Aloha

Aloha from Hawaii. Well, Aloha from Matt from Hawaii. These are the pictures my brother torments me with on an almost daily basis. j/k....I LOVE getting these pics. It looks so beautiful. Maybe Tom and I will magically come into some money so we can go visit him ;) Maybe not......but a girl can dream, right?

Happy Birthday to Tom!

Ahhh, another relaxing weekend has come and gone. Tom's birthday was today so we cleared our schedules and did nothing all weekend. It was fabulous considering we've had something going on every single weekend since forever it seems. I cooked a bunch of his "Favorites" (which also happen to be my favorites too ;) and I tried a couple new recipes. It was a pretty good food weekend and we are stuffed and probably about 5 pounds heavier (oops...my bad).

Saturday for breakfast we had "Weekend Brunch Casserole" which consisted of biscuits, sausage, eggs, milk, & mozzarella cheese all combined in a casserole. It was sooooooooooooo good. I wish we could eat that every morning for breakfast. Here's a pic!



For lunch we had Jackie's Buffalo Chicken Dip (not healthy, I KNOW! but soooooooooooo good!). Then for dinner we had Buffalo Chicken Pizza. YUM! It was a little messy but delicious. Here's a pic.



I also made lemon cupcakes and lemon cookies. (If you haven't guessed by now, Tom's a big fan of buffalo chicken & lemon sweets ;) Today we had sausage, eggs, & biscuits smothered in country gravy, my mom's Baked Chicken recipe, and for dinner we're having my Crock Pot Mozzarella Chicken. Needless to say we have plenty of leftovers for lunch this week! Here's some pics of the desserts!

Runnin' Again!

After a month of moving repercussions I finally got my lazy butt in gear to start running again....and I'm sooooooooo sore! But it does feel good to be running again...and as Tom would say I'm definitely less "irritable" when I've been running :)

This weekend is Tom's birthday! And I don't have to work! YAY! We're going to have a nice relaxing weekend at home and hopefully go to the pool a lot. I can't wait!

And I'm super excited for next weekend. Tom just found out about the Magic City Brewfest. Yes, it is just what it sounds like....a beer festival right here in Birmingham! I can't wait! 100's of beers, good southern food, and live music. It's going to be awesome. Website

Then the following Monday (12 days and counting!) I leave for the Grand Canyon for a few days! I can't remember if I blogged about this yet or not....so I'll just blog about it anyways :) Mags, Abby and I are flying into Phoenix, renting a car, and doing some serious sight-seeing for 3 days before I have to be back in Birmingham for work. We're going to Bryce Canyon, Antelope Canyon (this looks absolutely AMAZING, I can't wait to see it in person!), camping at Lake Powell, and visiting the Grand Canyon on our last day there.

Smokin'

So Tom and I stepped out of our apartment the other morning and it smelled like something was on fire. I didn't think too much of it until we got to work and we got out of the car and it still smelled like smoke (think campfire smoke). I knew there were some wildfires in Florida because of the heat but didn't think the smoke would travel this far to Birmingham. I checked it out on the weather channel and apparently I was wrong....

"...SMOKE FROM GEORGIA AND FLORIDA FIRES AFFECTING ALABAMA...

FOR THE PAST TWO MORNINGS SMOKE FROM THE GEORGIA AND FLORIDA FIRES HAS AFFECTED ALABAMA. THE SMOKE HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO US FROM A DEEP SOUTHEASTERLY FLOW. THIS SMOKE CAN BE SEEN ON VISIBLE SATELLITE AS FAR WEST AS LOUISIANA...EASTERN ARKANSAS...AND SOUTHERN TENNESSEE.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS NOTICEABLE WEATHER PHENOMENA OCCURS AS THE SURFACE COOLS OFF AS THE SUN GOES DOWN. THE AIR JUST ABOVE SURFACE IS WARMER AND ACTS LIKE A BLANKET. EVERYTHING BELOW THIS BLANKET IS TRAPPED. THIS IS CALLED A TEMPERATURE INVERSION. AS THE NIGHT PROGRESSES THIS BLANKET LOWERS...COMPRESSING EVERYTHING TRAPPED BELOW. THIS IS THE SAME SCIENCE BEHIND MORNING FOG. ONCE THE SUN RISES...SO DO SURFACE TEMPERATURES. WHEN THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE BECOMES WARMER THAN THE AIR ABOVE IT...THE ATMOSPHERE MIXES... DISPERSING THE TRAPPED PARTICLES FROM BELOW.

