My husband is awesome

Last Saturday, K and I went to a wedding of some friends on our kickball team. After the wedding, we all (including bride & groom!) went out to a bar.

K had taken his ring off. I pinched him jokingly. "What are you doing?"

"I'm fixing it. I had it on backwards."

"What do you mean, you had it on backwards?" K's ring is solid and symmetrical.

He was looking on the inside of the band. "I always wear it the way you put it on me."

I was stunned. "You know which way I put the ring on you? How do you know that?"

He explained. "I took it off after the wedding and looked at the stamp inside so I'd know."

It was one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. I might have cried a little.

Dinner date

K and I had a dinner date tonight! We went to the Ch@mberlin, a beautiful restaurant on historic Fort M.onroe that we've wanted to visit for a while. Thanks to a Liv!ng Soc!al coupon that I bought months ago (and that expired -- you guessed it! -- today), we finally did. It was fantastic!

(Sorry the color is weird on these pictures. I'm too exhausted from camping this weekend -- more on that later -- to worry about it much right now.)

Fried shrimp battered in rice krispies. Surprisingly, unbelievably delicious!

K ordered duck. Also yummy.

My view at dinner

Beautiful restaurant! (Mondays aren't their busy night.)

The Chamberlin is actually a historic hotel. It kind of reminded me of The Shining.

The view outside the restaurant. You might recognize this shot from my run photos a few weeks ago.

Beautiful view off the balcony.

For a couple who doesn't really do date night often, this was a great choice!

MLIB, Marathon Runner

We ran. And ran. And ran. But we finished, and we had a pretty awesome pace.

It was painful, it was torture, and I'm pretty sure we're insane for doing it, but it's done.

We're done.

I'm never doing that again.

One lucky girl

Today is K's and my three-year wedding anniversary (from the Florida wedding, the one where we were actually legally married). Three years and a second wedding later, we still haven't had a honeymoon. We swore to ourselves that we'd finally get around to that this year, but between all the traveling for weddings, wedding showers, a baby shower, and we-haven't-seen-you-in-a-while visits, we just don't want to have to take off work again for something else. That, and sometimes it's just nice to be home for once!

We're very fortunate to feel like we have everything we want or need, so we didn't plan on even buying gifts.

So imagine my surprise today when I see an enormous bouquet of flowers coming up the stairs today. And when the bouquet was moved aside, I could see that the delivery person was K!

Of course he planned his arrival just in time for lunch. That alone was a nice treat, since we work in completely opposite directions from one another, so it's a good 40 minutes or so between my workplace and his.

Tonight is our weekly kickball game (by the way, I had an amazing catch at last week's game, AND I'm somehow the 3rd kicker in our new lineup!), which we always look forward to.

We're still going to fit in some of the sweet, romantic stuff -- we've got brunch and a couple's massage at a spa schedule for Sunday. Considering the jam-packed day we have on Saturday, which includes a 16-mile training run, Sunday's relaxation will be pure perfection.

But for tonight, we'll celebrate with a little kickball, lots of friends, and a couple beers.

That's more our style anyway.

What kickball SHOULD be

Written 6/17. Posted 7/01. Because I took forever to edit (read: majorly trim down) what I originally wrote. Sorry! 

K and I had a kickball game last night (two, actually, but more on that later). One of the guys on the opposing team is quite a character.

Abs spends a lot of time working out. The reason I know this is because he takes off his shirt so many times in the course of a game that it's become a league joke to keep a tally of how many times it happens. As if that's not enough, he also enjoys busting out with random pushups, pullups (on nearby soccer goals), handstands, etc. It's bizarre. It's cocky.

When we played Abs's team, we were both tied for first in our league. Talk about a big game.

We made some mistakes in the first inning. We were a little nervous, and it was obvious. Abs's team capitalized on that, and they were able to score 4 runs. There were 3 questionable calls (2 of which involved refs' conflicting opinions), and all went to Abs's team, since my team takes the classy route and doesn't argue with refs.

Our nerves settled down after that inning. It became very clear that Abs's team was just as nervous about playing us as we were. Possibly even worse. Where missed catches, wild throws or bobbles on my team are met with, "That's OK! Shake it off!", Abs's teammates were more of the "C'mon! You gotta GET THAT!" It was tense. It was intense. It was not fun.

It became clear that Abs's team had actually scouted and studied our lineup. The coach would shout to the entire team, "Justin's kicking! Then Mike! Then Liz!"

They were playing only their 12 best players; the rest of the team sat in plain clothes on the sidelines. We had our entire team of 20 suited up and playing. And every one of us got field time.

Somewhere in the 3rd inning, we realized we weren't going to win this game. When Abs removed his shirt again, one of our girls started yelling and joking about nipples. Our pitcher, who loves kickball and gets pretty nervous about games like this one, was laughing so hard that he actually had to pause for a minute to gather himself before throwing the ball.

