Fruit Salad

One of my favorite snacks to make and eat if fruit salad. So simple, so quick, so delicious. I am the type of person who prefers fruit over vegetables any day, and this little snack makes eating healthier slightly easier. Here's what you need to get started:

Ingredients:

4 cups of Mandarin Oranges (I buy pre-packaged)
2 handfuls of Grapes (purple or green...I go for whichever is sweeter at the moment)
1 Apple
2 Bananas
1 jar Maraschino Cherries
1 large jar Pineapple Juice


How to make fruit salad:

Pour the pineapple juice into a large bowl and let it sit patiently for the other ingredients. Then, drain the cherries and the oranges, rinse the grapes, and add to the large bowl of juice. If you like the orange syrup stuff the oranges are packaged in, by all means add it to the mix instead of rinsing and draining the oranges.

Now, slice the banana and apple into bit size pieces and add them as well.

Stir all the fruit together so you have a nice mixed fruit salad. 

Bright, colorful, delicious goodness. Makes 4 servings that I put in individual tupperware containers and refrigerate. And the best part? It's only 3 points if you are on Weight Watchers like me. I like to substitute my chips at lunch and have this instead. Gives you a serving of fruit and gets you on track to eating healthier. It's that easy!

Snow Day

We have had 4 days cancelled due to snow this week! Crazy! The first 3 days should have really been called ice days, but today we actually got real snow. The roads have been absolutely terrible and everything is covered in about 2 inches of ice. The few times I did manage to leave the house the past 4 days, I was sliding everywhere.

Baylor, however, has been having the time of his life the past few days. He absolutely loves the snow, while Dexter tries to avoid it as much as possible. Here are a few pictures from the past few days!

 Dexter on the first snow day in early January. He wouldn't go outside this time so this is the only photo I have of him in the snow!

Baylor, after sticking his face in the snow!

Welcome 2011!

2010 was a great year for me! Here's a short recap of the big changes 2010 brought:

• A new love came into my life - and his name is Baylor Bear

Baylor is now 100 pounds, but I still love this picture

• I finished my first full year of teaching.  I took my band (made mostly of my beginner students) and received the highest ratings in each of our competitions.
• My younger sister Kathleen got married in May
• Garrett and I moved into our first house in August
• Garrett and I got married in November!

• We decorated our first house for Christmas

• We went to Breckenridge, Colorado for our honeymoon in December

Here's what I'm looking forward to in 2011

• Celebrating my 25th birthday in January
• Going to San Antonio for TMEA in February
• Amanda's bachelorette party in Nashville in March
• Taking my band to UIL in April
• Garrett's birthday in May
• Amanda and Andy's wedding in June
• Hopefully buying a house and moving in July
• New beginnings in August?
• Hopefully not doing marching band in September and October
• Celebrating 1 year of marriage in November
• Celebrating another wonderful Christmas and end of the year with family and friends!

I'm usually not a fan of new year's resolutions because mine always seem to be the same and never happen, but hopefully if I post them it will help me stick with them. This next year will be sprinkled with posts about my progress. Here are my 2 new year's resolutions for 2011:

• Stick with Weight Watchers and make healthier eating choices
• Start the couch to 5K program and run a 5K in May and November.

Hunting near Georgetown, TX

The day after we returned from Colorado, we left to go deer hunting with Garrett's buddies Daniel and Doug Tebo. This was my first time deer hunting, and after doing so well at the gun range, I was ready to go. However, this is what we saw the entire time we were there :

Absolutely NOTHING! So this is what I did with my free time in the cold blind :

I slept. Or attempted to sleep since Garrett kept bugging me. Turns out Daniel and Doug never saw anything either, so we cut our trip short and went home.

Honeymoon in Breckenridge, CO

It has been a while since my last post! So sorry!

On December 10, Garrett and I left for our honeymoon in Breckenridge, Colorado. We were there for 6 days and loved every minute of it! We started making plans to move there as soon as we arrived!

