Birthdays, Balloons & Bling!

This weekend was pretty eventful for us, our friends and family. Friday we learned just how much you have to search for a good time in Abilene. We went to a karaoke bar...that was in a Ramada Inn hotel bar...that closed at midnight... We of course had a blast because we make fun WHEREVER we are but it was kind of a funny where we actually were.

Saturday my parents and sister came over from Dallas for the day/spend the night. After we watched the A&M football game (which we won, WHOOP!) we showed everyone the base, where I'll be working and what little of Abilene there is to see. Then we had dinner at Perini Ranch in Buffalo Gap which is actually a world famous steakhouse. The owner has cooked in the White House for 2 presidents! Plus, has catered hundreds of other high profile events. Needless to say, it was DELICIOUS! The main reasons for their trip over to Abilene was 1. My sister's birthday was today and 2. Abilene had it's 12th annual Balloon Festival! Now, don't get too excited when I say balloon festival, there were literally 12 balloons. But it made for a fun day starting with a 10K Fun Run Todd and I did and a balloon "glow" that we all went to after dinner. It was nice since it was at a park less than a mile and half from our house that we run at several days a week.





Speaking of hot air balloons, our friends Allen and Meghan got engaged Saturday night while on a tethered hot air balloon ride out at the balloon festival. I have to give the boy credit for a really romantic way to pop the question. Allen was one of Todd's groomsmen and he and Meghan have been dating for a little over a year. She recently moved to Abilene to pursue the relationship and now their getting married! We're all very excited for them. They are an adorable couple and great friends. And we're glad Allen is making Meghan a part of our little Air Force family of married couples :)



So tomorrow is the big start of the end of my master's degree! I'm very excited and very nervous to start my clinical fieldwork. I'll be working at one of the hospitals here in the outpatient hand therapy department which is actually one of the more difficult fields of occupational therapy since it's very detailed. I've talked to my clinical instructor (CI) a few times and she seems really nice so hopefully it will be a great 12 week experience. I'm more excited right now to have something to do day to day and a routine to go back to that doesn't include the daytime TV lineup. We'll see how it goes :)

It's not a tumor!

Ok, it really is a tumor, or was a tumor but every time I hear the word tumor I think of that line from Kindergarten Cop which MUST be said with the Schwarzenegger accent. Anyway, Friday at 3pm I had my eye tumor removed from my right tear duct. The doctor said it looked like your average granuloma, completely benign but still has to biopsy it to be sure. I have to honestly admit that I really underestimated how this procedure would affect me. My doctor acted like it wasn't going to be a very big deal and since I've had Lasik I didn't think much worse could happen to your eye. It was a simple surgery- local anesthesia, some numbing drops, about 45 minutes of total time and 2 stitches but I must say I did not expect the amount of discomfort during or after he was done. Within about 15 minutes of walking out of the office the anesthetic shot began to wear off and I felt like I had been given a swift right hook to the eye that left a bleeding laceration. Needless to say, I really didn't feel like talking to anyone or doing much of anything. Fortunately, a few Tylenol seemed to help. Friday night I didn't sleep very well either because every time I brushed my right cheek on the pillow it pulled at the skin causing pain. Saturday I woke up feeling better but as the day wore on I found the pain to my eye increasing, again making me not really want to talk to anyone or do much. But again, Tylenol seemed to help a lot. Today has certainly been better than the first two and I managed to catch the pain before it got too bad. So long story short, my eye is healing well and I will never again scoff at "minor surgical procedures" to the eye. Thank you all for your prayers, phone calls and text messages. I feel loved and blessed every day.

What did I do before HD & DVR??

Seriously? What did I do before HDTV & DVR? For so long Todd and I talked about how TV's weren't that important to us and we didn't need to upgrade from our 32" tube tv (yes, they still exist and we owned one). All of our friends have bought nice, new flat screen TVs with HD with all the bells and whistles but we never got it. Then one Saturday we went to Sam's Club, to buy pickles and beer by the way (yes, I know that sounds odd, but it's true) and right in the front door are all the TVs. The A&M game was coming on TV that afternoon and out of nowhere Todd says, "we should get a new TV to watch the game on". I thought he was joking but there we were looking at all the TVs, sizes, features and ultimately applying for the Sam's Club Discover card that would give us no interest payments for 6 months. The most unconventional, impulse purchase Todd and I have ever made separately or together happened that day. We generally discuss options, shop around, talk to people, try to make an informed consumer decision- nope, didn't happen. After less than 1 hour in the store, we rolled out our new Samsung, 52", LCD, flat screen TV. We had already upgraded to DVR a few weeks before, for the Olympics and couldn't get HD until Monday, but man, when we did! We had seen HDTV and admired it but never realized just how crappy the standard cable picture really is. I don't know if it's because we have more time to watch TV now or if a big, crystal clear picture makes us want to watch more TV but the amount of TV we watch has gone up exponentially. And yes, I'll admit, if you don't own a big screen HDTV, don't invite me to come watch a football game with you, I've now joined the ranks of TV snobs who will only watch Steve McGee & Tony Romo in HD.

Sue me, it's fabulous.

