Sledding Grandparents

So remember when I blogged about my grandparents (who are in their mid 80s) going sledding in Atlanta last month?! Well, I have pictures to prove it and I thought that you might enjoy them!  They mailed them to me and I scanned them in. Here they are, aren't they super cute?!?!

Grandpa Chuck, all ready to go!

Grandma Helen excited about the run!

Grandpa braving the hill!

Grandma headed downhill!

My Grandparents are the best! I hope Michael and I still have such a fun attitude when we are their ages!

(this is my post for the day, accept it! :) )

Super Bowl Sunday...

Yay! The Super Bowl is over and my least favorite team in the NFL did not win! And hey, I could cheer for Green Bay because their punter went to UK! WoOO!! The Super Bowl party tonight was also a success! What a great day and I am now beat.....

The morning started with Michael getting home from the hospital around 7:30, I had locked the bedroom door due to my irrational fear of intruders which had followed me into the evening.  Shortly after he got in bed, I got up to go to the 10 o'clock service with Elyse and Kellie Crook (CSF friend, blogger friend, awesome friend!). The service was great, as usual, and I was glad that I had friends to go with because I really didn't want to go by myself. After church, Elyse and I drove straight to the Johnson Center to run, we had a pretty good workout. But man, it was REALLY REALLY hot in the Johnson Center today, sweat was running off of me like a spring rain.

Once Elyse dropped me off at home I crept upstairs to wake Michael up, no it was not cruel, it was 1 pm and I really did think he would be up! We got to enjoy our lunch together cereal for him and english muffin for me and we caught up on some of our Thursday night tv, The Office and Community. (which were pretty funny this week). After the tv shows, I was like BEAT, I took a shower and passed out in bed for like 45 minutes, still feeling pretty tired but I knew I had to get up and make food for the party we were hosting at Michael's parents house tonight for our bstud group.

My Smore Cookies!

I got up and made white chicken chili (recipe from Mr. Wes Botto), which is super easy to make and everyone loved and I also made a new cookie recipe. The cookies are smore cookies and they were also a big hit at the party, and also pretty simple to make.  Very yummy.

I was worried about there not being enough food at the party, but there was A TON of food. All kinds of dip, beer cheese, spinach and artichoke, a meaty rotel type, mexican, and more dips. We also had a big cookie, brownies, oreos, a cream cheese and chocolate chip ball, and more.

Green Bay Beer Cheese, brought by the most supportive Green Bay fan of the night!

The spread!

 Let's just say I am super full for the night. Which means *yawn* I am pretty tired. So its off to bed for this little girl, not to mention that my husband needs to be up and at em' in about 4 1/2 hours! eeekkk!!

Oh...real quick... favorite commercial of the night?!?! I think mine was, if I remember correctly, the Doritos commercial where the dude was liking the Doritos dust off of everything, pretty funny! I hope you all enjoyed your Superbowl functions, traditions, etc. and that you get a good night of sleep tonight before another busy work/school week!

Burglar! Burglar! ... False Alarm!

Hello Friends! I hope you all have had a lovely productive, lazy, fun, sleepy Saturday.

Let me start this post off with what I woke up to this morning...
Flash back to 6:15 am, alarming going off, Michael has already been out of bed for 2 hours now and gone to work for one.... I wake up, say "yeah right, I'm not going to workout this early, especially on a Saturday" and I roll back over...

Well approximately 15 minutes later I wake to this little guy barking...

Yes this dude normally wakes up around 8 WHINING to go to the bathroom from his cage, but this morning he was barking! Since this was out of the norm and I was home alone, my first instinct was to freak out, naturally. Sometimes Michael forgets to lock the front door when he leaves and I was scared to death thinking that someone was in the house. I blindly got out of bed, it still being pitch black outside, grab my robe and cell phone (cause you know if I get kidnapped I might be able to call 911 real quick) and slowly open the bedroom door.

I violently turn on each light switch as I approach it saying, "HELLO?!", you know, what most normal people do when they first wake up in the morning. I made it downstairs, front door unlocked of course, I made it to the closet where the dog food is kept and the bathroom...I threw both of those doors open and screamed HELLO!? ... No one... I let the dogs out of their cages and watch to see if they'd go and find the intruder...

