I want to bite the muffin man

The smartest and I are on a health kick. I know, I know, we health kick every couple of weeks it feels like... only to be slowly seduced and led astray by soda, chocolate and the all important Chili's chips and salsa with ranch.

The smartest and I decided that we were in need of a bit of a life style change, so we decided to start a new eating regime in September (notice how I didn't say "diet", because the word "diet" sounds nowhere near as awesome as "eating regime"). We are trying some new things, including tracking our fitness and having a bit of competition between the two of us.

Shockingly, its actually been pretty fun so far. Something about being in competition with each other reminds us to be a bit more active, so we have been swimming more, playing soccer, and even ran a 5K last week (in the pouring and rather chilly rain), just for fun. Though my calves STILL aren't sure it was fun.

We have also opted to limit the grains/sugar/carbs that we consume. So we are trying to stay on the meat/veggie/fruit side of things. No bread. No chocolate. No snow cones. Here's what our house looks like these days after I hit the grocery store:

Shockingly, I haven't chased a bread truck down the street yet. But don't worry... it is still early. I may yet find time in my day to bite the muffin man.

A couple of things that we have discovered so far:

- The smartest likes mangoes
- I like grilled squash
- When you don't eat sugar, ripe fruit really does start tasting incredibly sweet
- Between the 2 of us, we can consume roughly 10 bananas in one week
- Friendly competition is an excellent motivating tool

We are definitely seeing some results- I, for example, can feel that we are eating less salt because my wedding rings fit the way that they did when we got married. We both feel quite a bit better most of the time- which isn't to say that we don't also feel hungry ALL the time, but we definitely feel better. Here are a couple of the recipes that we have tried variations of and liked:

Chicken tenders with avocado sauce  
One Pan Chicken 
Squash


Wish us luck as the Halloween Candy starts sneaking on to the shelves!

3 Years of Bliss (and stuff)

As of yesterday, the smartest and I have been hitched for 3 years. 3 years you guys. Does it feel like longer than that to you? Technically we've been together for a bunch longer than that, but our wedding feels like eons (that's right, EONS) ago. We're diggin this whole marriage thing, though, I have to tell you. (And not just because the smartest single handedly made the most delicious steak I've ever eaten in all my life yesterday.) Per our tradition, we snapped a selfie with our trusty wedding vows in front of the new house to commemorate the year. We added it to the collection, which now looks like this:

Surprise! New House!

You guys know how I said that there was a good reason for my sudden onset of absolutely-zero-blogginess?

There is. We... moved.

We've been pondering moving for awhile now, and had been casually looking at occasional houses for about 6 months or so. We had quite the list of criteria- so much of a list that we actually didn't really think we could find everything we were looking for. A couple of things we really really wanted were:

- A shop or outbuilding for the smartest (preferably with a concrete floor, to decrease likelihood of fire when he... lights things on fire)
- An office and 3 bedrooms. Since we one day may decide to have little humans... one day. In the far. Far. FAR future. And we want family to come and love those little humans. In the far. Far. FAR future.
- Trees
- Space
- A partially fenced yard
- More kitchen space
- A porch

The smartest and I started looking in different towns that are within striking distance of the town we went to college in, and started to toy with the idea of moving somewhere a bit more rural. As it turns out- the culture  differences that I struggle with so much in Oklahoma aren't necessarily Oklahoma related- they are more related to rural vs suburbs. Who knew? Once we opened our search to some additional locations...

... We found the perfect house.

It was bizarre and incredibly fast (but while it was happening... it felt incredibly slow). We still can't believe it. We moved a week ago today (with the help of fabulous friends- thanks guys you are amazing!) and are love love LOVING it here so far. I promise to share many photos- we've already tackled painting 2 rooms so I will give you a little peek of those soon. In the meantime- I will be unpacking with the help of these little imps:

Valentines day, 3 years apart

The smartest and I went to see Beauty and the Beast at the Civic Center for Valentines day. We walked in... picked up a program... and I was suddenly gripped with the feeling that we had done this before.

Surely not. I must be imagining things.

We went in, sat down, and peered at the stage. I could have sworn that I recognized the stage- the glowing rose and the framework.

No possible way. We have absolutely not seen this play before. Right?

