Summertime Weekend

This weekend really felt like summer!  On Friday night I had to work, but when I got off around 10:00 I came home to scoop up Austin, and we went over to our friends Paul and Megan's apartment.  We hung out over there, learned a new game, broke Megan's blender, and went to our favorite burger place: In 'n Out baby!  Paul had never been there before, so of course we had to take him :)  We went through the drive-thru, adorned our paper hats, and then chowed down on some double double animal styles.  If you guys haven't been to In 'n Out yet please come up to Dallas immediately, and me and Austin will show you the ways.  

On Saturday we woke up, had our morning coffee/hot chocolate, ate some breakfast, and then headed down to the pool.  Laying out by the pool with a book is seriously one of my favorite summertime activities, and is also one of the only ways I can get myself to read haha.  While we were laying out our friend's Andrew and Angel came over to hang out.  Austin went to high school with them, and now they live in Dallas, so we have more friends up here...yay!!

Austin's reading a book about WWII, and I have The Devil Wears Prada

Austin took a little break to go play at the park right next to the pool :)

On Saturday night our other friends Daisy and Caesar joined me, Austin, Andrew, and Angel at our apartment to have game night.  Austin and I cooked dinner (spaghetti for the boys and shrimp linguine for the girls with bleu cheese salad and garlic bread), and then we played cranium and pictionary.  The dinner was fast, and turned out really good.  To make the shrimp pasta I just sauteed some squash and zuccini in about a tablespoon of olive oil, then cooked the shrimp in the same pan with a little bit of minced garlic.  I added in some cooked linguine, and it was dinner time.

Delsihh

Of course I had to pair it all with a big glass of riesling...

While we ate dinner we watched the US v. Mexico Gold Cup Final game.  The US team lost, but we didn't let that ruin our evening!  After the kitchen was clean and the soccer was over we switched into board game mode.  Up first was pictionary, and we played in teams of couples.

We couldn't really figure out how to use the board for this game, so we kind of just took turns drawing and guessing, but eventually got bored (no pun intended), and switched to cranium.

For cranium we played boys v. girls...

Look at that crack squad of girlies

And the stinky boys team...

The boys ended up winning (boo), but then we played again with mixed teams, and me, Austin, and Angel won (woo!).  By the time we finished the second game I was a sleepy bear, so while the boys played video games me and Daisy fell asleep on the couch.  Yesterday we pretty much just bummed around all day, and then while I went to the rabba's Austin played tennis and hung out with Caesar.  This morning Austin went to his new work to fill out paperwork because he starts on Friday (!!!).  I hope everyone had a great weekend, and is having a happy Monday!  I'll leave you with a picture from Saturday night of Angel's dog, Mia, just lounging on our chair.

What a cutie! :)

Visitors & Pizza

This week has been busy busy, but lots of fun :)  Austin is back...yay!!!  He hitched a ride back to Dallas with my Uncle Scott and cousin Shane on Monday, and the three of them had a boys night at the Rangers game while I was at work.  The Rangers were playing the Astros (known as the disastros around our apartment these days), and Scott & Austin were rooting for the 'stros while Shane was going for the Rangers.  Shane and Scott had a bet that whichever team lost had to give the winning team a foot rub.  I'm sad to say that our boys form H-town couldn't pull it off, so Scott was stuck rubbing Shane's smelly feet haha.  It was fun having our first house guests on Monday night.  On Tuesday morning the burrito fairy paid us a visit, so we all got to eat yummy breakfast tacos.