Well not to my surprise at all, Carson was just up and at em' early. He just wanted me to come down and say hello to him and give him food. Not to mention give his worrisome mother a HEART ATTACK....whew, we were safe! But now I am up at 6:30 on a Saturday, oh well, might as well start the homework.

The rest of my day consisted of meeting Miss Betsy Cooney and Vanna Armstrong for breakfast at Doodles, which sadly was not very good, except for the beignets I ordered!

We chatted for a bit, Betsy was a UK student, but recently moved back home with her parents to attend IUPUI (some people pronounce it Ewwy Pooey). I loved getting to see her bright smiling face, she's a great friend and always a good time.

After breakfast it was back to the books for a bit. Then it was time to meet up with Adrielle (my mentee)! I've been struggling for fun, different things that we haven't already done, to do with Adrielle, a 9 year old around Lexington. (any suggestions let me know!) I decided today we would go get our nails painted.

When I told Adrielle the plans she was SUPER PUMPED! So off we went in the chilly weather to the nail salon. She immediately knew she wanted a sparkly red color and picked one that reminded me of Dorothy's red slippers in the Wizard of Oz. She really did make a good choice, the color looked really pretty against her skin, and she got white hearts painted on her thumb nails. They looked super cute. I told her that her nails were ready for Valentines Day!

intensely watching

sparkly red!

pretty nails!

We had a blast, I must say it was a lot of fun! I love hanging with that girl. We had a dance party in the car on the way home and it was hilarious and funny! We would talk in funny voices to each other and everything! I dropped her at the Dunbar Community Center downtown and watched a little bit of her brother's basketball game

Jamarius is #22 (black jerseys) and quite the athlete

After the game I debated for a while about whether or not to head to the gym. I mean, what else did I have to do today?! Well I decided originally not too... I popped a bag of popcorn and sat down and watched some of the Glee marathon and Cupcake Wars. After the popcorn I had a change of heart and decided to drag my poor self into the cold and go to the JC for a run. I was gonna push it! I was really proud that I went and I could tell by my time that the sickness from this past week is finally wearing off!

One thing that I must say about going to fitness centers is this: HOW DO MOST OF THE GIRLS THERE LOOK CUTE/ACCEPTABLE WHILE WORKING OUT AND I LOOK LIKE DEATH WARMED OVER??? These girls have their makeup on, hair pulled back all cute, their little black leggings and cute tanks on, barely with a drop of sweat on their bodies despite being on a elliptical for an hour while balancing a magazine on their machine.

I storm into the JC in a baggy tshirt, pale white legs, hair pulled back in a bun, frizzies sticking every which-a-way, hop on a treadmill for about 4 miles, and come off looking like I just had the worst experience ever, shirt is totally soaked through, hair is definitely doing even more crazy things, face is a shade of red that hurts the eyes and I always seem to have the gross stuff on my lips that continues to create itself after I get off the machine. I go to stretch on the mats with the other girls, all pretty and dry, and when I stand up to leave you can see where my body was because there's a big nasty sweat mark that I immediately try and wipe down before anyone else sees. Am I the world's grossest girl?! It's pretty hard to disagree with! haha! Oh well, what can I do?!

One other note for the day: I decided to use my Kentucky "country" roots to fix a reoccurring problem in our house. Carson, the pup, has been tearing out the stuffing in his bed everyday. Well the real quick hillbilly fix to this problem was obvious. Since we don't own a needle and a thread I decided the best way to cover the hole he was using to pull out the stuffing was to, oh you know, duct tap it! AND it worked, he didn't touch the bedding all day, no green fluffy padding floating around our house, it was wonderful!

duct tape hole...SUCCESS!

Well that's about it for my day, looking forward to a fun day tomorrow, some church, some friends, some party, some baking, some running, and maybe some homework (if it's lucky!). Enjoy your evening and stay warm friends!

A Field Trip for the Grad Student!

Remember back in elementary school, middle school, or whenever you brought home that lovely double sided permission slip forrrrrr a FIELD TRIP?! Always exciting, never exciting to fill the form out, my parents always made us fill them out on our own. Do you know how hard it is for a young person to remember their Doctor's name, address, phone number, etc. And then always having to figure out who the emergency contact would be?!? hahah! ANYWAY! Today, I, the graduate level student,  got to take a school related field trip, and it was actually enjoyable!

