Crush

It's no secret.  

I've got a crush.

It's ok--David knows.  Someday, I'll confess to my crush.

But they won't let me close enough to Matt Holliday to tell him.

In honor of my crush, David bought me this GLORIOUS present.

Yay!  Holliday!  Yay!

Last Saturday

Last Saturday we traveled to KC to go to my friend Jimmy's wedding.  I've known Jimmy since nerd camp (HOBY) when I was 16.

Also attending the wedding was my darling friend Erin, who I love more than life itself.

How can you not love her??

Anyway, the wedding was fantastic... very Jimmy.  David and I had a good time having "serious" conversations.

The only problem with photos of "serious" conversations is that I always look grumpy.  

Stinks.

They had one awesome groom's cake... David has never been so jealous in his life.

I had a blast... as evidenced by the following random pictures.

Here were all the invitees that also went to nerd camp with us...

The only sad point of the night was David's clumsiness...he broke Erin's camera.

No worries, though.  A replacement is already en route from Amazon.

Yikes

So.... I haven't written a post for 2 weeks.  I stink.  David and I have been out of town for the last... umm.....5ish weekends and still have 2 more weekends out of town before we are officially in our home for an entire weekend.  And then I have to go back to work.  Yay.

There's been a ton of things happening...weddings and kitchen finishing and berry picking and, oh lots.  It's going to be hard to recap, so I'll just start with today.

This morning, my darling (and engaged!!!) friend Martha and I went to Eckert's to go berry picking.  Blackberries were in season and I LOVE blackberries.   Seriously, I can eat a carton a day, happily.  Hands down, my favorite berry/fruit.  BLACKBERRIES!

I'm so happy.

On the way home we decided to stop at the shrine to Our Lady of the Snow...mostly because I'd heard about it on the radio (something about Christmas lights) and figured that we might as well stop.

We couldn't find the "main" shrine, unless this is it...

Nonetheless, the grounds were pretty.

And I had blackberries to munch on :)

Last night, David and I went to the Botanical Gardens for the free music.

And struggled with taking pictures, as usual.

Yeah, no good.

Oh well.  It was H-O-T outside, but we managed to find a spot in the shade...so it wasn't too miserable.

This morning, however, was sweltering.  I ended up deciding to go on a swim instead of a run.  

Then... I came home...and now the kitchen looks like this!

 Do you see it?  The countertops are painted!!!  They're not done--I need to use the epoxy to seal it, but I'm going to do that later today.  As long as that doesn't end horribly, the kitchen should be done (minus the flooring) by the end of next week.

At that point, I will have officially spent my entire summer painting every surface in my kitchen.

Worth it.

Complaining about the heat

Yeah, I'm complaining.  I left for my run at 6:30 am and it was already 79 degrees and 87% humidity.  I thought I was going to die...but I did my 6 miles.  Of course, I was mentally whining the whole way.

I found a new website that I'm trying out.  It's called dailymile and you upload your runs--I can upload directly from my Garmin, which is awesome.

You'll notice that I have a new widget (or whatever they're called) on the right side.  It shows my last run and some stats.  I uploaded runs since the beginning of July...you can see that I've run 78 miles and burned 49.01 donuts.  Awesome!

Weekend!

This past weekend was a bit of a whirl-wind!  After seeing Wicked at the Fox on Friday, I spent the WHOLE DAY Saturday at David's final trial.  

For David's summer class, the final was a mock-trial.  David had to wear a suit and there was even a jury.  I had to memorize a deposition so that I could be one of David's witnesses.  I was stressed out--and I wasn't the one being graded :)  The trial itself took over 5 hours.  

After that, we watched one of David's bosses play acoustic guitar at a coffeehouse and then met up with my friends Jimmy and Shanda for a few drinks.  Jimmy and Shanda actually live in Oklahoma...but they drove in to St. Louis to buy wine at Trader Joe's for their upcoming wedding.

Aside: I love Trader Joe's.

Sunday morning, I work up EAR-LY and drove to Kansas.  It was my grandpa's 80th birthday party and my mom's birthday.  The family celebrated with a picnic...and about 130 people showed up.  It's helps that my grandparents are popular and have HUGE families.  Seriously, my mom has 48 first cousins.  That's blood cousins--not spouses of blood cousins.  HUGE.

Here's Grandpa and Grandma.  Aren't they cute?

The ladies.

My mother, her brothers, and my grandparents.

Cher, Kyle, Me, Mom, and Dad.

It was very hot.  Not that I'm complaining now...but I sure did complain a lot then.

Cher made a lovely, beautiful cake for the picnic.  Unfortunately, the heat didn't love her creation very much...she's going to send me a pre-heat picture, but here's a mid-picnic shot.

Apparently, the family decided the best way to eat it was to just grab fistfuls of cake.

Delish!!!

It was yummy!

I spent Sunday night at Kyle and Cher's... and the drove back to St. Louis on Monday morning.

Once I got back, I painted the cabinets again and then went to our softball game.  We lost :( 

Today, I got up early and went on a 12 mile run.  Ugh!

Wicked!

Last night Debra took Danna and I to see Wicked at the Fox.

The show was fantastic--The Fox is stunning and the company was great too.

I hadn't ever seen Wicked before, but I read the book a few years ago.  The book was awesome, but nothing compared to the show.

Thank you, Debra!

Kitchen...half way?

I think I've reached the half-way point in my kitchen remodel.  I've finished the upper cabinets, finished the backsplash, painted all the hardware, painted 4/5 drawers and the frames for the lower cabinets AND turned the exhaust fan silver.

Whew.  I'm exhausted.  And tired of painting.

Here's what the kitchen looks like today!

I can't wait to be done.  I need to paint the cabinet doors, one more drawer, and then tackle the countertops. At that point, I'm going to beg some guys I work with to help me with the floors.

Yay!  Kitchen!

In other news: Titanic was rained out at the Muny last night, so Steph and I are going to try to cash in our tickets.

However, I wasn't too sad--because Debra's taking Danna and me to see Wicked tonight!  

I'm so excited!

Veggies

Even though my garden was SERIOUSLY neglected while I was in Branson, I came home to find this beauty.

Oh yes... it's a baby zucchini.  I've already go some baby cucumbers in the works.

Not bad for starting late, huh?

But look at how  thirsty my watermelon was! 

Branson!

Hello everyone!

I haven't posted for a while-- I had a rough week (followed by a good weekend) and couldn't get a post off the ground.

I had been having pretty severe neck pain since June 22nd.  I brushed it off, thinking I had slept on it funny or strained it at the gym.  The only problem was that it never just went away.  After complaining like a big baby, David informed me that he didn't want me to go on the family trip to Branson unless I went to the doctor.

I ignored him.  But then, on Thursday the 1st, part of me ear swelled up pretty massively.  And I was in too much pain to finish my long run.

I went to the doctor.  Turns out, I had a soft tissue infection and the neck pain was from my MASSIVELY swollen lymph nodes.  I got some antibiotics, but moaned because that didn't help with the pain.

Still, because I have a superman complex, we headed to Branson Thursday night.  David's parents had rented a condo for the holiday weekend...and it was fun, even though I was pretty heavily relying on pain killers for most of the weekend.

We went fishing...

Found a BBQ restaurant named after David's sister...

Went tubing on Table Rock Lake...

Went shopping and dressed up the baby...

Acted my age...

And watched some fireworks with my honey...

All in all, it was a great trip.  Thanks to Dan and Debra for making it possible!