We stayed at the Crystal Peak Lodge, a brand new residence that opened the summer of 2010. GORGEOUS! Crystal Peak is a group of private residences that usually does not rent rooms out. However, since it is a brand new property that has only 3 rooms left to buy, we were able to rent a room for the week. Our room was 1 bed, 2 bath, with a kitchen and living room. It was the perfect setting for a honeymoon.

Crystal Peak is on the base of Peak 7, which is full of blues so we would take the gondola over to One Ski Hill Place at the base of Peak 8 which was much more beginner/lower intermediate level friendly.

This was Garrett's first time to ski ever, so our whole plan was to take it easy. He was determined to teach himself to ski, which I warned him against. I took him down a green on our first run, which turns out had been upgraded to a blue...they just hadn't changed the map yet. Needless to say, after that first run Garrett walked straight to the lesson desk. After his afternoon lesson, he was good to go. We had a blast skiing for 3 days.

After skiing for 3 days, we needed to take a break and just hung out on the 4th day. On the 5th day, we went and took a 2 hour snow mobile tour. We went through trails which took us by old mine shafts and an old cabin which a miner lived in. Then we went to the continental divide. The continental divide is where all the water on one side goes to the Atlantic Ocean and the water on the other side goes to the Pacific. You had to be careful when you got off the snow mobile though, because if you step of the trail you would sink into snow at least 4 feet deep. I wish I had a picture of Garrett sinking into snow up to his chest!

I could not end this post without mentioning the food that we ate! We loved Main St. and were there every night. I can't even remember how many times we ate at Eric's, but I was obsessed! My other favorite place was The Motherloaded Tavern. We're talking Fried macaroni and cheese (which we ate and it was delicious), fried peanut butter and jelly (we did not eat that...had a cheeseburger instead), and make your own s'more, which you better believe I ate!

Our honeymoon was absolutely perfect! It was the perfect mix of activity (for Garrett) and relaxation (for me). We cannot wait to go back to Colorado and are even looking into going back this summer!

Little Letters

Dear cold weather,

I love you, and I am so glad you're here now since it is mid-November after all.

Dear trees,

I love the way you change colors in the fall. It seriously makes me happy and I would love nothing more than to sit in the middle of a bunch of changing trees and read a good book.

Dear Thanksgiving,

Please get here sooner. I don't know how much longer I can make it here at work and need the break.

Dear Garrett,

I am so glad we are going skiing for our honeymoon and that the honeymoon is only 4 weeks away. That means only 13 more actual school days until we go skiing.

Dear music,

You are my refuge. I hate that I let other people ruin you for me, and I promise to stop that.

Short and Sweet

Work has been rough lately. By rough I mean crying in the car on the way home. It certainly doesn't help that I had 6 wonderful, magnificent, relaxing days off to prepare for my wedding, get married, then spend 2 days in newlywed bliss watching movies, cleaning house, and writing thank you notes. Let me tell you, I went back to work kicking and screaming.

I called Garrett yesterday after work and we decided that it wouldn't solve anything sitting and complaining. I decided to grab the bull by the horns today and had a talk with my coworker, which ended up leaving me more upset because, let's face it, we are never going to see eye to eye and run the program the same way.

So, now that I am sitting here in the band hall in complete and relaxing silence, on my conference period with no one in sight for at least another hour, I have a brilliant idea.

Start a blog.

I mean, why not? I love reading blogs. I love reading bright, positive, optimistic beautiful blogs where people celebrate the little things. It certainly helps those not so great days and leaves me thinking of beautiful things. I want to be those blog writers who are cooler than I will ever be and have a love for life and little things.

So I thought, why can't I be one of those people? I don't want the stress and unhappiness that I've felt at work. I want to be happy. Celebrate the little things. Love life. Go on little adventures. Look and post beautiful images that make everyone feel better. Have a place I can share my happy findings with friends and family.

This is my blog, my happy place. Welcome, and enjoy!