Halloween Weekend in Montgomery

Thanks to the University’s fall break and football bye week, I actually had my first free weekend the weekend prior to Halloween and decided to go spend it with my sweetie in Montgomery!

I arrived on Thursday evening, and we just enjoyed a quiet evening in (complete with Alex’s famous spaghetti for dinner…yum!)

Alex got to work from home on Friday, so we enjoyed spending the entire day together.  I have recently started doing some vinyl designs on acrylic cups and Alex picked out his favorite and asked for one.  I surprised him with it as well as his anniversary gift, and he enjoyed his cup all day!

Again, we enjoyed a nice, quiet evening in with a movie and a “fish and chips” dinner :)

Saturday was quite a busy day!  We went to Prattville during the day so Alex could check out Bass Pro Shop (a.k.a. his “happy place”), so while we were there we decided to do some exploring.  We had lunch at a local favorite, Uncle Mick’s

and enjoyed the sampler platter of sausage red beans and rice, crab meat au gratin, cajun potato salad, crawfish etoufee, and chicken sausage gumbo…it was all delicious!  If you are ever in Prattville, you should definitely stop by.  The owner will ask you “what did you have last time?”, offer free samples of anything you haven’t tried because he says he doesn’t want you to order anything you don’t like, and will stop by your table during the meal to check on you.  It was an all-around amazing experience!

After lunch, we walked around and enjoyed Downtown Prattville.

While we were there, we also picked up a pumpkin from a local pumpkin stand on our way home.  Alex wanted to make sure it made it home in one piece so he buckled it in the back seat.

We then headed home and got ready for our “date night”.  Alex had gotten us tickets to the final, and special “late night” showing of Dracula at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival as our Halloween date/early Anniversary present.  We were so excited!

Us before we left Alex’s apartment

Shakespeare got all dressed up for the occasion as well

    Our attempt at getting a picture with Shakespeare.  The sweet guy that took our picture must have thought we wanted just his bottom half.  Oh well ;)

The show was AMAZING!  Don’t just take my word for it though as you can read Montgomery Advertiser’s rave review of it here.  We were very impressed with the special effects (and that’s coming from two folks with ‘behind the scenes’ theatre experience).  They discuss some of the special effects in the video below.

Because ours was the last evening showing (and Alex and I know from experience that it is almost always the best show to see ;)), they held an after-party so that you could mingle with the cast members.  We wanted to stay and party, but it was almost 1 by the time the play ended, and we were exhausted, so we headed home.  We had a wonderful time though!

On Sunday, Alex and I decided to carve our pumpkin.  Surprisingly, in the 7 years we’ve been dating, we’ve never carved pumpkins together, and our first experience was quite entertaining!

Pumpkin all ready to go 

We cheated and bought a kit.  It backfired on us though (you’ll see what I mean in a minute

Alex carving away.  His job was to “gut” the pumpkin

 

My job was to pick out the pumpkin seeds so we could roast them later

 

Good job Alex!

 

Ready to carve!

We chose the Dracula print from the book as a nod to our date the night before, but unfortunately the stencil was too big for our pumpkin.  I had to freehand a smaller version on a paper towel.  It may not have looked that impressive, but it worked!

 

 

Alex marking the stencil on the pumpkin.  Yes, those are sticky tabs…somehow the boy had no tape ;)

My free-hand version of Dracula

Time to cut!  This is the only picture we got because I took over after this and Alex isn’t as good about taking pictures ;)

All cut!

 

Roasted pumpkin seeds…yum!

Our “Dracu-pumpkin”.  We were pretty proud of him!

The next day, I had to get back to Tuscaloosa to get ready for a conference, but I would have stayed longer if I could!  I also had to change out my Halloween decor for my fall decor, but not before I snapped a picture :)

My bar.  Yes, that is still my Alabama football subway art, but it matched my color scheme so I left it ;)

 

Place setting.  Yes, it is pretty much my football decor with some added Halloween touches, but I loved it! :)

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween! :)

Valentine’s Day

I was SO excited about giving Alex his Valentine’s gift, I didn’t even wait for him to get ready to give it to him, so excuse his sleepy-look and bedhair.  He had just planned on working that morning ;)

As you may remember, Alex started brewing his own beer.  He is German, so his friends have always joked about him starting his own brewery and calling it Biehn Bier (with the German spelling of beer…promise that’s not a typo ;))  Anyway, I decided that this year, I would create him a logo for his “future company” and put it on a beer mug.

Ready to open…

He knew it was a mug as soon as he took it out of the bag, but I think this is the point he saw the logo.

He LOVED it!

In fact, he loved it so much that he started sending a picture to all of his friends! :)

I also got him a beer journal to keep track of all the “tasting profiles” of beers he tries.

Since the logo is a little hard to see (and he didn’t turn out quite as good as I wanted it to :(), here’s a picture of what it looked like in design mode.

