Weekend Recap: July 27-29

Can you believe today is the last day of July?!  Yeah, I can't either.  Where has the summer gone?

Last Friday, Ryan was out golfing, so I ran out to Eldridge to pick up some paperwork and a super belated wedding gift that was mailed to my parents.  Yeah, over two years late! Lol.  Better late than never right? My dad and bro were heading to the cheap theaters and settled on the movie "The Hunger Games."  I decided to tag along even though I had already seen it...it's such a good movie!

My brother and his new phone

Saturday morning arrived, and I was full of butterflies.  Hello Bix!  If you've never heard of it, the Bix 7 is a 7-mile race and it's becoming world renowned.  Kenyans win almost every year.  It's a hilly course, but lined with fans and supporters along the entire route and boasts the best after-party I've ever attended after a race...yeah, there was free beer!  I opted to do the Quick Bix (2-miles) since I hadn't really been training, and Brooke joined me!

We walked/jogged the race and then enjoyed all of the free goodies!!  Did I mention there was free beer?!  We met up with Jess and enjoyed a couple of hours down at the party and downtown Davenport.

Later that night, Jess, Ryan and I went to the Street Fest and drank some beers, ate some cheese fries and watched Funktastic 5!  I had never seen them before, but it was soooooo much fun!

Sunday, Ryan and I played golf with my parents out in Eldridge, then enjoyed some pizza, and took another tour of our new house!! 

My favorite room in the whole house!

I have lots more pictures, but there are still a lot of personal belongings around the house, so I'm not going to share those pics.  The pool table, however, is ours to keep!  Woohoo!! :)

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

I have not fully adjusted to or accepted the fact that I have free time again!  But it's been nice.  Last week, I decided to become a River Bandits fan, even though they are a farm team for the Cardinals.  I went to two games in a row last week!  Two!

Thursday night was Thirsty Thursday, $2 beers!  Jess met me down there after her run and we had a great time catching up and watching the River Bandits win!  I know what you're thinking...why weren't YOU on a run w/ Jess?  Well, if you must know (and be jealous, it's OK), it was "Keep the Glass" night at Old Chicago.  Buy a $3 Fat Tire and keep the authentic New Belgium glass it comes it!  They ran out of glasses in half an hour, and we got three of them!

Friday night was our company night at the ballpark!  I got to hang out with my coworkers, enjoy some free food, and another Bandits win.

I am looking forward to another game, who wants to join me?

Best. Dessert. Ever.

Ryan and I went to the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn't resist buying a bucket of peaches for $4.  They were good peaches, but there was no way I'd be able to finish them all before they went bad, so I looked to Pinterest for some recipes.  BAM! I found the greatest recipe on the face of this planet.  Behold, Peachy Keen Bars.  I photographed some of the steps, and you'll notice that the recipe calls for canned peaches, but I just used the fresh peaches (about 6-7) and left the skin on!  I would do it the same way again, it was so incredibly fantastic!

I wish my regular camera would have been working, the pictures would have been much better, but I just wanted to show how simple it really is!  I always like to make sure I give credit to the person who created the recipe, so please follow the link above for the recipe.  And trust me, you will not regret making this dessert!

The King and I

I bit the bullet and tried out for a play this past winter, for Countryside Community Theater.  I made it into The King and I along with my little brother.  It was the first play I've been in since high school, so yeah, 8 years! WOW!  I can't say if I'd do it again...not anytime soon at least.  I did have a lot of fun, I met some great people, and it was fun to perform again, but the time commitment really took a lot out of me!  Nevertheless, I'm glad I had the experience and met the really awesome people that I did!

Pura Vida!

Most of you know that I finally got my tattoo or at least that I was planning to get one, and two weeks ago I finally got it!  My friend Stephanie helped me design it.  I gave her this very basic idea of "Pura Vida" being written within the lines of a heart, and she sketched out a couple designs and I told her which one I liked best.  She took it home, designed it more thoroughly and the following Monday, I was off to O'tool Design.  I always work with Ryan at OD, he did the rose I added on to my first tattoo as memorial to my friend, TJ.  It wraps around my first tattoo that has a cross in it with a little "L" as a memorial to my friend, Lindsey.

This time, I wanted that tattoo on the back of my left shoulder.  This way it could be covered up whenever I needed it to be, but visible in the summer so I can show it off. :)  For those of you who may be wondering what "Pura Vida" means, I posted about it when I first started this blog.  So here it is....my new, simple, beautiful tattoo!