PS- and we did find out that we did get a GREAT tv for a great price and could not have gotten a better deal anywhere else. So sometimes impulse buying does pay off :)

Whole Wheat Banana Nut Bread

My dear friend Stephanie got me hooked on a book called "Small Batch Baking" by Debby Maugans Nakos. I was able to buy it on Amazon.com for $4+ shipping/handling. It really is a great concept and book because who doesn't love dessert but doesn't like making 2 dozen cookies with only 2 people to eat them. I LOVE dessert...Todd, not so much, but he'll usually eat a little bit so small batch baking is great for us. The book has recipes for cookies, cakes, cupcakes, breads, you name it and the recipes are all scaled for 2-3 servings each and most of the recipes call for ingredients you typically have around the house. You can't just take a regular cake recipe and divide it by 8 and make that to get 2-3 servings, so there is a science behind it. Anyway, I got the book a few weeks ago but hadn't made anything yet but Todd and I had 2 bananas that we just couldn't seem to eat before they got too ripe and anyone that knows me knows that I like them pretty brown, but even these had gone too far for me. So I was hoping their was a banana bread recipe in the small batch baking book and low and behold, there was! The only kicker was that small batch baking has to take place in small baking pans, which of course you don't register for at Bed Bath and Beyond when you get married, but who doesn't need an excuse to go to Target?! Well, Wilton makes a whole line of mini bakeware for $6 a piece...mini loaf pans, cake pans, bundt pan, and tube pan! I just got the loaf pan and cake pans because I figure I'll use those more, maybe I'll get the others another time. So after all that I made the banana bread which turned out DELICIOUS!



Here's how I made it...

Ingredients:
Unsalted butter, at room temperature for preparing the loaf pan (I used Pam for baking)
1/4 cup plus 1 tbs. all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flower
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (1 to 1 1/2 bananas) (I used 2)
1/4 cup plus 2 tbs packed light brown sugar
3 tbs vegetable oil
3/4 tsp vanilla
yolk of 1 medium egg (I used about 3/4 of a large egg yolk)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional) (I used walnuts)

Pan required: 1 petite loaf pan (5x3 inches)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease loaf pan and set aside.

Place both flours, baking powder, soda and salt in a medium mixing bowl and whisk to blend.

Place the mashed bananas, brown sugar, oil, vanilla, and egg yolk in a small bowl and whisk to blend. Add the banana mixture to the flour mixture all at once, and stir until just blended. Stir in nuts if using.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan, and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 23-25 minutes. (23 was perfect for me).

Remove pan from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Loaf will keep for 2 days at room temperature or for 1 month in the freezer.

Yum!

6 saltines in 1 minute

Can you eat 6 saltines in 1 minute??

Honestly, I've never heard of this so called "lunch time dare" but we were watching Food Detectives on the Food Network today and that was one of their questions. So of course I say to Todd, "I bet I could do it" to which he replies, "No you can't, it's impossible." Sure enough we find ourselves in the kitchen with a stop watch and our box of saltines. I could eat almost 5 in 1 minute and after 2 failed attempts, Todd couldn't do it either, but of course, he still thinks he can.

Oh the things you do on a lazy Sunday afternoon :)

Friday Night Lights & "The Beast"

There are a few things almost all Texans look forward to during the fall....The State Fair and football! I definitely grew up where Friday nights was football night and you were pretty much wrong if you didn't go to the game. Once I got to college Saturday became football day and again, you were wrong if you didn't go. So Todd and I decided to go to one of the biggest west Texas football games of the year last night- Abilene High vs. Abilene Cooper. It was a GREAT game and so much fun to see boys play football who still love the game for the game and not the money and they still have dreams of leaving their small town to go to Austin, College Station or, God forbid, Lubbock to play division 1 college ball. The game was played at Shotwell stadium on the east side of town. The stadium holds 15,000 and was pretty much sold out! We got tickets on the Cooper side and therefore decided to cheer for the Cougars but after a hard 48 minutes, Abilene High ended up with the win. The only downfall of the night was the realization of how much older we are than high schoolers and how different "kids are these days". It was kind of shocking. Overall, it was a great $12 spent.

We couldn't make it too much of a late night since we made plans to run Steamboat Mountain at 6:30am this morning with the Abilene Runners Club. Steamboat Mountain, also known as "The Beast" is an actual mountain (or really tall mesa according to Todd) about 10 miles south of Abilene in Buffalo Gap and is a nice 13 mile route up and back down the mountain. Not having run many hills since leaving San Antonio we were in for quite the climb...a 14% grade for a quarter mile to the summit with a few "smaller hills" on either side. It was quite a run! It was nice to run with about 10 other runners, all training for the San Antonio Marathon, of all different running levels, ages and backgrounds. We think we'll stick with the Club and run with them some more.

By 11:15am it has already been a great weekend.

101 Days

As of today Todd and I have been married for 101 days! Time really does fly! As a tribute to 100+ days of marriage I've decided to start a blog to write about our adventures and my random thoughts...whatever occurs most often :) So here is a run down of the last 100 days...

*We made our first official move to Abilene, Texas and are renting an old house in a quiet older neighborhood of Abilene.

*We made it through our first temporary deployment (TDY) of almost a month while Todd went to SERE in Washington.

*We rescued a 7 year old Brittany Spaniel named Bella from the American Brittany Rescue.
*We went on our honeymoon! An amazing 7 day Royal Caribbean cruise that left from San Juan, Puerto Rico and stopped in Aruba, Curacao, St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

*Todd finally started his last phase of training for the B1-bomber. He's scheduled to finish sometime in the end of February or early March 2009.

*We found out that our next home, for hopefully at least 4 years will be Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota! We'll move in March/April 2009.

*We signed up and started training for the Inaugural Rock n' Roll Marathon in San Antonio on November 16, 2008!

I guess that's all the highlights of the past 101 days. Things are otherwise pretty boring here in Abilene. There isn't a whole lot to do but our small group of friends make the most of it. Maybe the next 100 days will be more eventful :)