I worked on Tuesday night, but I had the day off yesterday, so me and Austin were productive!  We woke up around 10:30, had our morning coffee/hot chocolate (I will vom if I drink coffee), and then hit up Wally world.  I swear I don't even know why I shop there...every time I go to Walmart there is some sort of problem.  Yesterday the issue was that they were out of pretty much ALL of their refrigerated/frozen foods because their power was knocked out by a storm we had on Tuesday night.  And of course a good majority of our list was cold food.  Way to blow the game Walmart.  So we bought what we needed that wasn't cold, and then got out of there.  Then we ran errands (bank, dry cleaners, etc), and went to our apartment gym to work on our beach bods.  I also did some laund-o and cleaned the casa a little bit.  Then it was party time baby.  Austin and I went over to our friend Caesar's house to make dinner and watch So You Think You Can Dance.  How delish does this pizza look?

Yeah, Austin, Caesar, and I scarfed that down faster than you can whistle dixie.  I got the recipe from another blog that I read....I make stuff from this girl all the time, and it always turns out really yummy.  Here's the recipe for the pizza: eat live run.  I just used the crust recipe, and then we added our own toppings--mozzarella, pepperonis, and pineapple.  Yum!!  Here's some pics from the baking process:

Austin or Pete the pizza maker?

Before the oven...

After the oven...

Ta Da!!

Today we just kind of lounged around, did some laundry, and then I had to work.  I'm working a double tomorrow, but I have Saturday off so I'm sure we will get into some fun adventures!  I hope everyone is having a wonderful week!!

Happy Father's Day!

Well I hope all the papas out there had a wonderful day yesterday!  I went to Austin this weekend to meet up with my Dad and some of his family.  I got there Saturday afternoon, and we went to lunch at this place called Cherry Creek.  They have really yummy catfish and shrimp, but the reason we like going there is because they have THE BEST fried green tomatoes in the world.  We gobbled up as many of those as we could, and then spent the rest of the day over at my dad's cousin's house.  Here's a picture of me, my cousin, Alisa, my dad, and Mimi at Cherry Creek:

For dinner that night we went to a Mexican restaurant called Seranos.  The food was good, but the margs were better :)

Cheers!

On Sunday morning we pretty much got up, ate breakfast (I brought my dad doughnuts), and then I had to hit the road because I had to work at 4:00.  So, it was a short trip, but I'm glad I got to spend time with my pops on father's day weekend!  

Do you ever notice how no matter how many times you check your bag, or go over your packing list you always seem to forget something when you go out of town?  Well, that always alwaysss happens to me.  This weekend I forgot my face moisturizer.  I didn't think it was a huge deal, but once I got out of the shower I realized that my face would be raisin-like for the day if I didn't get some kind of lotion on there stat.  So my search began.  I didn't want to totally ransack the house we were staying in, but I figured I could investigate a little.  However, all of the lotions I found smelled like some kind of flower or kitchen ingredient, and I really didn't want to go around smelling like that all day.  So, I had to resort to my grandma's gigantic pink overnight bag...that thing was like a black hole of beauty supplies, dental hygiene products, and other miscellanious items that I can't even describe.  But in that Mary Poppins bag is where I struck gold--in one of the seventeen side pockets I discovered "Olay's Age Defying Daily Moisturizer and 15 spf Sunscreen".  Jackpot.  I slathered some of that stuff on, and was good to go.  So, if I look younger the next time you see me you'll know why.

I'll leave you with two random pictures from this weekend.  The first is my dad posing next to a picture that's hanging on the wall at Cherry Creek, and the second is me with some new earrings that I found at Seranos.

My cousin, Josh, thinks that my dad looks like the guy in the picture right above Jimbo's thumb...

Ole!

I hope everyone has a great week!

  

  

My day in Pictures

Happy Friday everybody!!  I'm glad that the weekend is finally here!  Today was my last day of class, so now I'm free from school forever...until I start teaching that is (haha).  Since it was the last day I thought I'd bring some treats, so I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.  But, when I started making them last night I realized that I only had about 1/2 a bag of chocolate chips, so I decided to improvise.  I had some peanut butter chips laying around, so I just threw those in there and bam...choco-PB cookies.  Here's what the finished product looked like:

And here's what they looked like after my class was over today:

I guess they were alright...