By the way, the bug on the mug (ha!), is his baby :)

Then, it was my turn.  We had decided Valentine’s day would be the “simple holiday” (We usually choose to do big gifts on either birthday or Valentine’s Day since they are so close together), so Alex chose one of my favorite things for my gift:

The retired Lolita Shopaholic martini glass.

I had been wanting this glass for a while, but it had been retired since I started collecting them.  Alex did some research, found one, and got it for me (faded box and all).  I loved it!

We no more got presents out of the way, then I heard a knock at the door.  I had gone back to my room and he came back and told me that there was someone at the door.  I was confused as to why he didn’t just answer it, but he insisted I go get it.  When I opened the door, I was handed this….

  Awwww! :)  So sweet!  He told me that he had ordered them just in case he couldn’t be there, but decided to go ahead and surprise me with them anyway.  I loved them!

Then he started inspecting them, and he wasn’t pleased.  He thought they looked a little sparse, especially compared to the ones shown on the site.

He called the florist, and explained the situation (or at least I think he did, he didn’t do it in front of me).  The next day, this showed up at my door

The florist felt terrible that Alex wasn’t happy with the flowers so she sent another one, free of charge, with a bear, balloon, and box of candy as an apology.  A day late, yes, but sweet nonetheless :)  That’s good customer service!

Anyway, back to Valentine’s Day.  We were so excited to get a reservation at our favorite restaurant for Valentine’s Day dinner.  We’d only been once before for Valentine’s Day, but it is always such an amazing experience, we had to go back :)

We got all dressed up

 

and headed to dinner!

       The food and service was amazing as always.  Alex had 1) Pan Fried Gulf Oysters with Aged Sherry Butter Topped with Caviar, 2.) Lamb Bourguignon, 3.) Filet Mignon Wellington with Bearnaise, served with Peruvian Purple Mashed Potatoes, and Grilled Asparagus, 4.) Pomegranate Creme Brulee

I got 1.) Pecan Chicken Salad Stuffed Roma Tomatoes with Balsamic Reduction Drizzle, 2.) Iceberg Wedge topped with Roasted Cherry Tomato Vinaigrette, Bleu Cheese, and Applewood Smoked Bacon, 3.) Applewood Smoked Bacon and Lump Crab Stuffed Jumbo Shrimp with Sweet Cream, served with smoke gouda grits, and broccoli salad, and 4.) Tuxedo strawberries with a milk chocolate semifreddo shooter.

Of course we sampled each other’s dishes, so I can say that ALL of the dishes we ordered were amazing!

Overall, we had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!! I was so excited to have him there.

Next up:  Alex’s birthday week!

Pre-Valentine’s Day Blues

Because of the distance and our crazy February schedule (both of our birthday’s and Valentine’s day…yikes!), Alex and I had to figure out which “holidays” were important to us.  He, unfortunately, could only manage two weekend trips, so we decided to just see each other for our birthday’s and skip Valentine’s Day this year.

I was, of course, a little sad about this considering we’ve spent every Valentine’s Day since 2005 together, but I completely understood.  Needless to say, for the first time, I was actually NOT looking forward to Valentine’s Day.

On Sunday night (the day before Valentine’s Day), I was getting ready for bed and I received my nightly phone call from Alex.  I know he could tell I was bummed, and he was doing the best he could to cheer me up.  Since the class I teach only meets every other week on Monday, I actually didn’t have class the following day, but I decided I’d use the day to just rest and relax and an early bed time was the best way to kick-off my single girl Valentine’s Day.

While on the phone, Alex was trying to convince me to stay up a little longer and enjoy a movie or something.  I had no clue why he was trying to prolong my terrible evening, but I stayed up and talked to him a little while longer nonetheless.  I got off the phone with him, finished up the TV show I was watching, and just as I was about to head to bed, I heard a knock on the door.  I went to answer it and look at who I found at my front door:

The word elated doesn’t even begin to describe how excited I was to see him!  Of course, I had to snap this picture and share with all my friends on FB, which of course, received some very sweet responses.

I totally agree my friends…he’s a keeper!

He was so sweet and told me that not only would be be there for Valentine’s Day, but he would be there all week! (He was planning on coming the next weekend anyway for his birthday, so his boss just told him to work from T-town all week).  He also told me that he had been conspiring with my brother, in case he couldn’t make it, to have the little bro take me out to dinner in place of Alex….too sweet, but glad he didn’t have to rely on that plan!

Next Up:  How we celebrated our 7th Valentine’s Day!

My Top 10 in 2010

This year, we decided to make my grandmother a “Year in Review” photo album for Christmas.  As I was looking through the pictures and trying to narrow it down to my favorites, I was able to relive some happy (and sad) moments from this year.  Isn’t it amazing how photographs can do that?

