1.17.2012

1.17.2012 was one of the best days of my life. I say one of my best because each day with Hudson Gene Friedeck gets better and better. I can't believe how lucky I am to have this precious angel in my life. I've never felt more in love in my whole life. I have some catching up to do on posts each month on my sweet baby getting older and older so here goes 5 months :) I love these two photos from the day Hudson was born.

Sweet baby boy with his daddy.

My sweet angel in my arms.

New York with the in-laws minus my husband February 2011

I was sitting at my in-law's one day and listening to them discuss their trip to New York for Shelly's birthday. My father-in-law (Stan), mother-in-law (Eileen), sister-in-law (Shelly) and her boyfriend (Patrick) were going for her birthday. Stan told me & Karl how much the plane tickets were and we both were amazed how cheap it was. Eileen suggested that I go since it wouldn't be that bad of a price. Karl couldn't go because of the tax season but he insisted that I go...so I said yes. I was so excited. I was going to go to New York for 6 whole days!! Right after I just went to Chicago. We decided to not tell Shelly so that it would be a surprise. She was so happy when she found out. I have the best sister-in-law in the world. I have the best in-laws!

What an amazing trip we had. We did everything a true tourist would do. I loved it. We woke up at a reasonable hour and didn't get back to the hotel until it was night time. I lost weight on the trip from all of the walking haha. Also, in New York the restaurants have labels with calories listed on them so you can make a better choice if you want :). The first day we were there I didn't make any "healthy" choices. Oh another awesome thing. Patrick is a huge Starbucks fan so we got Starbucks every morning. I LOVED it. We stayed at the Belvedere. Shelly, Eileen and I squeezed into a full size bed. That was fun lol. It was a tight squeeze.

Check out these photos if you have a Facebook account :)

Day 1 - The Belvedere, walking around Grand Central Station, stopping by Mood, and walking around the Rockefeller Center.

Day 2 - Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Time Square.

Day 3 & 4 - The Bronx Zoo, Skating at the Rockefeller Center, Empire State Building, and Museum of Natural History (one of my favorites).

Day 5 & 6 - China Town, Little Italy, F A O Schwarz (I LOVED playing on the Big Piano) and Central Park.

Time to Catch Up - Chicago July 2010

So it's been awhile since I've posted about our adventures. Karl and I took a trip to Chicago July 2010. It was a great trip. We had been planning to go to Chicago to watch the Cubs play in Wrigley Field. All of these years we have been going to watch the Cubs play the Astros in Houston since it's closer and we finally got to go to Chicago.

Wrigley Field

What an awesome place Chicago is. If you ever have a chance to go you absolutely have to. It's like a great mixture of Austin and New York. It's huge and fun like New York and beautiful and relaxed like Austin.

We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel. It was absolutely beautiful. There were peacocks everywhere. It was beautiful. I spent one night going through the hotel by myself exploring all of the different floors. It's an old hotel...so I got scared a few times when the floor was empty and I'd take a picture and see a bunch of orbs.



The Cloud-Gate "Bean"

This was awesome. It was a large bean shaped mirror in Millennium Park that you could stand in front of and take a picture so that you had the Chicago Skyline behind you. It was soo cool.




We walked by this park several times on our way to different locations and we would always stop by the Bean to take our picture.



Also, as we walked down the street there were these beautiful planters everywhere. With beautiful flowers. And you'd think that would have water hooked up but instead water trucks would go by every morning and water the beautiful flowers.



Karl and I took a few photos in Millennium park where there were beautiful flowers everywhere too.






As you walk down the Magnificent Mile you'll notice the city is full of beautiful architecture. We took pictures of beautiful buildings on a romantic night. We walked around the city one night with no plans just soaking in all of the beautiful buildings and the wonderful atmosphere.




The Navy Pier

This was one romantic night if you need one. We took a boat ride to the Navy Pier and rode the Ferris wheel then ended the night with fireworks that only happen during certain times of the year. It was one of the best nights in Chicago.







The Sky Deck

You'll also want to check this out. It's one of the tallest buildings in the United States. Our advice would be to go as early as possible. The lines are long and will be longer if you wait to go in the afternoon. It was so crazy to step out in the box. Your knees will start to shake when you first step out. Another word of advice...if someone starts jumping in the box step away...haha.



Farewell Chicago - it was sad to leave. We'd both love to live there and know that we'll be back as soon as and as often as we can.






If you need advice or need tips on places to go let me know. Here are a few places listed above that are great to go do:

1) The Skydeck

2) Millennium Park

3) The Cloud-Gate

4) Navy Pier

5) Gino's East - great pizza!

6) Magnificent Mile - great shopping and architecture

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!