Wrong. A bit of research (who says that my creepy blogging isn't useful) revealed that exactly 3 years before, the smartest and I attended a broadway production of Beauty and the Beast. For Valentines day. At the same theater. In the same seats, one row up.

How. Hilariously. Embarrassing.

2011

2014

To be fair, in 2011, the smartest and I were in the beginning stages of wedding planning, and about to close on our house. So our minds were probably pretty full of other, non-theater related things. But still.

I even wore the same necklace on both occasions. We are creatures of habit, evidentially.

Happy Halloween!

We interrupt your regularly schedule recaps to bring you a very special Halloween message. Over the weekend, the smartest and Cousin K took Mrs. Cousin K and I out to a masquerade ball. That's right. We're living the dream a little bit. It was gloriously fun. Anyone recognize this dress, by the way? It was almost 3 years to the day from when the smartest and I went to dinner at the same place, and he asked me to marry him, so it was fun to walk around the grounds and reminisce. While wearing capes... because who doesn't have a hankering to wear a cape every now and then.

Also over the weekend, the puppy turned 1! We bought her a puppy cookie. And she proceeded to chew on my underpants. I'm pretty sure she thought it was the world's most perfect day.

Photo Mapping

The smartest and I are sort of obsessed with GPS tracking our photos. As I mentioned yesterday in my post, we will literally take a photo of nothing, just to add a new dot to our photo map (that's right Detroit. Sorry that I only took a photo of the tarmac).

Until recently, my photo map was mostly contained to the mid-west, because that is where the majority of our family lives. This year, however, we are having ourselves a busy little travel year, so the map has gotten MUCH more interesting, quite suddenly.

The iPhoto map is really pretty cool. It breaks down where your photos have been taken by state, country, city, and recognized place (and apparently, the church we go to is recognized by Google. Nicely done, church of ours). My favorite listed place is "North Atlantic Ocean" and "North Pacific Ocean", because it makes me feel like maybe we ventured out in a boat into the ocean to take photos. Which, by the way, we didn't.

So if you ever see us pulled over on the side of the road in no-man's land, you can pretty well bet that we are taking a photo to score a dot on our awesome map of travel.

B is for Bon Voyage: Nice (part 3)

We have come to the final day of my re-caps. Are you impressed that I have made the experience of blogging about our trip twice as long as the trip itself? You should be throughly impressed. Today I thought I would just share the pieces I haven't shared yet, in no particular order.

One day, we had lobster. It had a face. You guys know how I feel about faces on my plate. I ate most of it anyway- be impressed.

We went wandered around town a little one day, and took photos outside this large and awesome casino. I love that our casinos have fake fronts to look awesome... but this one was legit awesome.

 

 

I loved the flags along the water. There was something very internationally cool about seeing all of the flags side by side. Even though at least half of them were actually flags for hotels.

The boys hated taking photos. We eventually just cut them out of the equation and took girl photos instead.

And that lasted for all of 5 seconds. Because lets face it- we love having photos of/with/near our fellas. And annoying them is sort of enjoyable:)

 

They fed us lots on the ride home. At one point, there was ice cream. It was crazy.

We flew back through Detroit, I think? I took one photo, because I wanted to add a GPS dot to my photo map.

The puppy was pretty excited to see us. She decided she needed to touch me at all times, to prevent me from leaving again. So there was quite a bit of this action the next couple days:

B is for Bon Voyage: Italy

We decided to take a day trip to Italy. Which pretty much blew my mind. I mean... who takes a DAY TRIP to Italy? People who live in France, apparently. We drove through/past Monaco on our way, which was really cool, and spent nearly the entire drive on the coastline... which led to the most GORGEOUS views. There is probably smudge marks on the back windows of the car we drove from me staring outside so intently. Ps- that's where the black lines in the photos came from. The back window. I make no apologies... now you can have the full driving experience!

 

 

We spent the day in Italy shopping, which was really fun. There was also some gelato- which was delicious (and my very first). The architecture there was equally as awesome as the architecture in France.

The stores were so interesting. There was everything from super high end stuff to people peddling wares on the street- which made for a fun and diverse experience. Apparently I thought this display was pretty awesome.

After making the trek back across the border, we did a little celebrating of Mrs. K's birthday (I'm still working on a pseudonym that makes sense. We are getting convoluted up in here, you guys). There was chocolate. It was awesome.