California Girls (and a Guy)

This past weekend Rebecca and I traveled to San Francisco for a long weekend to see Kade before he leaves for his Thailand adventure. I love to travel, but am not the best planner, so luckily I had travel agent Rebecca to lead the way. Rebecca was so organized and had done tons of research so we didn't have to miss out on anything. Kade also brought his friend Foster to hang out for the weekend. Between Foster (who grew up in San Francisco) and Rebecca, we never got lost. We went to Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square, the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown to get eggrolls, and did lots of shopping and sight seeing. My legs are still sore from walking up and down all the hills! We had rented a flat off of VRBO, which I highly recommend for anyone who travels. We had the cutest 2 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen for $140 a night! It was a few blocks from Alamo Square which has the famous "Painted Ladies".

I'm so excited for Kade to experience Thailand. I am going to miss talking to him everyday but I know he is going to have an amazing time. I just hope he comes back!

My mom is always telling me to put sunscreen on, but I think if I wore this hat everyday I wouldn't need to!

Check out Pickled Lily for maternity and baby clothes! Happy Shopping!

Weekend Wrap Up

Here is a summary of what we did on this awesome 3 day weekend:

1) Drove to Houston to see our friends Martin, April, and baby Henry.

Henry is such a good baby and tolerated April and I shopping for hours on Saturday. Here is a picture of Henry when I was holding him trying to make him smile and laugh. (I obviously rock at doing this because he is smiling in the picture)

I feel that I have a lot of experience with babies but it was very apparent that I do not have enough when while trying to make Henry laugh by holding him above my head, I didn't think to myself "Henry probably just ate and I shouldn't be bouncing him around..." Moments after this picture was taken, Henry while in the air laughing proceeded to toss his breakfast all over me....all in my hair, down my neck and all over my shirt. Then he started smiling again. I obviously need to have common sense when it comes to babies from now on. No, I didn't get a picture of the aftermath, but I'm sure you can picture how I looked.

How cute is Henry sucking his thumb?

Martin and April also took us to this awesome coffee place where they put designs in your coffee.

2) Pickled Lily.

Sarah and I spent a lot of time on the phone this weekend picking out new merchandise for Pickled Lily. I have mentioned that I own a maternity and baby boutique called Pickled Lily right? We have super cute stuff and I am so excited about some new merchandise we have ordered. We are also offering a 20% discount until September 15! code: 20OFF

Also, if you are pregnant or have a child under 24 mo (right now our baby clothes only go up to 24 mo), and you haven't seen anything you would purchase off of Pickled Lily, what would you like to see? We are always open to suggestions!

3) BBQ at the house with family and friends.

I always say how Dan and I tend to do too much, but who doesn't love hanging out with friends on a beautiful day? Monday we spent the day working in the flower beds (much needed!), grocery shopping and cooking. One of my favorite things to do, besides hanging out with Dan, traveling and yoga is cook! We try to cook every night of the week and I normally get recipes off of Chocolate Broccoli or out of Cooking Light. If you haven't checked out either of those, you need to! I try to cook pretty healthy, but it is a holiday, so I threw in some Pioneer Woman recipes into today's spread. Not that all of her recipes are unhealthy, but they just normally call for more butter than I normally use :)

We had a great time playing on our new Cornhole boards made by Jordan, eating food and just hanging out enjoying our day off from work. Rebecca brought Chase and Dan had a blast playing with him.

Overall, we had a great weekend and are sad it's over. Yay for a 4 day work week!

Blue Bell & Texas Stereotypes...Y'all

9/2/10 - This is the day that Emily allowed me to post on our blog, which is a day she might regret. Since this might be my only blog post ever I wanted to make it count with two things I am very passionate about.

