Wedding Through The Eyes of Dad & Denise

While my Dad and Denise were here, we downloaded some of the pictures they took from our May 2010 wedding. Man does time fly!! I thought it would be kinda cool to post how our wedding looked through their eyes...

Rehearsal

Rehearsal Dinner

Morning of wedding:

Wedding:

Reception:

Brunch the day after:

Thankful Thursday: Play Dates & Goofy Face

It's thankful Thursday time! We all have so much to be thankful for and we love to take this opportunity just to write down each and everything that comes to mind. Please take this time to share with us what you're thankful for as well. If you have a blog expressing your thankfulness, please share the link! Without further ado, here's what we're thankful for:

Mandi's List:

I'm thankful that Peanut is starting to sleep well at night! We get one 5-6.5 hour stretch and a couple 2-3 hour stretches. That makes for one happy momma in the morning!

I'm thankful for a good 6 week postpartum check up and being 100% cleared to workout. I was able to get into the gym today and lift for the first time in 6 weeks and it felt awesome. And on Monday I did a 5 mile run.

I'm thankful for "play dates". I've been meeting weekly for coffee with a friend with a 3 month old, and we're going to start meeting weekly to walk the zoo (fun sights for the kids, exercise for mom). Also, we have a next door neighbor that just had a baby Sunday night and we're already planning all the fun walks and pop-bys we can have. Gotta love mommy and baby time with friends. It'll be great as the kids get older and can actually play together!

Ronnie's List:

I'm so thankful that my Dad and Denise were able to come out for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was nice to have them stay at our house as it gave us the opportunity to spend a ton of quality time together and actually use parts of our house that rarely get stepped in to! Denise was a cleaning rock star and my Dad and I were able to knock out some projects around the house (more on that to come).

I'm so thankful for my goofy looking face. For the past week or so, I've been able to get Mckenna to smile or laugh at me on command. She has one of those wide mouthed smiles that is absolutely adorable, so I'm trying to elicit one from her every chance that I get! 

I'm thankful for beautiful weather. For the past couple of weeks, we've had highs in the low to mid-70's and not a cloud in the sky. I love being able to open up all of the doors and windows in the house and just enjoy the "freshness" breezing in. Of course today, as I write this, it's raining :)

So, what are you thankful for today?

Workout Wednesday: The Update

I wanted to give ya'll an update on that exciting new workout I talked about a couple of weeks ago (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here). The "spartan" workout has been going really well and it's provide a nice break from the routine that I was stuck in for many many months. It got to the point where I was bored while doing certain lifts and found myself starting to just go through the motions instead of really focusing on what I had to do. It's so important to exercise with purpose. Going through the motions simply won't get it done. Sure, it's better than nothing, but since I'm at the gym anyway, I might as well give it my best effort.

Anyway, the first couple times doing this workout was quite an eye-opener as it is one intense booty kicker. I knew going into it that it wasn't going to be easy, but I never thought that it would make me sweat nor breath as hard as it has done. I figured that the required 3 times a week of doing this workout was going to be a piece of cake, but I now see that they purposely give you some rest days cause they're absolutely needed! I mean, I couldn't walk straight for about the first 10 days of the regiment. But as a lot of you know, getting that sore can only mean one thing - I hadn't worked out those muscles like that for a long time. And now, it's up to me to keep those seldom used muscles in shape!

The other thing that I've added to intensify this new workout is to run to the gym on my workout days. This really gets my heart rate going and I feel warmed-up before I start "pumping the iron". Now, it also make my workout more challenging as some of the lifts require me to use leg strength and stamina, and after a mile run, my legs feel a little bit like jell-o. I like it though because I'm already sweating when I enter the gym and I continue to sweat the entire way through. There's nothing like sweating your butt off at the gym, or as I like to call it - the liquid representation of all your hard work :)

Like I said before, if you're looking for a new challenge, look no further! This is a great workout and will get your lungs as pumped as your muscles. If you have any questions, please don't be afraid to ask.

Happy lifting!!