Anyways, like I said today was the last day, so I got some feedback on my mini lesson plan that I presented yesterday.  My teacher gave me a 3 (the highest possible grade), and told me that my lesson plan was "fantastic".  Not to toot my own horn or anything, but toot toot!  I was so excited...especially since I did my lesson plan on English, not dance.  I know I can teach dance, but it was good to hear that I'm pretty good at teaching English too.  

After my class was over today I came home, took a little nap, and then went into work at 5:30.  We were pretty busy tonight, but it wasn't too bad.  I actually like it better when it's busy because time goes by a lot quicker.  I got cut around 9:30 or so, and went to Walmart to buy a bag to put Jimbo's padre's day present in.  When I walked in I was immediately drawn to the fabulous Father's Day display that was set up in the front of the store:

But as I look closer I noticed that one of the featured items was a little odd...

I guess Walmart just decided to get practical this year?  Anyway, I thought that was worth sharing, and after spying that enema gift suggestion the hits just kept on coming!  As I was walking to the checkout lane I saw "The Fighter" on blu-ray for 13 ducks...now that's a deal people!  I immediately added that little gem to my cart, but when Olga was scanning the movie it came out to be $25--bummer.  But remember: Walmart workers will give you pretty much any price that you want, so I politely let Olga know that the shelf said $13, and without even missing a beat she changed the price in the computer.  Puppy!  I also got to see the guy in front of me (who was buying 14 cans of vienna sausages and a 6 pack of Coors Light) almost throw down with the woman in front of him and Olga.  Pretty eventful trip for only being there about 15 minutes.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Austin to meet up with my Dad and some of his side of the family, so I'm sure I'll have some good stories to share on Sunday!  Interesting stuff always goes down when the Chan clan gets together.  I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!    

Retail Therapy and SYTYCD

Today I had school again.  All was well and good until about 2:00 when my teacher started to drone on and on and on about all of the procedures and guidelines for dealing with "exceptional learners & English language learners".  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for equal opportunities in the classroom, but the way that this woman presented the material was SO boring.  So, by the time 4:00 came around I was left with a huge headache and way too much information about all of the different types of "learners" I'll be dealing with.

So what's a girl to do when she's in need of some major boredom recovery?

SHOP of course!!  So that's exactly what I did.  Hey, I needed to go to the mall anyway to get Jimbo a father's day present...two birds, people.  As I strolled through the mall I instantly felt better.  Almost EVERY store was having some kind of sale and I had plastic gold sitting in my purse: gift cards! I ended up getting a pair of shorts and a top at Express (thanks to my sister and her hubby for the gift card), a six dolla shirt from American Eagle, a topper from Banana Republic, and some sweatpants from Victoria's Secret (not as exciting as underpants, but these will probably cover more surface area).  Oh yeah, I did find something for my pops, but that is a secret because I think he takes a peek at this thing every once in awhile, and I don't want to spoil his surprise.

Ok, so I had a great time on my shopping spree, but of course I can't go anywhere without something ridiculous happening to me...

While I was in the dressing room at Express I was taking off my old, boring clothes before trying on the new, potentially fabulous ones, and somehow I kicked one of my pink flamingo socks into the room next to mine.  And I don't mean I kicked it a little so it was kind of straddling our two rooms border patrol style, I mean I kicked that flamingo clear across the border and into Mexican territory.  My sock was now enjoying a margarita and working on its tan.  I looked under the stall to see if anyone was in there, and staring back at me were a pair of purple wedges.  Great.  I wasn't sure about the protocol on this type of situation, but I guessed that reaching my arm into her stall wouldn't exactly be appropriate.  Time for plan B.  I crouched down so I was once again face to foot with purple wedges and said, "Um, excuse me but I think my sock got kicked into your stall."  Nothin'.  Apparently the owner of these awful purple wedges not only lacked taste, but was also hard of hearing.  Guess I should've been listening to those strategies for dealing with exceptional learners after all.  I pondered a few other options (going 1/2 sockless for the remainder of my trip, reaching my hand under and hoping purple wedges wouldn't notice, etc).  I finally just decided to wait it out, and practiced making scary faces in the mirror until wedge woman exited her stall.  I'm happy to report that I left Express with both of my socks and did not get arrested for any kind of sexual offense in the process.