1. Blue Bell Ice Cream - If you find yourself standing in front of Dreyer's, Bryer's, Ben & Jerry's, etc. at the store, you are obviously either a.) Not in or from Texas b.) Cannot spell or see 3.) Have not experienced the greatness that is Blue Bell.
2. Texas Stereotypes - We have one TV, and surprise, Emily enjoys watching Lifetime. Emily is the best thing that has ever happened to me and my soulmate, so naturally I have to spend my entire day stalking her and hanging out with her. This also requires that I trade nights of watching sports and Man vs. Food (a show I am very passionate about, thanks Martin) for Suburban Sally. Suburban Sally is my poor attempt of making fun of a Lifetime movie that goes something like this: Sally is a beautiful brunette with a great husband and two great kids with a perfect lawn, house, wood floors, and no mortgage payment. One day Sally finds out that her son's female teacher has a crush on her husband, however, the husband is actually cheating on his wife with another teacher, and his son's teacher is jealous. The husband ends up dying in a fiery crash and the wife ends up with her son's teacher in a lesbian twist. Does this not sound like a Lifetime movie? I digress. My point is tonight on Lifetime there was a movie that started out with Police Officers in the middle of Houston who all had on cowboy hats, everyone had a huge accent, there were mountains in the background, and it looked like a desert around them. We'll come back to this.

Blue Bell Ice Cream is needed after at least one meal a week. Why you ask? Let me answer my question with another question. After you work out and you are sore, don't you ice your body to keep the swelling down? After you exercise your stomach and eat a big meal you should ice down your stomach, it's just common sense to keep from stomach swelling.

I have to finish up now because my wife says I get a 'creepy smile' when I start discussing Blue Bell, but I did want to provide some value to our viewers. Cookies and Cream is my favorite Blue Bell Ice Cream and my favorite dessert of all time, if you have not tried it, you should. It is especially good when you get a container that has a lot of big cookies in it, it's like a great surprise. Several weeks ago I came across a new flavor, 'Vanilla Cookies and Cream'. I suggest after your next workout that you try it out.

Texas Stereotypes: For all of you non-Texans out there let's get a few things straight.

1. Yes, we do have cowboys. However, so does South Dakota and New York.
2. Yes, there is oil in the ground in Texas. No, not everyone works for Exxon. Quick aside: Why does everyone complain about oil company profits, they are usually in line with other corporations when times are good (10-15%) You don't see people getting ticked off when Target or Baby Gap's profit is this high. And aren't companies suppose to make a profit.
3. Yes, we have deserts. So does California. We also have more trees in East Texas than you can imagine, swamps near the Louisiana/Texas border, and big cities. The deserts are near El Paso, that's about 12 hours from my house. This is like someone in New York City driving to Indiana, big difference right? I actually only know one person from El Paso and I've never even been there.
4. Yes, we have accents. So do people in Boston. The accents in Texas are really not that bad compared to other states. Try Tennessee or Kentucky, their accents will blow you away.
5. We have farms and cows. So does Illinois. I drove through Illinois once, it was 8 hours of corn and then Chicago. Several Cubs fans tried to tell me two things 1.) Girls in Texas are not pretty, which is very funny 2.) Everyone lives on ranches in Texas. Cubs fans, I drove past more farms in your state than I do in Texas. Also Cubs fans, you are the Los Angeles Clippers of baseball with grass on your outfield walls.
6. Texas is better than you, please deal with this accordingly.
7. The University of Texas football team and the Dallas Cowboys are two teams in Texas. We also have about 10 more professional teams and about 30 Division I football teams.
8. Longhorns on the front of cars. Yes, I have seen Longhorns on the front of a car in Texas...maybe once. There are so many times in movies that I see cars with Longhorns on them, it just doesn't happen.
9. I have been on a horse twice in my life, both times in Colorado. I once had a joker in Pennsylvania tell me he was in downtown Houston and police officers were parking horses everywhere, and he did not see many cars. Penn man, there are 6 million people that live in Houston and hundreds of thousands that work downtime, do you really think they take a horse in 30 miles from The Woodlands?
10. We don't all live on ranches. We live on 1/10000 of an acre (which I hate). I can broad jump across my yard.
11. Cowboy hats - Yes we have cowboy hats but we also have baseball caps too. Anytime you see a police officer in a movie based in Texas they are wearing a cowboy hat.

Have a great Labor Day weekend y'all!

One more thing...check out new merchandise on Pickled Lily! If you "Like" Pickled Lily on Facebook you will get updates on new merchandise and coupon codes! Happy Shopping!