Colorado Vacation: Days 7 and 8

The end of our vacation had arrived, we had one last day in Colorado Springs before making the painfully long drive across Nebraska the next day.  That didn't stop us from exerting some energy and having a fantastically awesome last day!  First stop, Garden of the Gods.  If you are ever in or near Colorado Springs, you must stop by.  It's free and full of great hiking!  Plus, it's pretty awesome just to look at!

After Garden of the Gods, we got roped into this ridiculous tourist trap, Manitou Cliff Dwellings...here I am thinking we are going to see some real cliff dwellings, and after spending $20 just to get in, we quickly gathered that those cliff dwellings weren't original.  I will say that it was semi-fun to walk through them, but it was disappointing to learn that they were moved from another location and rebuilt.  We didn't feel too bad about the money though, it was free to go to Garden of the Gods and we would have paid $20 or more to experience that!

Whew, all that hiking was making us hungry!  We needed a bite to eat and oh my goodness, thank you UrbanSpoon for leading us to a place in Manitou Springs (Urban Dictionary definition is great).  This little city was surreal, it was like diving into the early 70's where we suddenly surrounded by hippies, real freaking hippies, not hipsters!  I'm talking dirty, drug using, vegetarian, anti-war, dreadlocks sporting, roaming the streets with a guitar, hippies!  And they were singing in the streets, congregating in parks, operating businesses (ie. vegan cafe, clothing store, etc.), and just plain wandering around.  IT. WAS. AWESOME.  I had never been anywhere like that before and it was kind of fun to feel like we had gone back in time.  


We ended up eating at Adam's Mountain Cafe, and it was so good!  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this experience thanks to my broken camera, but I'm glad we did it.


We debated between spending 4-5 hours going up and down Pike's Peak on a train, or driving for another 4 hours going to Royale Gorge and back...but we ended up deciding to keep it local, and free!  So we went to Cheyenne Mountain National Park.  Awesome!  We drove around this gorgeous park and then checked out some waterfalls.  We hiked up to the top of the main waterfall (I was panting, yuck!).  We had some gorgeous GORGEOUS views!

Sadly, after a long day of hiking, we were ready to relax!  We stopped at a beer store and stocked up one last time with beers we can't buy at home and headed to the hotel.  Our hotel, like most of the other ones, had a full kitchen so instead of going out to eat, we ran to Papa Murphy's and got a take-and-bake pizza!  We enjoyed our last night in with a couple of good beers and got to sleep pretty early.


Our last day was spent driving to Omaha, which was long, and boring, but we did get to hang out with Laura and Jason for the night!  We had a good time celebrating Laura's birthday at Nebraska Brewing Co and this local dive bar they live next to.  We had a really wonderful vacation, despite some of our plans being changed and I would love to go to Colorado again!  

Colorado Vacation: Day 6

So about that wildfire...in the news even today you will hear about several wildfires burning in Colorado.  I guess we were fortunate that when we were there, it was only one.  The smoke from the High Park Fire had settled into Fort Collins over our first night there, and we woke up the next morning, we could smell the fire/smoke inside of our hotel room.  We made the ultimate decision that staying in Fort Collins another night wouldn't be quite as fun as we had hoped.  We called and got a hotel room down in Colorado Springs a day earlier than planned to be far FAR away from the smoke.  I wanted to see some mountains darn it!


We decided that we would still drive out to Estes Park like originally planned, I kept being told it was beautiful up there and apparently the smoke hadn't blown that far west.  Woohoo!  Check out this pic from the drive there...incredible.

Estes Park was beautiful, a little kitschy though for my taste.  However, I dove right into tourist mode and called the Stanley Hotel to make reservations for the ghost tour!  Now that was fun!  It was a great tour, fun little "true" ghost stories, and beautiful views of the mountains.

After the tour, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to Colorado Springs.  This was a fairly long drive, but it was still pretty beautiful.  Once we got through Denver, we could start to see Pike's Peak...man that mountain is huge!  Our first stop though, the US Air Force Academy!

The Chapel at the USAF Academy

We took a nice hike through part of the academy, and pretty drive through more of it.  It was huge, and in such a beautiful setting right at the foot of the mountains.  After a long day of driving, we were ready to relax.  We checked in to our hotel, got some Mexican food, and stayed in for the night.  We had a big day ahead of us on our last full day in Colorado...

Colorado Vacation: Day 5

When we woke up on Day 5 in Longmont, the smoke was starting to get a little thicker from the wildfire that was burning while we were there.  It smelled like a campfire outside.  Though we could vaguely see the mountains, I'm pretty sure we didn't get the true, beautiful picture the whole time we were there because it was always so hazy.