Top Ten Tuesday: Thanksgiving Day

Haven't done a Top Ten Tuesday in a while and I thought this would be a good time to write one out. With Thanksgiving here and now gone (too quickly might I add), I wanted to take the time to reflect on what I enjoyed most about this particular Turkey Day. These are in no particular order :)

Carving Knife - I have never seen, nor held for that matter, a carving knife in action. Not only did I get to see my Dad work the carving knife while slicing up the turkey, but I actually own one now since he and Denise bought us one for the house!

Stuffing - Denise, my step-mom, made her world-famous stuffing (at least in my world now). I still don't know everything that was in it, but I do know this - it contained bread and sausage. Winning.

Hosting - This was the first Thanksgiving that Mandi and I hosted at our home. We usually head down to Tucson, but with my Dad and Denise in town, we thought it would be a perfect time to have Thanksgiving at our house. It was awesome to be able to use our kitchen to it's full capacity and put our dining room table to good use :)

Family - Like I said before in previous posts, my Dad and step-mom Denise are in from San Antonio to visit with us...and Mckenna :) I love spending time with family, and I love spending time with family even more around the holidays.

Apple Pie - We made an apple pie from scratch (as long as you don't include the crust) and as long as you don't judge a book by it's cover, it turned out really well! It was very very tasty and to be honest, I'm looking forward for another holiday so we have an excuse to make it again.

Gravy - This one really doesn't need an explanation. Gravy. That's it...Gravy.

Relaxing - Don't know if it's the turkey, the company or my comfy couch, but whatever it was, I had a very relaxing Thanksgiving. It was so nice to be able to relax and hang out with family after a fantastic meal.

Football - Thanksgiving and football really go hand-in-hand don't they? I wasn't able to throw the pigskin around like I usually do, but being able to watch it on TV was almost just as nice...and less tiring.

Fire - It was a bit chilly out, so just as we always do, we found our excuse to make a fire. Granted, we didn't sit next to the fire as we had an alternate heating source (more on that in a bit), but it was sure nice to look at.

Heater - Mandi's parents bought us a heater for our back porch and it really came in handy on Thanksgiving night. We sat on our outdoor furniture with coffee in hand, pie on lap and heater turned on. It was glorious.

So what would be on your Top Ten Thanksgiving list?

Momma's a Slacker

Ok, so you don't need me to tell you, but I'm a total slacker!! Truth be told, since I'm not working, I only know it's Sunday because we go to church, but all the other days run together. And even when I know it's Sunday, Mandi Monday still slips my mind until my loving husband wakes up Monday morning and jokingly says, "what did you do Mandi Monday about," knowing full well I spaced it. Anyway...enough with the excuses...here I am.

Things are going well. I had my 6 week postpartum check up today (can you believe it's been 6 weeks already? Where does the time go?) I got a gold star (not actually, although that would be kind of fun and motivating for a type A like myself). I got the go ahead to resume activities as normal...but as I've mentioned, I gave myself the go ahead weeks ago. I'm back running again. I took it a little easy, wanting to wait into I got the official clearance before going full throttle. So I was only running 2 times a week and walking the other days. I did manage to get my mileage up to 3.5 miles though....so hopefully I can just build on that quickly. All in all I feel great. I could go for slightly more sleep, but truthfully I get a lot, just not all in a row. And mornings are always fun because Mckenna is adorable in the morning, grunting, groaning, stretching, etc. So it makes a bad night's sleep feel so worth it.

Mckenna is doing great. Growing like a beast. She's up around 9.5 lbs these days and adding more and more rolls to her collection. I love them!! Why can't rolls be so desirable on EVERYONE? Mckenna's big update this week is that she's officially smiling, a lot and on purpose!! She started occasionally doing it about 10 days ago, but now she definitely smiles intentionally. It melts my heart! We sit for what feels like hours with HUGE smiles on our faces because we can't get enough (and you still have to work at it a bit). By the time you get a smile you feel a bit like a clown who's face is going to fall off...but it's sooo worth it. You can see her gummy grin in the picture above. We're still working to get a good photo...but this is the best one yet.

That's all I have for now. Off to Carters to buy a few pairs of pants for her. No, I'm not joking...it's a sick addiction ;-) I kid. We haven't bought THAT many clothes, she just "needs" some pants.