It was all downhill from there. We decided all the guys should take their shirts off at the start of the 5th inning. K liked the idea so much that he ripped his shirt off as soon as we told him. Another guy followed.

It was our turn to kick. One of our teammates had a blast with his at-bat. It was clear he was going to get tagged out on first, but for the fun of it, he dove for it. I swear, he flew 3 ft. We were cracking up on the sidelines! To add to the fun, as soon as he jumped up, he ripped his shirt off as he ran back over to us.

It was then that the team decided if we made it to first base, we would take off our shirt.

Fast-forward an inning, and it was my turn to kick. Abs had just dropped into a random set of pushups. My teammates joked that we should each do pushups before we kicked. Sounded like a good idea to me.

I stepped up to home plate. The pitcher and infield players were just settling in to their places again.

I marched right up to the plate. Dropped down to the ground. I set myself into pushup position. 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Five pushups. Real pushups -- not chick ones. Just the right amount to get my point across. Just the right amount to deliver confidently, correctly, and without expending any energy I'd need for my next task. 

Far in the background, I heard my teammates screaming. Cheering. Clapping. People were going crazy. 

From the infield, I heard Abs say he could admit when he'd been stood up by a girl--just before I saw him bust out a handstand from the corner of my eye. (Seriously, what is UP with that guy?!)

I vaguely heard and saw all of these things. But I was already focused on my next task at hand: kicking the ball. A task I'd managed to suck at quite a bit this season. I hoped my initial "in your face" display wouldn't be met with a sheepish strikeout. 

The pitcher chunked the first ball at me. It was far left of the plate. 

Ball!

Then another. 

Ball!

"Yes!" I thought. "Maybe he'll walk me." 

But the next pitch went screaming right over homeplate. "Here goes nothing."

I raised my right knee, and the ball connected with the inside of my right foot and headed toward third base. It looked fair, so I took off. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Abs go running for it. 

"Shit! He's going to beat me!" 

He was headed toward first, ready to throw the ball at the baseman. I was determined to beat him. 

I ran as fast as I could. Just before I reached the base, I saw Abs's wild throw get away from the first baseman. I was safe. By a longshot. 

I slammed my foot into first base, and I immediately began celebrating. 

I might have remembered the deal myself, or I might have heard one of my teammates screaming about it from the sidelines. But somehow, as soon as the "reach the base, take off your shirt" rule clicked in my mind, I ripped my shirt over my head as quickly as I could. 

I was screaming and jumping up and down. 

Of all the times to get on base--and of all the ways to do it--this was the best. 

I ignored the wayward ball. 

Like hell was I about to risk getting out by getting cocky with base running. Like hell did I think twice about taking off my shirt. Like hell were we going to get upset about losing a kickball game.

Seriously, my favorite moment of the entire kickball season.

When the game was all said & done, we lost 6-0. But anyone watching us leave the field would never have known. Our team was laughing, smiling, and carrying on. Abs's team walked off little by little, looking more like they'd lost, and asking the coach why they couldn't have more fun like us.

Just when I think you can't get any dumber ...

K just pinged me on my phone. He's 10 minutes away from my office (which means he's now about 40 minutes from his).

Evidently this was a planned surprise. Tomorrow marks 5 years from the day we met, so he wanted to do something special. Since he has a meeting or something tomorrow, he asked for an extended lunch today so he could surprise me with one of my favorite places for lunch!

Does that man know how to redeem himself, or what?!

Hawaii in bullets

How on earth do you write about a fantastic trip that lasted 7 days? In that time, K and I did so much stuff. It would be quite a post to get it all down.

The best I can think to do is to start with bullets of each day. Then, I can elaborate on the most special/unique/memorable things in different posts with lots of pictures. So here goes:

• Day 1 (Tuesday, March 23): Arrive on Oahu a little after 6. CG & Joe greeted us with beautiful leis. They had some awesome surprises for us in our room back at their house. We headed out to Gordon Biersch for dinner. K and I were starving! By 9:00 (actually, probably before), K and I were really struggling, so we went to bed.

• Day 2: We checked out Turtle Beach with CG (more on that here), and we hit up Matsumoto for its famous shave ice. Delicious! 

• Day 3: K and I got up early to hike Koko Crater (more on this here). Once we finished the hike, we went for a drive around the entire island. We stopped by a macadamia nut farm (Tropical Farms -- HIGHLY recommend it! More on the tour here.) to go on a tour. ER and I had been on it when we went to Hawaii in 2005, and it was our favorite thing we did the entire trip. Neither CG or K had been on it, so I was very excited when they couldn't stop talking about how cool it was once it was over. K got his first look at Pipeline that day.