I got home just in time to watch So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD), which was amazing.  The best dance of the night was choreographed by my would-be-husband-if-he-wasn't-gay, Travis Wall (duh).  I'm excited to see who gets the boot tomorrow.  The rest of my night was boring: laundry, dishes, homework.  I'm currently sitting in my bed watching tonight's chick flick: Sleepless in Seattle.  Hope everyone had a happy humpday!       

Monday Surprise.

I just received a wonderful surprise in the mail!  One of my best friends in the world, Kaway (Kaitlin + Whelan = KaWay), sent me my graduation present, and it was the perfect ending to my 7 hour school day. Here's what my package contained:

The card says: You worked your butt off, and it shows!

If y'all don't know I love love loveeee Alvin and the Chimpmunks, and so this little beanie is perfect :) There was also a little present inside the card if you know what I mean jellybean...so thank you thank you to Kaway and her fam!!

On another note: I've been in school for a week plus one day now, and I have a little problem.  The class is downtown in a big sky scraper, and so I have to park in a parking garage.  Now this normally would not be a big deal.  However, there are a few inhabitants of this parking garage that I am not too fond of.  I guess the technical term for these critters would be "pigeons", but I think they look more like some kind of mutant cross between a pigeon and a large chicken.  Seriously, these things are HUGE.  As most of you know my number one fear in the whole world is birds of any kind, so you can only image how terrified I am of these chigeons.  Almost every day as I walk from my car in the morning and to my car in the afternoon, without fail, at least one chigeon will violently flap its wings and fly off over my head.  Terrifying.  That is nothing compared to what happened to me on Friday though.  As I was waiting to exit the garage on my lunch break I was daydreaming about the sonic cheeseburger, tots, and cherry limeade that were in my near future.  Just as my mouth started to water a pack of chigeons decided to take flight, and apparently my car was in the way, so instead of just flying over it they landed on my car!!!!  I almost had a heart attack, for real.  I was screaming, honking my horn, and doing anything I could think of (except accelerate) to get these birds of prey off of me.  Meanwhile the rent a cop security guard was just laughing her head off.  Um, thanks for the help lady!!  I finally got the bright idea to just move my car, and they flew off, but boy was that ever traumatic.  I think it's safe to say that my fear of birds isn't going anywhere any time soon...

Here's some pics to prove my A&TC obsession:

Before going to see the movie! 

 

Kaway and me with the Alvin poster :)

I'm about to eat dinner and then head off to work.  Happy Monday everyone!!

Weekend Update.

Welp, it's the end of my second official weekend in Dally bar.  On Friday after I got back from my teacher certification class I came home and discovered that I have been missing out on something for my entire life so far: storage wars.  If you've never heard of this show...yikes, you're missing out sister!  Basically, these two guys buy storage units that are full of people's old "junk" that turns out to be worth tons of money about 20% of the time.  I was glued to the TV for about 2 hours watching as they found old guns, vintage china, a coffin (gew), toy cars worth $2,000, and tons of other cool stuff, and then I feel asleep because I was exhausted after my week of school.  I woke up to Austin making some yummy turkey tacos, and we munched on those while we continued our storage wars marathon.  Later that night we met up with Blake (Austin's best good friend from La Porte) and his fiance, Terra Laine.  TL and I chatted about their wedding (because what else would we talk about?!), and Austin and Blake watched sports and talked to TL's dad about some old sports guy.  Wayne Jetski or something like that.