FOR TUESDAY...SMOKE WILL BECOME LESS EVIDENT AS WE MIX OUT. UNFORTUNATELY A TEMPERATURE INVERSION WILL AGAIN SET UP TONIGHT MAKING THE SMOKE MORE NOTICEABLE. THIS WILL ALSO REDUCE VISIBILITIES.

RELIEF IS ON THE WAY IN THE FORM OF A COLD FRONT ON WEDNESDAY. ONCE THE FRONT PASSES...WINDS WILL SWITCH AROUND FROM THE NORTH AND CLEAR THE SMOKE OUT.

PERSONS WITH RESPIRATORY PROBLEMS ARE ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE UNTIL THE FRONT PASSES."



Just thought this was interesting :)

New Pics

Pics from Joe & Laura's visit in March, Jackie & John's visit in April, and the Crawfish Boil.
http://community.webshots.com/user/awesomeanne/3?start=42

Jackie & John's visit

Since we moved 1 week after Tom's sister Jackie and nephew John Thomas came to visit I haven't had a chance to blog about their visit! They took the train down and spent the week with us. We did a bunch of stuff including visit the Vulcan, the Birmingham Zoo, the McWane Science Center, and the Botanical Gardens. Here are a few pics from their trip!

Tommy & John Thomas at the Vulcan

Jackie waving up at us from the ground!

Tommy and John at the bottom of the Vulcan

Tommy and I enjoying our drinks at our new favorite restaurant, Landry's.

John enjoying his chocolate cake at Landry's!

Tom and John at the Zoo

John running through the Botanical Gardens

Crawfish Boil

Finally! We are almost unpacked! We just have some of the little stuff to unpack (you know, the stuff that everyone saves for last and then gets too lazy to organize and put it in it's place and it ends up as "clutter"). :) I'll post some pics of the new place soon. It's pretty much the same layout as the old place, except it has a HUGE storage space right off of the kitchen and an extra large balcony. And it's in the back of the complex so we look out onto a field instead of another apartment building 30 feet away. AND it faces west so I get to see the sunset (how I miss that view from my Philly apartment!) Like I said earlier, the layout is very similar, except it's on the left side of the stairs instead of the right (like the old apartment) so everything is backwards! Minor things, like how we had things set up in the kitchen, I keep wanting to reach to the left for the dish detergent but since the layout is flipped we now keep the detergent on the right. And the washer and dryer got flipped around so now you have to like squeeze into the tiny laundry room first before you can open the dryer door. Anyways, I am *NOT* complaining, it's just kind of funny/weird ;) Pictures soon, I promise.

This weekend we went to Birmingham's annual Crawfish Boil. It was Friday evening/night and Saturday afternoon/night. There were a bunch of bands (Soul Asylum, Papa roach, akon, hinder, cracker, Collective soul, fuel, and Barenaked Ladies to name a few). And we just sat outside, enjoyed the music and a few cold ones, and I ate some crawfish! They are kind of scary looking and I actually screamed by accident when they gave me my plate and one fell out! But our friend Brian showed me how to eat them (you only eat the tail, who knew?) and they were actually quite yummy! Pics are below!

Ahhhh

This is why I haven't blogged in forever! Updates soon...I promise!

My makeshift couch :) Too tired to unpack!