Happy Easter!!

I hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend!! On Friday, I met up with my friend Colleen for dinner down in Delaware, and we did a lot of catching up and exchanged birthday presents (it's pretty much right between our two birthdays right now). That was a really fun evening.

And Saturday morning we left to pick up Kevin's sister, and then drive to the New Jersey shore! It was so beautiful there, and aside from it being a little chilly it was a LOT better than during the summertime there, because it was empty! There were barely any people down the shore, so we had the beach almost to ourselves. Kevin and I walked all along the promenade as soon as we got there, so that was about 3 miles of walking along the gorgeous beach. After we got back to the beach house (it had amazing views of the beach!), Kevin and his sisters and cousins all played frisbee, and I was a lazy bum and sat in a beach chair because I'd kinda rolled my ankle towards the end of our 3 mile walk. I'm totally fine now, but it was just sore at the time, so I didn't think running around the beach was a good idea. I was able to get some good pictures of the frisbee fun though!

Oh here are some cookies I made for the weekend! They were sooo rich. And they had Easter M&Ms and chocolate chips in them.

Ryan (McGee's cousin) looks like he's directing an orchestra or something...

We left the shore at about noon to head back to PA, and we picked up Guinness from the boarding place at about 2pm. The boarding place was NOT a pleasant experience... So we won't be going back to that one, and we will be complaining. I think poor Guinness is a little traumatized from that place.... but he's napping a lot, so hopefully he'll be better once he gets some rest. All 3 of us are exhausted, so we're probably going to be in bed right after Game of Thrones is over tonight (oh my gosh, this season is SO good already!!). Here's some pictures from different times today... This is pretty much all Guinness has been doing since we got home: 

This one cracks me up... I'm not sure how well you can see his smooshed face, so I tried to take a close-up (but that turned out kinda blurry)

Here's the close-up... He was SO passed out that he like smooshed his face into his paw... It was really cute.

And here's about an hour later... Our poor goober is so exhausted.

I hope everyone is having a really fun and/or relaxing Easter!! 

We've had Guinness for a whole year!

We figured out last week that we've officially had our crazy boy for a whole year!  It's hard to believe it's been a year. We didn't do anything at all to celebrate, except McGee and I high-fived each other for making it through the year (there were a few rough days!), and we gave Guinness a few extra treats.

He's full-grown now we think, and he's about 55 pounds. One of McGee's friends said that he looks like a small German Shepherd Dog with a curly tail... and I think that description is pretty perfect! He looks so much like a GSD, but he definitely isn't anywhere near as big as they usually are... and his tail looks nothing at all like a GSD. He definitely still has his crazy puppy-level amount of energy, and it is pretty impossible to give him enough playtime. We try really hard to exhaust him in the yard (Kevin ending up taking care of the most dangerous tree limbs in the yard so it's safe-ish again... We got tired of waiting for our landlord to fix the trees after 2 months of bugging him about it...), and Guinness loves to fetch tennis balls in the yard. Here are some very recent pictures of our big guy!

Isn't he handsome?

His nose looks enormous. And you can kinda see his Nylabone ring that he loves to chew on. 

He's super happy to have the yard back! Tennis balls everywhere.

This is him looking exhausted after TONS of running around the yard this weekend. 

Here was a small basketball we got for him this weekend... and wow did he love it. We thought it would be tough, and he couldn't get his mouth around it so we thought it would last forever... but he popped it within about an hour. We're going to try a full-size basketball, and fingers crossed that holds up a bit better!!

My birthday weekend

I had a wonderful birthday and birthday weekend! It was so fun, and so relaxing. On Friday night, McGee took me to an absolutely amazing restaurant called Garces Trading Company. For an appetizer, we ordered the fresh House Made Mozzarella, which was amazing. For dinner we both ordered the Steak Frites, which includes ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT STEAK!!!  Yes, you read that right: all the steak that you can eat. It was served in a cast iron skillet, and there was a huge portion of awesome fries that were fried in duck fat (SO delicious).  You also got to pick from 3 sauces, and I picked a Bearnaise sauce, and McGee picked a Bordelaise sauce. It was beyond amazing, and it was seriously the most delicious steak I've ever had. I tried to take a few pictures, but I didn't want to use a flash in the restaurant, and there was very dim lighting... so they didn't turn out great.

Here's some of the fresh mozzarella after we'd already eaten most of it

Here's my steak frites with the bearnaise sauce! I can't even explain how delicious the steak was. 

Here's the outside of the restaurant. It was in a very cool part of Philly. 