Well, to fill you in on the reason for the field trip I might bore you for a second. In my advanced auditing class we are in groups to study specific industries and their audits and audit plans. Our group chose Distilleries! What fun right?! Living here in Central Kentucky we are SURROUNDED by distilleries (the bourbon trail is just down the road from Lexington), in specific BOURBON! (no, I do not like bourbon, even in the slightest, but it's still interesting, ALTHOUGH I do love me some bourbon balls!) Well in order to learn more about the industry I set up a little field trip for our group to Buffalo Trace Distillery in the good ol' capital of Kentucky, Frankfort.

We met early this morning, around 9, to head to Frankfort. The car ride was pretty quiet on the way there, considering our group didn't really know much about each other, but as we got closer the chattering began to take flight! When we arrived we were greeted by our super enthusiastic tour guide, J.W., you could tell he utterly loved his job and was super excited about showing us the distillery. We did Buffalo Trace's "Hard Hat Tour". This tour is by reservation only because you get to actually walk through the distilling process of Bourbon, climbing stairs and more! It was soooo interesting and definitely a day full of learning! Here are a few pictures from the tour!

Buffalo Trace Logo

This is where the corn for the bourbon is dumped by the corn trucks, slowly taken into the distillery

Mash Cooker

This is what is going on inside the mash cooker, corn with enzymes to break it down, it looked like vomit sloshing around, maybe what I would imagine the inside of our stomachs to look like

Ground up corn

This is used to try out new recipes for Bourbon instead of using an entire barrel

Beer Still

This is what "Bourbon" is before it becomes Bourbon -- Bourbon is created through the aging of the product in barrels, with the shortest allowable time being 2 years by law. This stuff, called "White Dog" is named this because it is white and it has a bite! We got to smell this stuff, and it smells just like rubbing alcohol, you can buy it but I don't know if you would like it!

Our group afterward!

 We had a lot of fun today. (After our tour we actually got to meet up with a real live auditor from Deloitte to discuss who he audits the distilleries, but I won't bore you all with that part!) We even ate at "5 guys" together for lunch, what a bonding experience!

One fact that I was not aware of was: by law, bourbon must be aged in a brand new, white oak barrel. The barrel can only be used once for bourbon. So after the distilleries use the barrels they may sell them to other alcohol producers or even to Walmart to cut in half and sell as flower pots!

Also, most bourbons at each distillery are made from the exact same recipe. The thing that gives them different brand names is based on the number of years aged and the number of barrels it came from. For example, a 15 year single barrel bourbon will be WAY more expensive than an 8 year combination of 30 barrels. They adjust the proof of the Bourbon by adding distilled water.

So there you go, that was my exciting field trip for the day!
Oh and on a side note, I did the Johnson Center's Friday Zumba class (taught by a different instructor) and I am still uncertain as to how I feel about it. It was REALLY different than my normal Tuesday zumba class. The music was all music from today (no latin music) and it was REALLY fast and hard for me to keep up with....oh wellllll....at least I burned a few calories! :)

Goodnight Readers, Sleep Tight!

Bill Cosby loves Jello Pudding and so do I!

We have so much in common with our love of Jello Pudding snacks! Jello Pudding is way better than Snack Packs, sorry people but it's the truth! I have loved these things forever and could eat one every day. There is a particular way you must eat it, and you should probably know. You have to dip your spoon in straight down the side so that your "bite" comes out chocolate, vanilla, chocolate in order to receive the fully intended effect of Jello Pudding snacks, DUH!

On the topic of Pudding and Bill Cosby, I am brought back to the fond memories of "The Cosby Show", oh do I miss the television I watched growing up. What a funny family. Who wouldn't want Bill Cosby as a funny obstetrician Dad with awesome colorful sweaters?!!? Also, don't forget about the cute little Raven Simone, who started her acting career here with the Huxtable clan!

The Cosby family, of course!

Today as I was running on the treadmill at 7:45, I was able to catch the tail end of "Boy Meets World". One of my all-time favorite shows growing up. In this particular episode, at the end, Shawn Hunter had to take a "cold shower" immediately after making out with his girlfriend. I probably had NO CLUE what that meant when I watched this. But I definitely miss watching the shows on TGIF! I loved growing up with Cory and Topanga, and watching them go through school and then college. And slowly watching Topanga's hair calm down a bit, once she realized what a straightener was!

