a toy for her so I could wrap it and give it to her. It's a Kong stick. She used to try to bring sticks inside and we wouldn't let her because we knew she would make a mess with them. She LOVES the stick.

Opening her stick.

Waiting for Mom to take a picture so she can have the cookie and stick.

I'm looking forward to another year of puppyhood with our little one. I know we have at least another year to go before she's a mature adult dog :-). 

Mushroom Risotto

Risotto is a bit more labor intensive than your typical rice, but it's worth the extra work. Josh and I made this together, so it wasn't bad at all :-)

Ingredients

• 6 cups chicken broth, divided
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 1 pound portobello mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 pound white mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 2 shallots, diced
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped chives
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1) Warm broth over low heat in a saucepan

2) Warm 2T olive oil over medium-high heat. Cook mushrooms until soft, about 3 minutes. Remove the mushrooms and their liquid.

 3) Add 1T olive oil to skillet and add shallots. Cook 1 minute and add rice, stirring to coat with oil for about 2 minutes. When the rice is a pale golden color, stir in the wine. 

 Stir constantly until wine is fully absorbed. Add 1/2 cup broth and stir until absorbed. Continue adding 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly until absorbed and rice is al dente. This should take around 20 minutes. (I didn't have to use all the broth. I probably had a little less than 1/4 cup left over).

4) Remove from heat. Stir in the mushrooms with their liquid, butter, chives and parmesan. Season with salt and pepper. Enjoy! 

The finished product, delicious! We had this with our Valentine's Day dinner (yes, I know I'm behind). That's why it kind of looks like a heart. 

Banana Nut Smoothie

I love smoothies. It's probably my favorite way to eat fruit. While they're delicious, they're usually not very filling, or at least not filling enough to be a meal. This one has oatmeal in it and it's actually very filling. I first saw this recipe on Pinterest. It was pretty good the first time. I made it a second time with some additional changes and it was even better!

You can see the original recipe at the link above. Here's what I did:

- 2 bananas

- 2 cups ice

- 1/3 cup plain yogurt

- 1/2 cup cooked oatmeal

- 1/3 cup walnuts

This was really good, but it was missing something and it had too much ice. The second time I made it, I used vanilla yogurt and I cut the ice in half. I also threw in a handfull of spinach (trust me, you don't taste it over the bananas). It's SO good! This is something I could actually have for breakfast. If I have it after I work out, I add a little bit of protein powder.

Friday Favorites!

1) Garage - Josh had to work again last Saturday. I wanted to do something for him since he has been working so hard. I decided I would clean out the garage. We haven't been able to park the car in it or even use it as a workspace since we've moved in because it's been used as storage. We still can't park the car in there, but we definitely have workspace now! 

2) Goodwill finds - Maybe you know this already, maybe not. Target donates clearance items that they haven't been able to get rid of to Goodwill. You can find lots of seasonal items and all sorts of things from Target, still in boxes. I stopped by one day this week because I was killing time before I had to pick Josh up from work. I like to stop in every once in a while just to see what I can find. Well, I got an immersion blender. I've been thinking about getting one, but I didn't know if I would actually use it. For $10 still in the box, I'll take that gamble! I also picked up a few camping accessories I hope we'll get to use this year!

3) Gardening - I love gardening, it's one of my favorite things about Spring/Summer. It's still a little early to plant things outside here. It does feel like Spring, but that doesn't mean it won't get cold again. I stopped by Home Depot to pick up some seeds and supplies. We bought plants last year, but it's much cheaper to just buy the seeds. I'm getting them started indoors so they'll be ready to go in the ground outside when the time is right! I got this thing that pretty much acts like a little greenhouse for the little seedlings. It just looks like dirt right now, but in a couple weeks, I should have some growth! I planted 2 varieties of lettuce (I'm going to try to grow these inside so the groundhogs won't eat it), 2 varieties of tomatoes (I think I'm going to try to grow the cherry tomatoes inside as well), okra, and bell peppers. Josh is working on potatoes. I also re-seeded all my herbs. I have basil, chives, parsley, rosemary, cilantro and thyme. Hopefully I'll do a better job of keeping them alive than I did last year :-).

4) One Tree Hill - I had been waiting for OTH since the Wednesday before so I was really excited for this week's episode. It was really good...AND...the body wasn't Nathan! I know it's just a show, but I would definitely cry like a baby if it would have been him. Out of all the characters, I'm most attached to Nathan and Haley, so it just wouldn't be OK for the show to end with anything bad happening to either of them. I need to believe they live long happy lives together :-).

5) Bailey's Birthday - Bailey turned 1 on Sunday! I'll eventually write a birthday post for her. We took her to the dog park for the first time in too long and she had SO much fun. This is Monte, he's 4 months old. Once he warmed up to her and got used to her chasing him, he followed her EVERYWHERE. It was adorable.


6) Fitness Progress - Sunday is my weigh-in day and I finally lost a pound! Haha. It only took me 3 weeks ;-). I know I'm gaining muscle too, so I don't expect to drop pounds quickly, which is fine. I want to tone more than anything. Hopefully I haven't gained any weight back because I slacked over the weekend and earlier in the week. I don't think I'm going to stick to the 30 Day Shred (surprise surprise). I did it for 3 weeks without seeing any results and I get tired of doing the exact same workout. I really need variation or I get bored fast. I started doing pilates in the mornings last week and I've really enjoyed that. I think I'll stick to doing that. I ran with Bailey for the first time in a while and it went really well. I was able to run farther than the last time I ran even though it's been so long. I think I might try Couch to 5K again.

7) Movie Night - We used to watch movies with one of Josh's co-workers from his last company, but we haven't since Josh switched jobs. He came over last Saturday for dinner and a movie. It was really nice to catch up and hang out. We couldn't decide what to watch, so we just watched Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and it was actually pretty good.