Anyway, I decided that I wanted to pick my top ten photographs from this year…not because they are amazing photographs, or even because they are my absolute favorites, but because they bring back an emotion or a memory I never want to forget.  So here they are, with explanations of course (because it wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t caption ALL of the pictures ;))

Here they are (in reverse chronological order):

1. BCS National Championship Game – Pasadena, CA (January 2010)
   

        This was by far not my favorite photo from the trip, but it completely captured our emotions for the day.  We were freezing and exhausted, but so happy, relieved, and of course in awe of what we just saw.  The phrase  “Remember the Rose Bowl, we’ll win then”, from our fight song will probably forever make my eyes well up with tears of pride thanks to this moment.  I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to witness this moment.

   2.  My 25th Birthday (February 2010)

   Selfish for putting my birthday as one of the “defining moments” of 2010…possibly, but in my eyes it was.  It was not necessarily the birthday itself, but more the milestone age and what it represented.  25 had always been my “goal year”…that was the year that I was going to be all settled with a house, a great job, married, etc.  Knowing that I had not accomplished all of that was rough on my self-esteem.  Anyway, some of my very favorite people and number one supporters all came to town to have dinner with me and CELEBRATE turning 25.  After a nice “pep talk”, turning 25 didn’t seem so bad and as much as I hate to say it,  they were right…25 is not the end of the world ;)

   3.  Watching my old dance studio compete (March 2010)

   

When I was at home for spring break, I had the opportunity to go see my old dance studio compete.  I hadn’t seen my dance teachers in ages and before I left, I had the opportunity to get a picture with all three of them…together…literally, 3 of the most important women in my life (outside my family of course)

4.  Visiting Alex in Arkansas (April 2010)

I’ll just go ahead and say that I love everything about this picture.  Not only do I love that it is “frame-worthy”, but I loved the emotion behind it and the memories it brings up every time I look at it.  It was my first long trip to Arkansas and I had been begging to visit this park.  I remember walking under this sweet little vine covered walkway and being so happy.  I don’t know why I stopped and took a picture at that moment, but I’m so glad I did.

 

5.  20th Anniversary Dance Recital (May 2010)

This was such an amazing moment that I will never forget.  This was taken at the Alumni Reception after the dress rehearsal.  Although the shows the next two nights were awesome, this moment was more special because this was the first time we’d seen each other in a long time and we came together to rehearse in old studio just like we did years ago.  It makes me teary just thinking about how amazing it was that we were able to come together, dancers of all ages, and share our passion one more time.

My dance teacher made this comment on the picture on FB which I think perfectly sums up the moment:  “A room full of blessings!!! A heart filled with love!!”

6. ISTE Presentation

 

When my professor approached me last year about doing a conference presentation, I never thought it would happen, however, she took me under her wing and helped walk me through the process.  Standing up in front of that crowd was one of the most nerve-wracking and rewarding things that I have ever done and my professor was beside my side the entire time.  Although this is not the best picture, I’m so thankful that I had this wonderful opportunity and that I had someone capture this huge moment for me!

7.  My first day as a COLLEGE teacher

 

This year I got to live out one of my life-long dreams…I had the opportunity to teach at the University of Alabama.  This picture was taken just moments before my first class and I was so giddy with excitement I couldn’t hardly stand it.  As a teacher, I want to remember this moment and always have that excitement about teaching :)

8.  Celebrating 6 Years with Alex

 

Although this is not the best picture of us and definitely not my favorite from the evening, this picture meant a lot to me.  Yes, it is a big deal that we celebrated 6 years, but to me it was more important that we were celebrating an anniversary at all.  In the car on the way to the restaurant for dinner (as you see above), we were talking about how much had changed in a year.  In November 2009, we didn’t have a clue as to what was about to happen.  As soon as he found out and decided he was moving, I remember telling him  that I would be shocked if we made it to our anniversary…he of course told me I was wrong and that we would be fine, but being the worry wart I am, I didn’t believe him.  Lo and behold, he was right (yes, Alex…I put it in writing ;)) and here we are celebrating another year together, and even stronger than ever :) 

9.  Cooking and hosting my very first Thanksgiving dinner

Because of the way the Iron Bowl fell this year, my brother and I were not able to make it home for Thanksgiving.  Because we are a stickler for tradition, my mom and I decided to take on the daunting task of recreating my grandmother’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a lot of hard work and wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty proud of myself for pulling it off :)

10.  White Christmas

We woke up this year to a very white Christmas!! The news said it had been since 1989 since we had so much snow on Christmas day :)  It was absolutely beautiful and I made sure to cherish every moment (as much as I could…I was super sick with a cold! :( ) because it may be a while before we see it again :)

So there you have it…my Top 10 in 2010!  Do you have some favorite memories from the year?  If so, please share :)