Oh the good ol' days!

 One last  reminiscing note. Tonight as I was driving home from class I saw all the crazy, insane runners who were braving the cold for a good run. These people are super intense! Well for some reason this instantly made me think of "Cool Runnings". I guess I connected it through, oh gosh it's cold and they're running, so Cool Runnings.  I ALWAYS listed this movie as my favorite movie as a child. It was so funny to me. "We're a Jamaican Bobsled team, mon".

No, he is no smoking something, his dread was frozen and broke off, you have to remember this!

Practicing Bob sledding in the tub! hahahaha! giggles!

If anyone wants to watch the movie sometime with me in the near future I would love to have your company.

Sorry for the randomness but this is what went through my head today, and hey, it's better than boring you with my slightly lame day! Keep warm blog readers!

Busy as a Bee!

 Today was the typical busy day that I am starting to get used to. I was constantly running around from here to there. I was going to title this blog, "I am a chicken with no head" but then I couldn't do a picture of that, that is WAY too graphic for my liking! Gross, headless chickens :)

This morning I DID wake up for an early morning treadmill run with Ms. Elyse Hoxby. 

cutie patootie!

 Elyse and I have known each other from high school where we were on the Ryle Cross Country and Track teams together. We always had a blast and Elyse was ALWAYS hilarious! We kind of lost touch through undergrad, I maybe saw her two or three times, but since we both started graduate school we are definitely seeing each other more often (specifically to get our lazy butts into gear through working out). Elyse has signed up for the Derby half, which I will be signing up for shortly!


Back to the workout. Let's just say we both had a hard time getting motivated this morning, but we both made it to the gym by 6:50. Ok, let's be honest, I literally came in the gym with bed head and maybe I didn't have time to brush my teeth?! (ick, gross, I am sorry to mention that, but if you are a runner like me, brushing your teeth right before a run is a terrible idea, it totally dries out your mouth, sorry for the grossness, but I did drink a glass of water beforehand). And like I didn't touch my hair, I had my Ryle Track hood up, I was either straight sloppy or gangster, which is to be determined! By my hair was definitely sticking out at weird angles on it's own! Ya know since I looked like a crazy zombie girl, I would of course run into one of my classmates, who looked super chipper for 6:50 AM! Crazy!! Anyway, Elyse and I set the goal of 40 minutes on the treadmill, we did it, but let's be honest, we didn't look very good!


Exhausted afterwards, I rushed home, being blown across town by the INTENSE winds and showered and ate breakfast as quickly as I could because I had to be back up at the library at 10, then it was a group project from 10-1:30, then straight to the Gatton college of Biz for another group meeting at 2, then class at 3. WHEW after all of that I was very tired.


I have allowed myself to relax for the past hour and a half, checking facebook, sending emails, watching last night's Teen Mom and Parenthood (funny that the show I watch on Wednesdays have to do with being parents, teehee!). Plus, it is 6:50, and I haven't really heard from Michael but he has yet to be home. Hopefully he hasn't blown away!


Speaking of blowing away, you should have seen HOW COOL I looked ALL day. So, you see, since I needed approx. a bazillion things for all these group projects and class I had to pack it all in my backpack. Well carrying that all around campus is pretty hard, especially when you weigh about 105 pounds haha. Well the weather didn't help the cool factor. I literally felt like my body was in the shape of a 90 degree angle when I was walking around all day due to the extreme weight in my pack and the mighty gusts of winds that tore through UK's campus. To sum it up, my neck and back hurt from lugging around all this shizzzz!


OHHH and I almost forgot to tell you about what I got to do last night!

So remember that I am still clearing up from the eternal death illness?! Well since I hadn't worked out in nearly 4 days I decided it would be a good idea to workout, ya know, even though I still wasn't feeling 100%. I'll have to say I was at about 65%. Well I wanted to do Zumba and got there early, so I was like hey, it's a good idea to run a mile beforehand. Well that was tiring, good thing my lungs had shrunk to the size of a marble when I got sick. Then it was time for Zumba, WHEWWWWW, I made it through the whole class, but I'm tellin' ya, it was hard. My face was all pale, side stitches, extreme to the max sweating. Luckily I warned my instructor beforehand to ignore the confused looking girl that might look like she's dying during the dancing. But hey, I pulled through and it's a great cardio workout!


