“Mother Nature is Trying to Kill Us!”

Yeah, that title pretty much sums up yesterday evening.

Before braving going out in nature, we made these lovely pizza bagels using pizza sauce, Bruschetta from TJ’s, provolone cheese, basil and roma tomatoes.

This was a quick and easy meal–great for a busy weeknight. Probably not the healthiest with the normal (not thin) bagel, but we had to use them up because I got a bunch of plain bagels free at work last week.

After digesting and looking at some new kindle books, including this one that was free and looks quite good…

…we went to Boerner Botanical Gardens, where we were married almost two years ago. Going back there, I always get the feeling that we chose the perfect place to get married in. I am glad we didn’t just get pictures taken there, as many brides and grooms do.

This was my “aisle.”

I took lots of pictures of the rose garden area, our ceremony site.

I liked that these signs and flowers were right next to where we said our vows.

Where I became a Mrs.! And yes, I do have a hitchhiker’s thumb, thanks to my daddy’s genes.

Then it was off to hike around the Whitnall Park pond, which is right near Boerner Botanical Gardens. Yeah, not a good idea to go hike in the woods when it is sunset I guess. I think summing everything up in bullets is the best way to describe what happened because I wasn’t able to take pictures of our adventure until the end.

-First, there was a robin on the trail who wouldn’t leave us alone. He was just super friendly and cute.
-The bugs were getting really bad and buzzing around our heads. We were flailing our hands above us and then we started running on the trail. I love trail running, but this was the “survival” kind to avoid the bugs.
-At one point, I was leading the way on the trail and concentrating so much on not spraining my ankle or falling, so I was looking down. Craig yelled “Lisa stop!” He didn’t explain why I should stop and I looked up to see a big deer on the trail. I was about 10-15 feet away from running straight into it!
-And then there was another deer about 5 minutes later. This time it was a big buck.
-This is where it gets gross. Craig had a bug fly in his mouth. I have had this happen once and it was not pleasant. Anyway, Craig was pretty disgusted by this and we got off the trail and walked out by the Wehr Nature Center.
-We had to walk on a road to get back to our car and towards the end, there were geese with their babies on the side of the road. We stayed on the same side as them until one of them started hissing at us and looked very threatening. Trust me, I love birds, but I was scared when the hissing began. I thought for sure the one goose was going to chase us and bite our butts.

Evil goose is right behind the street sign. Yes, he is still watching me very closely at this point.

-This is when the quote that is the title of my post was blurted out by Craig. I really felt like everything was against us doing this hike and it was time to call it quits and get one of these at Kopps.

I had Orange Dream and Craig had vanilla.

Aaah, that made everything feel better. We had quite the adventure last night, but those kind of funny things make great memories! We’ll never forget what happened and will probably reminisce every time we go back to Whitnall Park pond.

Back tomorrow with today’s recap! I am behind on my posts, but today just flew by and we were gone for a lot of the day.

How has your holiday weekend been? We went to a cookout today and tomorrow, I am debating whether or not to go to the outlets with my mom. So glad for another day off, but I feel like I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to this weekend.

Swimming + me = disaster

I hit the gym this morning and went swimming (if you want to call it that). You see, swimming and I don’t have the best history/relationship. I used to have a major fear of the water when I was a little girl. I still am not a good swimmer and today’s attempt at doing laps proved that. At first, I tried to do laps and get my head in the water. After all, I bought prescription goggles and I thought I better use them. After I sucked at that, I did the backstroke a couple of times. I finally got out and looked for a kick board. That didn’t even help. I gave up, got out of the lap lane and settled on running in the pool. Oh well, I tried for a full half hour to do something in the water. Don’t think I will be putting my swimsuit on for a while. I’ll stick to weights, cardio machines and classes.

Breakfast was Special K Protein Plus cereal with fresh blueberries.

I bought this particular flavor after reading a recent post from A Better Bag of Groceries. She said that it rated a 60 (out of 100) on the NuVal system, which is really good for a cold cereal. Haven’t heard of NuVal? Check out their site–I love the concept and wish we had Nuval scores in Milwaukee area stores.

Before swimming, I had half of a banana and finished the other half when I got home from the gym. I tend to get very bad charley horses when swimming, so I figured some potassium right before might help.

Lunch was my leftover wrap from last night, a pink lady apple, which I dipped in almond butter, and a few pieces of Super Dark Newman’s Own Organics Chocolate.

After lunch, we ran to every hardware store possible looking for the appropriate d-rings and hooks to hang our pictures above the couch. We finally found some and realized that not every store carries d-rings, where they might have the hooks, etc. What a pain! I ended up with some cute new place mats at Target though and they were even better because they were on clearance! One was a mere 98 cents and the other was only $1.98.

Oh and while out shopping, we got a grande Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate at Starbucks to share. YUM!

Dinner tonight was at my mom and dad’s to celebrate my brothers’ birthdays this past week. One of my brothers (below) turned 40 and the other turned 51. I am 30. Quite the age difference, huh?

For dinner, I had salad, German potato salad, a piece of rye bread and some jello salad thing with fruit in it.

Dessert was chocolate cherry cake and two types of custard-Kopps red raspberry and Culver’s vanilla. Love custard!

It was a good, productive Sunday for us!

Ooh, my main man Matt Damon is on the Golden Globes, must pay attention.

Now I have to get ready for bed and try to fall asleep by 9:45. Back to another week of work!

Body pump & b-day party

We got home late last night, so I didn’t blog about yesterday’s events.

Here is a recap of my Saturday:

Had some breakfast before the gym. Coffee, toast with NuttZo, Oikos plain greek yogurt with sliced almonds and honey.

I met Angie at the Y for Body Pump at 9:15. It was a challenging class. I can tell by the soreness in my right thigh I am experiencing today!