After dinner we were going to walk around a bit, but it ended up being a very cold and rainy evening so we decided to just head home. McGee decorated one of those large slices of cake that grocery stores sell, and it was soooo cute. He wrote a "H", "B", and "E" (Happy Birthday Erin). He's going to kill me for sharing this picture, but I thought it was adorable. 

On Saturday we had a pretty relaxing yet productive day at home, and on Sunday we met up with McGee's parents for brunch. McGee's dad had just had shoulder surgery a few days prior, so he badly wanted to get out of the house for a bit. And Sunday night we watched the season premiere of Game of Thrones!!!  I'm so glad it's back, and I'm so excited to find out what happens this season. I hope everyone's doing well, and thank you all so much for all of the birthday love!! 

Spring has sprung!

It is sooooo Spring now, and I'm sooooo excited. The temperature has been feeling really great, and we've been getting tons of rain (SO much better than snow!). Our stupid backyard is still not in good enough shape for us to use it and let Guinness run around, but we get weekly email from our landlord telling us not to worry, and that he's "on it". Yeah... We're annoyed. We have so many trees (and these are enormous trees) with limbs falling down - it's ridiculous.

Anyways, back to good stuff. Yesterday evening we had a nice break in the rain, so we decided it would be a great time to use our new grill for the first time! We made some delicious grilled burgers with a recipe I found on Pinterest. It has BBQ sauce and shredded cheese in it - SO good!  They turned out really great. We also grilled up some zucchini to have as a side dish. It was quite an amazing dinner, and I'm so excited for the many grilled meals in our future! Here's what the burgers look like before they're grilled, but I forgot to take a picture so I'm borrowing this picture from the website that had the recipe!

Tonight we're going to a historical movie theater not too far from our house to see The Grand Budapest Hotel. The movie theater looks really cool, and it's 100 years old! And Wes Anderson's movies always crack me up, so I'm excited to see The Grand Budapest Hotel! It should be a fun evening. Here's the movie theater:

And tomorrow night, McGee is taking me to a nice dinner for my birthday! We're going to one of Jose Garces' restaurants (he's an Iron Chef, in case you haven't heard of him). I'm so excited! McGee also already gave me a birthday present: some new running shoes! They were waiting for me this morning, so I already wore them on my walk with Guinness today, and I'm going to wear them for my run later today! Speaking of running, I've been doing pretty good at sticking with it! I run 3 times per week. I suppose "run" is a very loose term considering how slow I am, but it still feels good, and I'm noticing small improvements every week in what I'm capable of doing. One thing though: I desperately need some suggestions for running music for my Ipod! If any of you have any suggestions for songs I should download, please let me know. 

I hope everyone is having a great week so far! We've almost made it to the weekend!!  

Where did March go?

It's funny how sometimes your weeks seem to drag like crazy, but then you blink and the month is over. These weeks in March have been sloooowwww and painful (mostly due to work), but somehow it's almost April? So weird!

Nothing big has been going on, really... Last weekend McGee and I went to brunch at his favorite place in Philly: Sabrina's Cafe. They always have a fun brunch menu with a new theme every week or two, and for last weekend the theme was "Saturday Morning Cartoons", so all of the brunch specials had fun cartoon-related names. I took a picture of the menu so you can see some of the fun titles.

I went with the Optimus Prime Cut Special ETA Burger, but now that I'm inspecting the menu again, I wish I would've selected Jambi's "Meka Leka Hi" Mexi Special! McGee got the Fat Albert Sandwich Special (it was fried catfish).

On Saturday night, McGee went into Philly to hang out with his friend Big Mike (the opera singer... who also works at one of Jose Garces' restaurants, and works part-time as a tour guide at Yards Brewery too!). So while they were hanging out, it was just me and Guinness hanging out all evening. I had taken him for a very long walk that day, and McGee took him for a very long run that day, so we were hoping he would be tired and just want to sleep in the evening for me!  But here's what our boy looks like after a very long walk and a very long run: 

He's bored!

He did nap on the couch next to me for a bit while I was watching The New Girl (I just started watching that show on Netflix! It's so funny), but then he woke up and was bored, so I played fetch in the house with him while I continued to watch my show. That was our exciting evening! My goodness I can't wait until we get our backyard back - Did I mention that we have about 3 trees falling apart in our backyard? There are tree limbs falling down everywhere. It's ridiculous and dangerous. Our landlord has been "working on taking care of it" for like a month...

