Hello Friday!

I have felt like this week has gone by so slow! I am very happy that it's Friday. 

Tonight the El Paso Downtown Street Fest starts. There will be food, car shows, and a ton of bands. 

Playing on the main stage tonight is:

BUSH!!!!

Oh I am so excited haha. 

Tomorrow night on the main stage is:

THIRD EYE BLIND!

I hope you all have an awesome weekend, I know I will haha. :)

Back To Normal

Things have been busy since Kyle went back to work on Monday. We are still getting FRG stuff worked out, right now we have a battalion family day to look forward to next Tuesday. It should be a great time for soldiers and their families. I will make sure I get lots of pictures since Kyle is participating in both the dunk tank and pie in the face fundraisers. 

I know a few weeks ago I posted a picture of my stockpile that I have been acquiring. I finally got plastic shelving to organize it all and I'm happy how it turned out:

 

We should not have to buy any more of this stuff for a long time, it will help with all the upcoming training Kyle has. He can grab what he needs and not worry about running out.

I did do a little baking a few days ago and made these delicious chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches:

 YUM!!! I definitely need to be careful with these and not eat them all.

Hope you all have a great day!

Vacation Recap: Part 3

Friday, June 21st, was a very special day of our vacation. We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary! We started off our day by heading to downtown San Antonio to see The Alamo. What an incredible site to see, so much history happened here and it was amazing to stand where so many brave men died.

After we left the Alamo we headed off to the Riverwalk. It was an amazing place with shops and restaurants. We decided to take a riverboat tour so we could see more in a shorter amount of time. It was amazing! While on the tour we we told about the oldest restaurant called "Casa Rio" so we knew that was where we would have lunch. It was a fun tour and absolutely gorgeous.

After a few hours at the Riverwalk (including a tour through the wax museum) we headed off to the Tower of the America's for dinner. We had dinner at a place called The Chart House, it's a revolving restaurant 620 feet up in the tower. It was AMAZING! The food and view were remarkable. It was the perfect way to celebrate our anniversary. After dinner we headed back to the hotel, had some drinks at the bar and relaxed in the spa.

We had an amazing week in San Antonio, we were sad to leave but definitely happy to be home. 

Hope you all enjoyed the recaps. Have a great day! :)

Vacation Recap: Part 2

Kyle and I both agreed that Thursday was our favorite day of the whole trip: SeaWorld!!

We got there before they opened and thanks to the Hero Salute program we were able to get free tickets (thank you SeaWorld!!!). We started off with a Sea Lion show which was amazing, these animals are just so impressive. I even got danced with by a team member who was warming up the crowd haha. 

We walked around and took in the amazing sites and adorable animals. We were able to see 2 sea lion pups who were just recently born (one was born that morning), just too cute. 

At 2:30 we had our dolphin encounter, I was so excited for this. We met a 32 year old dolphin named, Nacha. We got to feed her and pet her. It was absolutely incredible!

We then headed off to the Penguin Encounter. Kyle was like a little kid and couldn't wait to see a penguin up close and personal. We met an adorable little girl penguin (she doesn't have a name yet) that is still in penguin school (learning how to swim and feed herself). We were even able to go into the habitat and see just how cold it is where the 200+ penguins live. 

We saw every show at the park and enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was a perfect day.

Stayed tuned for the last vacation recap tomorrow!

Vacation Recap: Part 1

Hey Everyone! I am so happy to be back blogging. Thanks to all my wonderful guest bloggers for holding down the fort last week for me. It's safe to say that this last week in San Antonio has been by far the best vacation we have ever taken! It was just packed but we also got the chance to just relax and enjoy time together. I'm going to split this up into 3 posts so it's not so much at once.

Monday: We got up bright and early, dropped Emma and Fishy off at the vet, and hit the road. We got into SA at around 5pm, checked into our hotel, had dinner,  and went to the pool for some relaxation.

Tuesday: This was our first full day in SA and we headed off to Six Flags. We had a blast, so many fun roller coasters and water rides. We definitely will be going back, we even played some fun carnival games and left with some ridiculously funny prizes (including Superman capes haha).

After our fun filled day here we headed back to the room and thanks to some not so fun findings we ended up switching hotels and ended up at a gorgeous one! 

Wednesday: We spent the day at a water park called Schlitterbahn! Wow this place was incredible. If you have never heard of it go look it up now. This is the only water park that it's primary water source comes from the river that runs along side it (some of the rides even go into the river). There are no chemicals in the water, it's only filtered. There is a West and East portion of the park and both are equally fun. The East portion is new and has the faster water rides while the west is older but we thought it was more fun and less crowded.

After we finished up at the water park, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We headed off to Cheesecake Factory and had a great night. 

Look for another recap tomorrow!

Have a great day!

Headed Back...

We are finally on our way home from vacation and it was amazing! I can't wait to recap all the fun we had. :)

Hope you all had a great week and special thank you to all my wonderful guest bloggers! 

Guest Post: Sweaty Girl in a Fur-Covered World

How I found my running legs…

 

Once upon a time there was a girl who was always slightly chubbier than the rest of the girls her age. She was teased. As she got older, she yoyo’ed from being chunky to almost being average. When she was a junior in college she finally achieved a weight and a body she thought would keep her happy but life and bad relationships led her to eat her emotions and soon she had a body she once again resented.  And then the girl found out she had cancer… she was pumped full of medications including steroids which caused her to gain even more weight. She eventually beat her cancer but she was left with a much different body and the scale tipped at just under 200 pounds… 196 pounds to be exact. The girl was miserable but also more determined than ever to change her life and her body once again!

I’m that girl… My name is Ashley and I blog over at Sweaty Girl in a Fur-Covered Girl [http://sweatygirlfurcoveredworld.blogspot.com/]. 

On April 15, 2013, I started a program called C25K (Couch to 5K). It is a program that is designed to take someone who isn’t active at all (i.e. a couch potato) and have them capable of running a 5K (3.1 miles) in a 9 week program. There were a variety of different factors that led me to this program but it was mostly convenience – all it required was the app and a good pair of running shoes.

If you’re curious about the app I use, its RunDouble [http://www.rundouble.com/] on my Samsung SIII. When I started, I had the worst time ever… my feet hurt, my knees hurt, my legs hurt, and I couldn’t breathe when I finished a run. It took ever bit of willpower I had to not give up. I hate ever single minute of each run and I wanted to kill over after each one was finished.

But, then around week 5, something happened… I began to enjoy the running. My pains had faded away. I could breathe. And I finally started feeling a “runner’s high” after finishing my runs.

And then, around week 7, I stopped taking my rest days and running every day… sometimes twice a day.

I had at last… found my running legs.

I do have a few tips to offer those who might want to dabble in running but please keep in mind that I’m not an expert:

-        Invest in good running shoes

-        Use an heart rate monitor. (I recommend the Polar FT4 [http://www.polar.com/en/products/get_active/fitness_crosstraining/FT4]

-        Make the program your own (i.e. repeat runs or skip runs as needed)

-        Consider other forms of exercise like spinning for strengthen your legs and the rest of your body

-        Follow a good diet (lots of lean proteins and veggies)

If you’re interested in learning more about my fitness journey, please feel free to check out my blog or find me on any of my other forms of social media. I’m particularly active on Instagram [http://instagram.com/anratliff] and Twitter [https://twitter.com/anratliff].