On Saturday I went to a review for the test I have to take to get my teacher certification, and I found out that it's been a looooong time since I've done 8th grade math.  I may need to get my sister to tutor me before the big test since she could probably do this stuff while blindfolded and standing on her head.  After 6 hours of walking down middle school memory lane I came back home and Austin and I embarked on a very "couple-y" adventure.  First, we ate at this BBQ place that Austin's been wanting to try called "Red, Hot, and Blue".  It's supposed to be more Tennessee inspired, and we both got the chopped pork sandwich with ribs, potato salad, and cole slaw.  Yummo.  I also had a giant margarita which was also delish.  After dinner we took a riveting trip to Linens n Things where we purchased a few miscellaneous kitchen items, and had a debate about tervis tumblers.  Then we went to WalMart to buy True Grit.  We came home and watched True Grit and Austin packed because he went home to La Porte today.  Here's some pictures of our Tennessee BBQ experience:

My favorite part was the potato salad...it was SO good!

The perfect end to a week of school...

Today Austin and I went to church.  We've started going to a local church here in Carrollton called Bent Tree Fellowship.  Austin's old boss invited us to come a couple of Sundays ago, and we both really like it.  It's a good mix of the contemporary-type church that I'm used to and the traditional one that Austin grew up with.  After church we went to our favorite place in the world: Chipotle (or as we refer to it: Choppers).  We came back to the apartment for a bit and then Blake came to pick up Austin and they drove to LP.  Austin is going home for the week because his mom is having surgery on Wednesday and he is playing nurse.  I'm coming to Sugar Land this weekend to visit Jimbo for Father's Day, and Austin is hitching a ride back to Dallas with me on Sunday.  After ATX and Blake left I went grocery shopping for the week and then went to work.  If y'all haven't heard I'm working as a hostess at Carrabba's, and so far I'm not hating it!  I definitely didn't mind the training part where I got to eat for free :)  I'm currently laying in bed watching When Harry Met Sally--one of my all time favorites ("waiter there is too much pepper in my poppycash").  I figured that since Austin is gone this could be chick flick week at the old apartment.

So there you have it...a weekend of good food,  reviewing the quadratic formula, passing out kids menus, and Matt Damon wearing chaps.  I hope everyone else had a good one!  Also, here's a picture of Austin and me at the Rangers game last week.  I'll always be an Astros fan at heart, but we couldn't pass up free tickets and $7 world series t-shirts that they were trying to get rid of!

Let's Go Rangers *clap clap clap clap clap*

My first!

Hello hello to the blog world! I have been pondering the idea of starting a blog for some time now, and I decided that now would be the perfect time to start because I am starting a LOT of new things in my life, and hey why shouldn't a little bloggy blog be one of them?!

So here's the skinny: I just moved to Dallas with my favorite butt head, Austin--also known as the boyfriend. Pretty much my entire family lives in the Houston area, so I thought this would be a good way for them to keep tabs on me, and I also thought this could be something cool for me to look back on when I'm older than the hills. Like it says in my bio over on the Ralph (right), I just graduated from Texas A&M (gig 'em aggies!), and I am currently obtaining my teacher certification.  That's another reason I wanted to start a blog: teacher stories. Growing up with a school nurse for a mom definitely made for some interesting dinner conversations, and I figured you guys would get a kick out of some of the stuff America's youth is up to these days.  The last reason I wanted to start up this thang is to share some of my favorite recipes.  I love to cook and bake, and want to invite all of you into my kitchen. I am by no means a gourmet chef, but I like to think I know a little bit about the odds and ends of whipping up a yummy dinner.

Well, there you have it. I want to share my experiences on cooking, teaching, dancing, and life in general with my family and the rest of the world, so that's what I'm gonna do!

Here are a few pics so you can put names to faces:

That's me with Austin before an aggie football game last season.

Here's me with the fam...from L-R we've got Sherbo (mom), me, Erin (my older sister aka: Fox), and Jimbo (dad)