Thursday, March 29, 2012

Frog in the Toilet!!!!

I spent the majority of my evening yesterday cleaning up the house. I washed sheets, towels and several other loads of laundry. I picked up junk and dusted...you know all of those fun things! Well Mac decided to go to bed a little early (9:30!) and I was still working on laundry. When I got the last load out of the dryer I decided to clean the laundry room floors. I grabbed some paper towels and was going to wet them to get up the majority of the dust and lint. I headed into our half bath to wet the towels in the sink, and I notice there is something in the toilet. IT. IS. A. BIG. BLACK. FROG. 

I backed out of the bathroom screaming for Mac. He is sound asleep. He opened his eyes and I began pleading with him to get up. "Mac! There is a frog in the toilet! Please go get it. I'm serious, there is a frog in the toilet. It is black. It is big. I think its going to jump out. Please get up and get it. Please. Frog. Toilet. Now."

He rolled out of bed and walked over to the bathroom toilet. I am standing by the bed shaking in fear and watching his reaction. He kind of stood there for a minute looking and then he reached down to flush it.

"DON'T FLUSH IT!! IT IS TOO BIG", I screamed. He just looked at me, shook his head and said, "It's lint. I threw it in there earlier when I took out some laundry. It does look like a frog though." He walked back into the bedroom and went back to sleep. On the other hand, I stood in the same place with my heart racing for, oh, another ten minutes.

Happy Thursday to all! And for future knowledge, Mac and I will be having a discussion about never again throwing lint in the toilet. :)
 

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

I've Got Skills

After returning from Chicago, I had a hectic two days at work and then headed to Camden on Saturday! We had our second annual Grandma's Weekend with Dee Dee. We had a great time. I will post photos from that event next. On Sunday, Mac and I went to church and then had a delicious brunch at Majestic. It was a great end to a fun weekend!

Last night, I enjoyed one of my Christmas presents! Mom gave me a class at the Viking Cooking School in Memphis. The basic knife skills class is only offered once a quarter, so my class was Monday night! It was awesome. It was about 2.5 hours long. We started out learning about knives and knife safety. We began by learning how to de-bone a chicken. Then we transitioned to learning different ways to peel and dice a tomato, then moved on to onions, green peppers, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, lettuce, etc. There were about 10 people in the class, and I think we all felt like experts by the end. When we were done chopping everything in our path, we sat down and enjoyed our hard work. We had salsa fresca and fajitas for dinner.

Here is a photo of the test kitchen before we got started. It's a tad bit blurry because I took it on my phone through the window of the waiting area. I had so much fun and would love to take another class at Viking again soon!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Chicago

I have been in Chicago the past few days for work and it has been awesome. The weather is unseasonably warm, about the same as Memphis! We've had great food, done a little shopping, and a tad bit of sightseeing. I can't wait to come back to the city with Mac and really get my tourist on!

Here is a quick picture from the ferris wheel on Navy Pier tonight!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Chattanooga Weekend

I am going to take you back...way back to the end of January. Mac and I traveled to Chattanooga to celebrate the engagement of our friends, Sarah and Mike! We had never spent an entire weekend in Chattanooga, so I had a long list of things to accomplish while we were in town. 

We left Memphis on Friday afternoon so we could be in Chattanooga in time for dinner.  As soon as we arrived we joined Courtney and Will for dinner at Urban Stack Burger Lounge. I had read about this restaurant in Southern Living, and it was quite delicious. We got there pretty late, but it was a cool atmosphere and I wish we had more time to hang out and visit. They were definitely waiting on us to close up, so we headed home.

Mac and I got up early to get our long day of sightseeing started. After a pretty hefty wait, we had breakfast at Aretha Frankenstein's. It. Was. Delicious. Their pancakes were seriously some of the best I have ever had. Their biscuits were two biscuits stuck together, so they were huge as well. I took a few photos, but the sun was beaming in on our table, so you can't really see the magnitude of this food.