Last night (Wednesday), a local bar (the Iron Abbey) was having a big event for the release of Ommegang Brewery's Fire and Blood red ale (part of their Game of Thrones brews). We had NO idea how big of an event this would be... It started at 7pm, and we got there at like 7:03pm, and the place was so packed!  We had to park blocks away, and we could barely find anywhere to stand. We met up with Juliff (McGee's friend) there, and we all had one beer (it was delicious!), and then we left to find a different restaurant where we could actually talk and maybe order food for dinner. I'm glad we got to try the beer (and we got a free Game of Thrones coaster!), but it was way too nutty to enjoy hanging out there. They were raffling off lots of GoT merchandise, but we decided we'd rather have some nice conversation and dinner. 

Here's McGee (contemplating something?) and Juliff (his first name is Kevin too) drinking the Fire and Blood beers. Sidenote: Juliff just bought a house! So excited for him!

That's our life recently! Nothing too exciting. We're somehow still unpacking our boxes from moving, and work has been really stressful for both of us. We're hoping the job stuff calms down soon... 

I hope all is going well for everyone! 

Happy Things!

So this post will be filled with all good things, because I'm sick of complaining about the stupid winter, and I'm sure you're sick of hearing/reading it! :)

First happy thing: Congratulations to my friend Shannon on her engagement!!! :)  I'm so so happy for her, and she reads this journal so I just wanted to give her a little shout-out!!  It's so exciting!  And Shannon and her fiance (!!) are moving from Florida to ALASKA soon!! And I thought moving from Southern California to the DC-area was a drastic temperature change! I'm so excited for her and all of her upcoming adventures.

Second happy thing: The Philly St. Patrick's Day Parade was this Sunday! McGee and I took a train into the city, and met up with his family. The Philly St. Patrick's Day Parade is always a super good time, and there's always a fair share of college-age people that are a little out-of-control, but for the most part it's a very family-friendly atmosphere. We always have a great time!

City Hall! It's so pretty. That's William Penn on top of the clock tower.

McGee's mom and sister (Maureen aka "Mo")

McGee and his uncle

This was a funny part during the parade. This girl wanted to cross the street, and her and this guy in the parade started dancing!

Third happy thing: We went to the Arcade Fire concert last night!  It was super fun, and wow do they know how to put on a show!!  They were so awesome to see, and we had a blast. 

So much confetti!!  Super fun. 

And the fourth and final happy thing for this post: Guinness got his 3rd Bark Box today!  He's having fun trying to destroy the rooster toy from it, and I've given him some of the bacon-flavored treats and he LOVES them.  It's his first bacon-flavored anything, so of course he's now obsessed with those treats. And those "calming" Licks treats have me intrigued! We'll save those for a time when we really need him to mellow out (because he's never naturally mellow...). 

He's got the rooster! Look at that blurry tail from it wagging so fast

I hope everyone had a happy and fun St. Patrick's Day! 

Is it Spring yet?

I think it's officially Spring now, because we had Daylight Savings "Spring Forward"... Even though this year it really feels like "Winter Forward", but that's not as catchy. Our high temperatures are finally feeling a little more reasonable, but our lows are still below freezing. I'm ready to see some birds and flowers, and I'm ready for the grass to start to recover from this terrible winter! McGee bought a BBQ grill yesterday, so I think as soon as that arrives we'll start grilling lots of our meals and that should force the warmer weather to come... Right??  Right. I loooove grilled food, so we're quite excited for our new BBQ!

We're also starting to plan our trips for the rest of 2014, so that's giving us something really awesome to look forward to. I just booked campsites for my family to go to Yosemite for 2 nights in July, and McGee is coming too! I think he'll love Yosemite (how can someone not??). I love camping... The smells, the campfires, the fresh air, the scenery, the SMORES, the family bonding time... I'm so excited! I love unplugging for a bit, and being without laptops, cell phones, etc. I'm also just quite excited to get McGee back out to California again... There's so much awesome stuff I want to show him, and I'm excited for him to see my family and friends again. 

There isn't really much else going on... Work has been nuts, and is about to get even nuttier in the next few months. Guinness is doing well, so not much new stuff to report there... McGee and I have been doing a lot better with cooking meals at home, rather than getting takeout all of the time. Last night I made a pasta dish with smoked turkey sausage that was a big hit! It was pretty easy, and we both enjoyed the leftovers today for lunch. And this weekend I'm going to make some Guinness Beef Stew that we've made before, and I'm going to attempt to make some Irish Soda Bread too! McGee loves Irish Soda Bread, so we'll see how my attempt goes...

I hope everyone's March is off to a good start!  Here are some flashback Guinness pictures, since I don't have any new pictures of anything to add to this post. I'll do better on the next post, I promise!