• Day 4: We got a late start on this day. CG cooked us breakfast for lunch, and then we headed out to a beautiful lagoon. That afternoon, we went on a sunset mai tai cruise. What a blast! I had a celebrity sighting (more on all of this here). We walked so much that I lost my buzz. Sleepiness set in, and I found myself standing up at our table at the bar in an attempt to stay awake. Although it was only 11:00 (if even), I was so glad when we finally called it a night!

• Day 5 (Saturday): The four of us (since Joe was off work for the weekend) went to a place I think may be pretty dang close to heaven: the Dole Plantation (more pics here). We went on the Pineapple Express, which is a short train ride that takes you around the plantation for a tour. We got Dole Whips, of course, before we left. Late that afternoon, we all took our host dog to a dog beach (pics here).  

• Day 6: K and I left early that morning for the Big Island. I'd been before, but K hadn't. We had quite an agenda. On this first day, we managed to get a lot of it done (more on this later). The most notable things: a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, which rises 13,803 feet above sea level (and is the world's tallest mountain when you factor its total height of 30,000 feet, which includes its base under water); and seeing the glow from the lava at Kilauea Crater.

• Day 7: K and I got up bright & early to check out some lava tubes and to hike across a crater in the Kilauea Iki hike. After that, we headed to a black sand beach, the southernmost point in the United States, and the southernmost bar and bakery in the U.S. (not the same, by the way). We also did some off-roading to check out a green sand beach. We might have gotten whiplash, but the trip was well worth it. (Many more pictures to come from this day!) That night, we flew back to Oahu for one last night with CG & Joe.

• Day 8: We went to the beach one last time before spending the rest of the morning getting ready to head back home. We were at the airport by 11:30 a.m. Hawaii time. Three flights later, we arrived back in VA around 9:30 Eastern time. 

So there you have it: 14 out of over 1,000 pictures I took documenting our awesome trip. We did so much that I couldn't put it all in these bullets. (Guess that's one more reason jet lag is still affecting us after almost 72 hours of being home.)

And it's also why I see a few more Hawaii trip posts coming to this blog in the next week.

Best holiday ever! (and some blurbs)

Today is G___ Day. It's the first one K & I have spent together since we got engaged, so it's nice to have our own little holiday tradition. We celebrated by enjoying two things that had been on our minds since our trip to Hawaii: Forgetting Sarah Marshall (since it takes place in HI) and pizza (since we didn't eat it while we were on the island).

We mixed some champagne and strawberries with it. Nice, laid back, and completely awesome.

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A couple weeks ago, I discovered kettlebell classes at our gym. They're fantastic. I actually missed them while we were on vacation. I went tonight. Awesome workout. According to my heart rate monitor, I burned 592 calories. I'm totally going to be a regular to that class! 

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K & I have a 10-mile run to do in just 9 days. I'm worried I'm going to keel over & die in my attempt to finish. I dragged myself out for a quick 2-mile run today. My first mile was done in 7.5 minutes. Granted, I was at a faster pace when I started that first mile, but whatever. My time for the entire run was 16:40. I thought I was going to die; I have no idea how I didn't. (Burned a couple hundred cal there too!)

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Tomorrow's my big 4th interview. Hopefully it goes well, although at this point, it seems that just qualifies me for another interview. We'll see!

I'm on a moat ...

OK, so I should've posted this last week. I'm a little late, since we went the weekend before last, but the experience was too cool not to share.

K and I visited a museum on an Army post nearby. It's something we'd been wanting to do for a while now, and we finally got around to it.

The Casemate Museum shows the history of Fort Monroe, which is quite a historic place. It was fortified in 1609, and it's been an active post since 1823. It was once home to Robert E. Lee and Edgar Allan Poe, and Jefferson Davis was actually imprisoned there for two years.

The post actually has a moat, and the museum resides on it.

There were two bikes thrown into the moat!

The room where Jefferson Davis was imprisoned. They hung this huge Union flag in his room as a sort of poke at him, since he was president of the Confederacy.

K was impressed with how large the cannon rounds were ...

... especially when compared to how small the soldiers were.

The writing on this display says, "The average size of soldiers manning guns, like those you see here, was only 5'8" tall and 143 1/2 lbs. in weight. Compare yourself." Our friend standing beside this display is about 6'4".

Robert E. Lee's former home is right across from the museum.

Unfortunately, this post is set to close in 2011. I really hope whoever gets control of it takes care to maintain it. The rest of the post is just as charming and historic as the places we explored on the moat.

After almost 5 years, we finally took a trip together ... alone

The drive to Snowshoe, where K and I went skiing, was about the same amount of time it used to take us to get to each other's apartments when we lived in Dallas and Louisiana. It was the first time either of us had been to West Virginia. It turned out to be a pretty scenic drive, and the closer we got to the mountain, the more ridiculous the road got.

If we lived in this town, I'd totally go to church here!

Such a beautiful view.