After breakfast, we headed over to Sophie's, the adorable shop where my friend Jessie works. After torturing Mac with that for a little bit, we headed up to Ruby Falls. I know that this is definitley a tourist trap, but Mac and I had a great time! The tour lasted a little over an hour, but it was really informative and was an impressive sight to see. I have a few pictures below from our time in the mountain.


I need to set the scene for the next two photos. So we have walked about 30 minutes into this mountain through a cave system. You get to a big opening and all the lights are off.  You can tell you are at the fall because you can hear the water and feel the huge gush of air. All of the sudden this classical music starts booming and they light up the falls with different color spotlights. Cheesy? Definitely! Impressive? Oh yea!
 


Our nice camera was getting wet from the mist, so the next two photos are from our cell phones. P.S. My hair was curled when we entered the caves. It was a tad bit damp in there.


When we walked back through the cave, they dump you at the top of the welcome center. You get a great view of Chattanooga. As you can see it was a beautiful day!

After our trip to Ruby Falls, we headed down to see the Chattanooga Choo Choo. We had heard that it was great to get a drink in the hotel lobby, but since we got there around 2 p.m. the bar was not yet open. We walked around the grounds of the hotel for a little bit and then walked next door to the Terminal Brewhouse, a local brewery and restaurant. They had half pints of beer, so we were able to sample several of their delicious concoctions. I just loved the little glasses!


After the Terminal Brewhouse, we decided to head down to the Frazier Avenue area. We hit up Clumpies ice cream for a famous local treat. As we were heading to our next stop (a hot dog store) we ran into Courtney and Will! After a hot dog, they joined us at a very small local brewery, Chattanooga Brewing Company. We sampled a few beers then headed home to get ready for the engagement party.

And what a party it was! Mike's parent's friends hosted the party in their beautiful home. The food was amazing and a great time was had by all. I can't wait to celebrate again with Mike and Sarah in June. Apparently it is a "rite of passage" with this group of friends to dance on the coffee table. Us girls had no issue with that, but it took the boys a little longer. You can see Will, David, Mac and Mike's mom on the table below.  

We had a great weekend in Chattanooga and I hope to visit again soon!


Sunday, March 11, 2012

Park City, UT

 And we are back! I am going to try and catch up from my past few weeks of bad blogging...aka no blogging! So when I left off, we had just returned from Park City, UT. It was a great trip! I could go back tomorrow. Darrell found our condo for us and it was fantastic. We were about a mile from the mountain base, but had a shuttle that would take us anywhere we needed to go! Our condo was huge and had two totally separate sides which worked out great for two couples. We also had a hot tub area right outside our door. The hot tub was necessary for soothing our aching muscles each night! Here are a few photos of the condo.

This is the shared living room in between the two separate sides.
Our lovely kitchen. This is looking into Libby and Darrell's side. Each side had its own living room, bathroom and bedroom.

More of the kitchen.
 We really had the best trip! We got up early every morning and hit the slopes. Skied all day, came home and relaxed in the hot tub, showered and got ready, then we headed out to eat each night. We ate at a local brewery one night, Mexican the second night, and High West Distillery the last night. Eating at High West is a story in itself, but it was definitely the favorite of the trip. Here are a few photos of our time spent in town!
 


See the bridge behind Libby and D? That is a ski run! There is a lift going right over it. It is called the Town Lift. You can literally ski right into town from the mountain! It was so neat.

And here is me and Mac with the Town Lift behind us!

 On our last day, I woke up to Mac telling me...it is snowing and it sure was! There was snow everywhere! I found out from my friend Amanda that it ended up snowing about 10 inches that day. We made it safely to the airport and down in Salt Lake it was just raining. 




Our favorite little coffee stop, Bump and Grinds! They also had an Ober Gatlinburg Ski Patrol shirt proudly displayed. We got a kick out of it!

Base of the mountain! Ready for a long day of skiing!
We had such a fun trip...it makes me ready for another vacation very soon. Mac has decided that he is going to retire his snowboard and give skiing a try on our next trip. Fingers are crossed that we can make another trip to the mountains next year.