Little Bro Turns 19 {Project 365: Day 11}

Today I set my alarm and got up at 5:15am. I know...gross right??

My thinking was that I would get my workout done before Baby N woke up.

That worked out great actually. Baby N did not wake up until about 8 minutes before my workout was done.

However, the workout didn't go so well.

See...today was Yoga X day. 

Waking up at 5:15am for the first day to do Yoga...not a good idea!

I don't think I ever actually woke up for the workout. I was stumbling all over the place. It was pretty ridiculous.

Needless to say, I won't be doing that first thing, early in the morning again.

Today was also my Little Bro's birthday. He turned 19.

He decided that he wanted to go to dinner at Plucker's because they have a huge ass burger called The Gut Grenade. It's insane. And he ate the WHOLE thing!

Of course, since I'm the baker in the family, it was my job to make the cake.

I made a Texas sheet cake. It was pretty awesome, but really rich.

Other than that, it's been a pretty chill day.

Speaking of "chill" it was quite cold today.

How was your day today?

Ladies Who Lunch {Project 365: Day 8}

Sometimes, after I drop Little Butt off at school, I decide to have some semi-adult time. 

Basically, that means that Baby N and I head to lunch with my Mom and Baby Sis.

Today, we decided to go to Olive Garden.

I know it's not REAL Italian, but whatever. I still love the place!

I had originally gone thinking that I would have the soup, salad, and breadsticks. But they had this amazing looking new dish that I just had to try.

I won't lie. It was pretty fantastic. But after some calamari, soup, salad, and breadsticks...I pretty much had about 3 bites then boxed it up to go.

Not only was it us 3 ladies and Baby N, but my nephew D-money came with us.

Now, D-money is 4. And he's Autistic.

So trying to take a picture of an Autistic 4 year old goes about something like this

Or this

Baby Sis looks great in both pictures. D-money? He could use some work.

But then...

You catch moments like this

And everything just falls into place.

He's such a sweet boy and he is so loved. He's extremely loving for an Autistic child as well. He's pretty awesome, I won't lie.

What is NOT awesome though, is trying to carry my 17 pound, 5 month old chunky monkey in his infant carrier seat after having done a P90X arm workout that morning. Nope. Not fun at all.

The only other really eventful thing we did today was to go mail a package to The Hubble. He's about to get hit with a book bomb! I hope he's ready for it!

Now, what's your favorite restaurant?

Visits and Family Fun

So my parents came to visit last week.

Now...we live in the middle. Of. Nowhere.

No lie. We really do.

I was pretty worried that they would be bored once they got here. I mean, the mall (or any shopping other than Wally World) is an hour and a half away!

However, as always happens, our schedule filled up at the last minute and we were pretty much busy non-stop. We were even double booked the first day they were here.

The parental units arrive at around 11pm on Saturday evening. We had just come home from a graduation party (can you believe The Hubble graduates his career course tomorrow??? I can't!).

We talked a bit before all hitting the hay for the night. When we woke up it was time to get moving! We were going to a baby shower and a chili cookoff that day so I needed to do some cooking. I made pigs in a blanket (little smokies wrapped in croissant dough) for the baby shower and The Hubble and I worked together to get a vat of chili going (it had to cook 6 hours and the chili cookoff was at 5pm).

The baby shower was the first stop. It was a lot of fun actually. We did the game where you were blindfolded and had to try to find itty bitty safety pins in rice. We also played "pin the diaper on the baby" which was a more suitable game for a girl baby than my original "pin the penis on the baby" game I came up with for a friend who was having a boy a few years ago.

I was extremely surprised to find out there was going to be running games as well. They had an egg race game (you ran with an egg on a spoon and tried not to drop it). I am a clutz so I opted out of that game.

But I did participate in the 3-legged race!

Can you believe I allowed that to happen? LOL! It was fun...we came in third of 4 couples. Lame. Oh well...at least we weren't last. And we didn't fall (although we almost did). I think that's a feat in and of itself.

Even Little Butt gave it the ol' college try. That didn't last long though.

After the baby shower we ran home to get the chili and showed up only an hour late! Everything was delicious and I ate WAY too much. Mmmmm...chili.

The next day was Monday. I made my mother get up and go for a walk with me. She did well. I made her walk with me on Wednesday as well.

We did a lot of hanging out with friends. We had a playdate with B and Princess. We had a spouse coffee to go to on Wednesday but I started getting sick and decided to stay home and have a screwdriver to stave off the sickness instead of going to the coffee.

We watched Iron Man 2 and Little Butt is obsessed! We even went to Wally World and she got a sticker from the greeter. She put it on the palm of her hand and "shot" people as we walked through the store. I won't lie...it was pretty awesome.

The other super fun thing we did was that we finally had a fondue party! I've been wanting to have a fondue party for almost a year now but I didn't know anyone who would play along with me. I found out my friend L (the one who is having the baby) has a fondue pot. So we enlisted a couple other people and had a party. OMG it was good!!! I bought The Melting Pot Cookbook and we had the most amazing meal! Bourbon Bacon Cheddar fondue to start. Coq au Vin cooking style with chicken, shrimp and beef for the main course. With the main course we also made dipping sauces: an her aioli, a roasted red pepper sauce, a spicy cocktail and a spicy honey mustard sauce. Yum!!! For dessert I ruined an entire HUGE bar of melting chocolate (in two attempts) by trying to add some Bailey's to it. It just curdled. No fun. On the second attempt I even tried to add cream to it but it just started separating. So I ended up making a white chocolate amaretto fondue that we dipped strawberries, marshmallows, rice krispie treats, and pineapple into. Did I say it was DELICIOUS??? Because it was.

The fondue was on Friday night. Oh, my parents watched Little Butt on Thursday so The Hubble and I could go on a date. It was nice. We went to a local bar/bistro with some friends. I'm glad we got to do that.

On Friday I also did a bunch of baking so I could send some treats home to my sisters back in Texas.

The parentals left on Saturday and we had the rest of the weekend to relax.

All in all I would say it was a really good visit. But sadly, the only picture I thought to snap was when I was introducing my parents to Dexter. All I had was my phone. Here's how much Little Butt loved hanging with Pawpaw:

And that was our week!

Do you enjoy it when your parents visit? When was the last time you had a family member visit? Was it fun?