TRI HARDER

In February, my sister, Thomas and I decided that we were going to do a Triathlon. We started training for the CapTexTri on 5/31. We trained most of the days together and it was a blast. I had so much fun! I highly recommend to everyone that if you want to work out and you have a group of really good friends you should do a Triathlon together. It's a great way to lose weight or get in shape and you guys will have so much fun, I guarantee it!

Since the Triathlon we've already started training for our next one. It's on Labor Day and we're so excited. Our first Tri was a 400 Meter Swim/6 mile bike/3 mile run and now we're hoping to do an Olympic Triathlon in the AVIA Austin Triathlon. It's a 1500 Meter Swim, 25 Mile Bike, 6 Mile Run. It sounds crazy but we're going to TRI really hard to do it! :)

If you want to sign up yourself you can go here: http://www.theaustintriathlon.com/register.asp

And if you want help training for it, we found this training schedule:
http://www.trifuel.com/triathlon-training/Olympic-Triathlon-Training.php

Join in, have fun and GOOD LUCK!

"I Mean Come On Now" - NOAH!

So my sweet baby cousin was born on April 1st and I'm in love all over again. He's such a beautiful sweet baby. He smiles so much. He's such a happy baby and he has some of the best parents in the world.


His name is Noah James Lancaster and he'll melt your heart. I could just watch him all day. It's the most entertaining thing ever. He's just wonderful.

We know he's going to be so funny since his birthday was on April Fools Day. He'll learn a lot of good jokes from his mommy and daddy (and his dorky cousin Amber :) ).




Enjoy the pictures of my beautiful sweet baby cousin Noah.

Valentine's weekend was great. Saturday Karl wanted to go bowling because we've been playing Wii bowling with his parents a lot. We hadn't been bowling in so long. It was a lot of fun.


Karl got me an edible bouquet. It was awesome! He got the dipping chocolate and it was soooooooooo good.


Sunday morning I got up to go see Shelly run the full marathon and Karl had to go to work. My poor baby.

Shelly did awesome!


Once Karl got off of work we hung out in our back yard. It was beautiful outside. Then we watched Couples Retreat. That's a funny movie. I highly recommend it for a good laugh. Then Karl made us steak for dinner. It was so yummy. It was a nice weekend.

Christmas 2009

Christmas went by so fast this year...as it always does. I think I'm going to start celebrating Christmas starting in October. That way it will last almost 3 months. I like that idea. :)

Anyhow, it was a great one. Karl and I made a deal that we wouldn't go as crazy as we had in the past but I couldn't help it. I never can. He couldn't either. It's too hard to not want to surprise each other. I like it :). I can't wait to have kids and then we'll get to surprise them.









We had Christmas Eve at my aunt Brigette's house (a tradition) and then spent the night at my parent's house so that we could all get up at 6:00 and run in the living room to start opening our presents :). It will never get old to me. We did it a little differently this year though. Each family handed out their presents at a time so we could all see each person open our gifts. We usually just rip them to shreds like a bunch of kids but it was nice to take it a little slower this year. Karl made everyone breakfast and it was so much fun!





After that we drove over to Karl's parent's house and had Christmas morning there as well. We do it a little different there. You have to guess what your present is before you can open it. I almost never get any of them right but it is fun to guess. This year we surprised his dad and sis with some NASCAR tickets. They would have NEVER guessed that.

Then for the first time both of our families got together for Christmas dinner. It was so nice to only have to go to one place for dinner. Especially since I made two dishes for us and it took me 3 hours to make them that day. We drove home from Karl's parent's house and we got to cooking. I just finished right before we had to leave. I made some yummy loaded mashed potatoes and green beans with bacon in them. They were so good but so NOT good for you. Oh well, that's what Christmas is about...eating a ton of food and gaining a couple of pounds...haha.





Christmas night Shawn'Na and I played our newly beloved Twilight games that we both got for Christmas while the boys watched the Cowboys game. All in all it was a wonderful Christmas.

I hope everyone had a great one and a Happy New Year!