After Zumba, Michael picked me up (it was raining buckets upon buckets) and we went out to the "condo", Bailey and Tim Robertson's house for dinner! (more high school friends, Bailey is one of my besties!)
 

Bailey and Tim made the largest Turkey meatloaf I have EVER seen, I mean ginormous! I wish I had a picture to show you the size, but it took up an entire cookie sheet! They also made mashed potatoes and yummy carrots! Luckily they had a large crowd to feed this enormous amount of food. Guests included: The Kastens (us), Ms. Olivia (whom I had not seen in forever and was totally glad she could make it), Ms. Becca, Mr. Cody Lokits, Mr. Micah Forman, Ms. Mollie Stewart and her lovely boyfriend Hagan. The food was yummy and awesome, the UK wildcats bball team on the other hand was not. I will not even speak about that! But that summed up the night, because shortly afterwards Michael and I returned home and hit the hay.


Although i have been super busy I have enjoyed being able to exercise, get work done, see friends, and finally relax for a little while tonight before I hit the homework again!


I hope none of you have blown away in this crazy windy weather!! Oh and aren't we glad that Phil the Groundhog said we will be seeing spring soon?! I sure hope we do!
 

Hello there February!

Alas! It is February! The month of Valentines Day, President's Day, cold weather, 3 of my cousins birthdays, AND mine and Michael's dating anniversary (it will be 3 years on the 8th!)! Not only is February those things, but it is also the month before my birthday wooo!!!

Well as exciting as some of the things I listed are, February is also bringing some things that I am not looking forward to. For example, the Audit section of the CPA exam, which is quickly approaching on the 25th and working on and completing 2 separate group projects for class by the end of February, and wrapping up the classes I am currently in! I am doing my best at keeping a positive attitude during this month, thinking despite the shortness of this month (which I normally would like because it makes my birthday sooner) which allows for barely any time to get work done, at least it will hopefully go by quickly. No, I am not wishing my life away, I am just looking forward to happier, do what I want, times!

So this morning was Michael's first wake up at the crack of dawn, well not even really the crack of dawn because the sun was definitely no where near coming up, for surgery day. His alarm went off at 4:10am! Crazy right?! We ended up going to bed around like 11:15-11:30 so the poor guy barely got any sleep! Surprisingly, my snoozing wasn't really bothered by his milling around and preparing for his day, although I did ask that he shower and get ready in the other bathroom! I do remember him kissing me goodbye and then I was out again, waking back up on my own at 7:30.

One thing that makes me sad about surgery is that Michael won't be able to really text me throughout the day. I like being able to text him throughout the day, even if its a question about something or just seeing what he's up to.  Besides texts from Michael I really don't converse with people unless I am at school, work, or blogging to you all! (No, this does not make me a loner, it just makes me a married girl with no other roomies who is super busy with schoolwork!) So you know, if you're bored, you can talk to me!!

Michael has emphasized that I need to hangout with friends during this time he's on surgery. Well look-at-you Mr. Michael, I didn't realize I needed to hangout with friends or that I am a busy person too! :) When he told me this I was like, "really?! I hang out with people all the time!" haha! Oh well! Anyway, some of the bstud girls decided for girls night we are going to make a list of things that we didn't get to do, but wanted to do before our wedding and do them all together. All of us girls realized that although we loved our b-maids in our weddings, they weren't always up to doing what the bride wanted to do. For example, although this is a kind of stupid thing to do before a wedding (you know broken arms, noses, etc.), I REALLY wanted to go roller skating. And if you all haven't watched the Office recently some of the guys go roller skating during their lunch break and Andy requests the DJ to play some Dave "deep tracks"...it was funny! :)

 

Well, no one wanted to go with me, but when I mentioned the idea to these girls, they were pumped out of their minds! I was like, you all are freaking awesome! So we are going to construct a list of things, and it will be fun, I guarantee it!

Well that's all for today folks! I hope you aren't about to be stranded in 2 feet of snow like parts of the US, please be safe and enjoy your day!