K said this is the craziest road he's ever been on. He actually got dizzy driving on the way back. These turns were insane!

Quite a welcome sign ...

Because we procrastinated on making our reservations, we weren't able to find a hotel room until Sunday, so we left Sunday morning. It was early Sunday afternoon by the time we checked in. We hurried to change into our gear and set out for the mountain.

I still had my Keystone run-in in the back of my mind, so I was hesitant to go too fast, and having to anticipate other skiers' movements made me nervous. I felt like it was my first time skiing again.

We got a good 4 hours in on the slopes before calling it a night at about 7:30. We headed straight to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and then we went back to the hotel. We'd planned on hitting up the hot tub, but I felt awful.

I was getting sharp stomach pains in waves. I was actually doing the math, wondering if I was going to wind up on one of those I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant shows (our May wedding WAS 9 months ago!). I had hoped there would be a little romance involved in our first solo trip, so I'd packed a nice little nightie. It never left my suitcase. I actually got up sick a few times during the night.

We got up early the next morning and headed to breakfast. The thought of putting even water into my body made me nervous, but I forced myself to eat a couple bites. We stopped off at the gift shop for some Pepto, and we headed to the slopes for a few more hours before we had to go back home.

It was snowing, and since it wasn't even 10 a.m. (the slopes opened at 9), the mountain was fairly clear. We got to ski on fresh powder! I felt more confident, and my first run was pretty darn fast.

We got quite a few runs in during the 2 hours or so that we skied, and each time I was more confident with weaving around people and anticipating their movements. K was my constant cheerleader. I did pretty well! I didn't fall once, either day!

The blue slopes at Snowshoe looked nicer than the "green" I'd attempted at Keystone. I actually considered trying one out, but K was hesitant to have me attempt that prematurely again. I think if I didn't have the whole Schoolmarm thing on my record, I'd have gone for a blue at Snowshoe (bonus points for rhyming!).

With the snowfall, we had to head out before the roads got bad. We passed so many small towns with huge fields of fresh, untouched snow. K and I were wishing we could stop and just mess it all up. How fun would that be?!

We got home at about dinner time. I still wasn't feeling great. I had slept a good part of the way home, but we were both exhausted. We unpacked and fell asleep just after 8:00.

Now that we're all rested, we're already talking about going back. Next time, though, we'll make a full weekend of it!

The kind of experience that comes around once every 23 years

Well, we didn't make it to the ski slopes today. The roads were a bit treacherous, so we stayed home.

Remember what our back yard looked like a week ago? This is how it looked when we woke up yesterday:

I was so excited when I looked out the window! K and I gobbled down breakfast, then headed outside to play in the snow with Piper.

She's quite the snow bunny! What's funny is that she hates rain and will absolutely avoid going outside if it's raining. Snow, however? She loves it! K and I took turns taking video of her frolicking around in it. She's such a dork.

Obviously she's not frolicking here; she's sitting. The frolicking was on video, though, remember?

K and I made snow angels (mine's on the right),

and then K tried to help Piper make one.

(Turns out she sucks at them.)

We decided to venture out to see how things looked beyond our neighborhood. With K's SUV, we knew we would be OK in the snow, so off we went! The highways were covered in snow. Other than that, they were empty.

That exit sign really had writing on it. I just blurred it out so the stalkers can't find us. Not that it was our exit, and not that I have stalkers -- that I know of. You can never be too safe!

We headed to our favorite beach because I wanted to see what it looked like covered in snow. First, though, I'll share a couple pictures of how it looks not covered in snow.

I took these pictures Jan. 5. This is actually my favorite place in all of Virginia. It's a private beach on the post where K works. On nice days, we love to have lunch on this bench.

This is what "our" beach looked like yesterday:

The wind created a cool mix of sand and snow on the sidewalk.

When we got back home, I made us some snow ice cream. My friend Danielle mentioned that she had done that when OK got hit with a ridiculous blizzard at Christmastime. Evidently her family had always done that when it snowed enough. I thought I'd give it a shot.

I found a recipe online that involved a gallon of snow, 2 cups of milk (or more, if needed), a cup of sugar, and a tablespoon of vanilla.

The website had said that snow ice cream isn't about making creamy, gourmet ice cream; it's about the experience of making it. Still, I thought it was pretty dang good! For extra awesomeness, I added chocolate syrup to mine.

K, on the other hand, took one bite and made a face. He asked if I'd be offended if he didn't eat it. I guess I'll just have to hold my hopes of making that a fun tradition for another 15 years or so when we have kids. Oh, well ...

By the end of the day, we were surprised at the amount of snow that had fallen:

Since we're so close to the coast, it's rare for weather like this here. In fact, according to our local weatherman, snowfall like this hits every 23 years. It had been 21 years, so it was only a little early.

It makes me feel lucky we got to experience it! Definitely made for a pretty cool Saturday!