Our New House!

Hey everyone! We bought a house! It's BEAUTIFUL.

I can't wait to move in. We close on October 30th. It's everything we dreamed of. It only took us about a month to find it. We had been searching for homes with bigger lots and big enough home to fit a family in but all we could find were one story homes that covered up most of the lot. So, we found this home that had a smaller lot but sent up in square feet instead of out. It's in a beautiful neighborhood. It's on a hill so we can still see homes behind us but we can also see hills. I love it.

It has four bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. We're planning on having 2 (maybe 3) children so this will fit us well. It has the most beautiful wood floors. They are hand carved and dark.

Another great thing is that we live less than a mile away from Matt & Sienna. They are the most adorable couple ever and they have 2 beautiful baby boys. They are the sweetest people ever.

It's going to be so amazing living in our own house together. I can't even imagine what it will be like. I just know that I'm extremely excited.

We have a lot of furniture shopping to do! I'll post more pictures once I move in and add my personal style :).

Annual Cubs Game

Did I ever tell you that Karl and I have started a tradition of going to at least 1 Cubs game every year? We've been going ever since we've been together. We believe that their success depends on us....ok...maybe that isn't true but I do feel like the year we don't go we'll cause them to not do as well as they could have. You know how it goes...baseball superstitions.

The first year we were together I bought Karl tickets for his birthday. We sat in the nose bleed section because I wasn't sure where to get them. I know now that the best place to sit is behind the bullpen for the Astro's. This is where you can catch a lot of home runs. It's also fun to stand there while they are having their pre-game batting practice. A LOT of home runs are hit over in this area.

One year Karl caught one and handed it to the little kid next to him. Come to think of it he's done that a few times. He's such a sweetheart. I can't wait to have kids so he can catch one for them too.

Next year we are planning to go to Chicago for our 3 year wedding anniversary to see the Cubs play. I'm SO EXCITED! I can't wait to be with all of the fans and be able to celebrate appropriately. Most of our friends are Astro's fans so it's kind of hard for us to gloat.

We've also decided that once we have kids we'll plan all of our family vacations around the Cub's games. We figured it would be so neat to go to at least one of their games in a different stadium.

I've put some pictures up from the last two years. I can't wait to show you guys the ones from Chicago. Be on the lookout for this next summer.

Anniversary

Karl and I just celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary in July. We were planning to go to Chicago this year but our plans didn't work out. We WILL go next year though.

Since we weren't able to go I decided to plan a secret date to Mangia. It's a restaurant that has Chicago style pizza. I figured if we couldn't go to Chicago I would bring a little piece of Chicago to us. I sent Karl directions and told him to meet me after work (it was on a Tuesday). Little did I know that he was going to pop the directions into google and find out where we were going (what a stinker). After work we pulled up and Karl had a BEAUTIFUL rose and gladiola arrangement for me. It was so beautiful. I decided to bring my flowers into the restaurant because I didn't want them to get ruined in the car.

We walked in and the hostess asked us what the occasion was. We told her it was our 2 year wedding anniversary and she looked at us like we were crazy and said "Congratulations." I guess you could say that we didn't have typical wedding anniversary celebration but we liked it. For our 1 year anniversary we went to Buffalo Wings & Rings because it's our FAVORITE restaurant. I never like buffalo wings until we found that place. :)

We were seated and we got a medium sized deep dish pizza. It was HUGE. I could have eaten on it for a week. I liked the pizza but the only thing I didn't like about it is that the tomato sauce is on top of the cheese and I like the cheese more than I like the tomato sauce. Overall it was a pretty good pizza. The waiter also asked us what the occasion was and after we told him he said, "Wow, thanks for sharing that with us." It was funny and we had fun :).

Our 7 year dating anniversary is this Wednesday. I can't believe we've been together that long. It's been so much fun. I get to be with my best friend every day. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Did I tell you that we were getting a house? I'll write my next blog on that. It's BEAUTIFUL! Closing date is October 30th! Less than a month away :)