We took our time getting ready in the morning, then drove up to Fort Collins.  We checked into our hotel early and stopped at a really incredible beer store to stock up on some beer at a little better price than the breweries had it for.  Then we drove down to tour New Belgium.  By far, this was the best brewery tour I have ever been on!  The tour guide was really cool, pretty funny, and the minute you start the tour you are handed a small glass of beer.  And you continue to get small glasses of different kinds of beer throughout the tour...awesome!

It was at this point, during the New Belgium tour, that I realized something happened to my camera.  We still cannot figure out what happened.  But outdoors, it started making every single picture way overexposed.  I don't know if it had something to do with the ash in the air, but it really bummed me out!  I could still take decent indoor pictures, but everything outdoors was awful.  Check it out:

Uck!  We're still working on trying to figure out what happened, luckily I'm still under warranty with it.  Anyway, after New Belgium, we went to the tap room at Odell and sampled some of their delicious beer!  We stopped at Fort Collins Brewery for a quick snack and Ryan tried their stout.  And our last stop was Funkwerks, and honestly is was a little disappointing (for Ryan anyway), but I did have an Italian soda, since I was the driver, and it was pretty yummy.

Ryan was, umm, feeling "good" at this point, so we headed back to the hotel.  Luckily, they had free dinner that night, so I enjoyed a burger and went swimming and just relaxed the rest of the night.  This day concluded our brewery tours, and before I forget, I want to list my favorite beers at each brewery we went to:
1. Coors - Blue Moon Belgian White
2. Great Divide - Wild Rasberry Ale and Belgian Yeti
3. Avery Brewing - Lilikoi Kepolo (only on tap), Ellie's Brown Ale, and Out of Bound Stout
4. Boulder Beer - Hazed and Infused, Kinda Blue, and Sweaty Betty
5. Lefthand Breweing Co - Good JuJu and Milk Stout Nitro
4. New Belgium - Abbey and Tart Lychee
5. Odell - Hiveranno American Wild Ale and Levity Amber Ale
I didn't drink at FCB or Funkwerks, so no opinions there.  Next post: How the wildfire changed our plans, but we still had a great time!
Happy Saturday everyone!

Colorado Vacation: Day 4

We woke up in Denver on another beautiful day, so we walked to breakfast instead of driving.  We headed to Snooze, which was highly recommended by Kristin of Iowa Girl Eats.  Thank you Kristin!  Best breakfast I have ever had...seriously.  I had the pancake flight: Pineapple Upside Down Pancake, Blueberry Blossom, and Sweet Potato.  I can't even begin to describe how incredible each one was.  I think the Pineapple Upside Down Pancake was my favorite.

After breakfast, we walked back and packed up the car.  Onto the next adventure!  We drove up to Boulder and stopped at the Avery Brewing Tap Room.  They had some fantastic beers, my favorite was their brown ale.  We headed down to the pedestrian mall in Boulder for a little bit.  It was really nice, full of cute shops, nice people, and pretty views.  Then we went to Boulder Beer Company and took a tour of their brewery.  Ryan and I have always liked their beer, his favorite is Flashback, and mine is Hazed and Infused (though I think my new favorite is Kinda Blue). 

After our 14 beer tasting tray at Boulder, we drove to Longmont to check out Left Hand Brewery.  We asked the bartender for a recommendation for dinner.  Our only stipulation was that it was not a chain, no Old Chicago please!  He recommended Georgia Boys...oh my goodness!  I normally would not want to go to a BBQ place, this place was a total dive (in the fantastic sense!).  We got our food to-go because the place was so small.  But when we opened up our boxes of food back at the hotel, it was like heaven!

Day 4 had plenty going on to deserve it's on blog post.  Stay tuned for the rest of the vacation. :) Happy Wednesday!

Colorado Vacation: Days 1, 2 & 3

June 8-18, Ryan and I took a nice little vacation to Colorado.  We rented a car, packed up our stuff, and headed to Omaha for night number one.  We were excited to be Andy and Ashley's first house guests, hang out on the patio and watch some Game of Thrones! *Thank you for re-watching it for me guys*

Early Saturday morning, we packed up again and hit the road for a long drive full of road construction and cattle yards.  We made pretty good time though and got to Denver in plenty of time to check, have a fantastic pizza dinner, and grab a drink all before going to see Bob Saget that night!

On Sunday, we headed out to the Coors brewery!  The tour was kind of lame, but we got some free beer so I'm not complaining.  Then we headed downtown and checked into our next hotel.  It was beautiful outside so we took a stroll down to Great Divide, followed by a wine tasting, and then dinner at Sam's No. 3, a diner featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.  Yumm!  Later that night, we grabbed a drink at Yard House and strolled around the pedestrian mall.

The first three days were pretty great (minus the driving), I'll tell you about the rest soon. Happy Tuesday! :)