The Real Mean Girl

I stole this from a Facebook post between my cousins' fantastic wives.  I'm posting it for your enjoyment because it is maybe the best thing that's happened to me all week.

Turns out you don't have to be in high school to be a mean girl!  Happy Thursday!!!

Cheers to Dads

This weekend we had a Father's Day BBQ at our house.  I already told you that, right?  You know, we ate lots of jalapenos and drank lots of Sangria.  Remember?  Well, I didn't show you all the pictures.  And I've been told by some of you (Kait), that you don't like posts without pictures.  So here ya go.

Dog Dads count too.

PaPa & Jack.

The men did man things... Drew & Tom taught Jack all about grillin'.  Jack insisted that his hamburger be a "big one".  No more mini burgers for this guy. 

Grillin' with the boys.

I was on a mission to take cute pictures of Jack with his mom, but most of them ended up looking like this:

Goofy baby.

The folks.

That's us.

More silly pics of Jack and Brooke...

Big kisses!

I love that kid.

Since it was Father's Day, dessert was the dads' favorites... carrot cake and pineapple pie.  Have you heard of two more random desserts?  I mean come on, where's the chocolate? :)

Carrot Cake & Pineapple Pie.  Sounds healthy right?

We had a few outfit changes because the big boy is learning to use the big boy potty.  God has blessed Brooke with some serious patience... and the foresight to bring a week's worth of shorts for a BBQ.  Drew took the opportunity to chase the half naked kid around the house and tickle him to death.  I was worried he was going to make him pee his pants again!

Tickle wars.

Get him Drew!

Awwww...

There was lots of laughing all night as Jack acted as the entertainment... just like always.


Jack loves his Grandpa.



Jack also loves Mya.

I love this picture. :)

We had such a fantastic night with the family.  We are so blessed to have such great dads!!!  And of course, we're so blessed to have Jack around to keep us entertained... even if he won't cheese for the camera anymore.

Jalapeno Poppers & Mango Sangria

It's Monday.  And again, I haven't cooked anything.  I had big plans to try out a new veggie burger recipe for our Father's Day BBQ this weekend.  But I got busy.  And lazy.  So instead I threw a Morningstar veggie burger on the grill next to everyone else's moo-cow-patties.

So today you get two recipes, that are absolutely meat-free, but maybe don't make a traditional meal.  Although, I think if you pair them together, you'll be so pleased you won't even notice you are drinking your dinner.

First up: the appetizers!  I was watching Rachael the other day and she was making jalapeno poppers in the oven.  They looked fantastic.  And they didn't call for any carne.  I was intrigued, but when she mentioned you could make them on the grill, I knew they'd be perfect for our BBQ.  It's grillin' season friends... and I don't want to turn on my oven.

Apparently I don't want to take pictures either.  Or at least not very good ones...

Get em' while they're hot!

Cute pic Drew, but I can't see the poppers.

Grilled Jalapeno Poppers from my BFF Rachael Ray

Ingredients:

• 12 large jalapenos
• 2 oz feta
• 4 oz cream cheese, room temp
• 4 oz pepper jack, shredded
• Handful of cilantro, chopped
• 2 Tbsp onion, grated
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

Method:

• Preheat grill to medium high.
• Cut peppers in half, lengthwise and scoop out seeds and ribs using a teaspoon.
• Mash the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl and spoon into peppers.  Place peppers in a grill pan.
• Grill for 15 - 20 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and brown.
• Eat up! 

These were fantastic.  We ate them all.  And everyone was raving about them.  I mean... seriously good.  And so easy!  We had those bad boys on the grill before anyone even showed up.  If you know my entertaining style... usually I haven't even showered by the time people show up.  Let alone prepared food.

But, what to drink with those spicy little suckers???

We had plenty of cerveza to go around, but it was such a nice night and something fruity and girly seemed appropriate, even though we were technically celebrating dads.  I decided white sangria was just the thing, but wasn't sure how to make it.  I read lots of recipes on Food Network, but was lacking a complete list of ingredients.  So I did what I do best and took the basic method from all the recipes, along with the hodge-podge of ingredients in my kitchen, and voila: sangria!

I can't freakin' believe I didn't take a proper picture.  The pitcher of sangria was just lovely.  So were the second and third pitchers. 

Up there in the left.  That's sangria.  Yo.

Jamie's Super Fantastic White Mango Sangria

Ingredients:

• White Wine*
• 1/2 - 1 cup mango rum, depending on how heavy your hand is
• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 green apple, chopped
• 1 cup-ish mango cubes**
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced

Method:

• Pour rum and sugar into pitcher.  Stir until sugar is dissolved. 
• Add fruit.
• Fill pitcher to the top with white wine.
• Serve over ice.

Nutritious and delicious!

The first pitcher was pretty much ladies only.  But word got out about the tastiness of this beverage and pretty soon everyone was drinking it.  Three pitchers of sangria later... and that's what I call summer.

Happy {meatless} Monday!!!

*I recommend a box of wine***.  It's classy, and you don't have to worry about how many bottles you've gone through.
**How on Earth do you cube a mango???  I just buy it frozen, pre-cubed.
***Don't hate.

Ready-Relate & My 4th Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to me!  Yes, just to me... Drew is out of town and missing our anniversary (again), so he gets no well wishes from me*.  Today, instead of my usual barrage of Drew & Jamie photos from the previous year, I thought I'd give you all a deeper look into our marriage. 

One of my summer classes, which actually ends today, is called Transition to Marriage.  It is all about communication, conflict resolution, expectations, and lots of other fun things that go along with marriage.  Let me tell you, Drew loves that I'm taking this class.  I mean, what guy doesn't want to discuss their relationship in depth?

As part of the class, I was required to take this survey called Ready-Relate.  It was something like 270 in-depth questions about every facet of my life.  Oh, and Drew had to take it too.  This was the part he was most excited about.

So after we each took the test, the program linked up our answers and spit out a 34 page Survey Profile.  OMG.  We kept reading through it, expecting that somewhere along the way it would give us like a score of 1 - 10 or tell us if we're going to make it or not.  It didn't.  It just gave us lots of charts and graphs... boring.

One of the charts was actually pretty interesting though.  It listed all of the common problem areas with couples such as drug & alcohol use, un-approving family members, willingness to have extra-marital affairs, etc.  There were check marks for each of us which signified each area as either a "strength area" or a "challenge area".

Of all the areas listed (there were quite a few), Drew and I had check marks in the "strength area" except for two areas** which were the same for both of us.  The reports show that a "challenge area" for both Drew and me are Personal Alcohol Use and Partner Alcohol Use.  

Well that's just fantastic.  Our stupid professional survey just said the only problem in our marriage is that we drink too much.  I don't even remember any questions that asked about drinking.  Maybe they read my blog. 

I guess now the world knows.  But hey, we've all got problems, right?

♥ Cheers to 4 Fantastic Years! ♥

*Just kidding.  Love you Drew!!!
**The survey actually reported an additional challenge area for Drew which was Willingness to Cohabit... which I'm pretty sure means willingness to live together before marriage.  I'm not sure how this is a challenge area since we didn't live together before marriage, but if Drew has a problem he probably should have brought it up before now. 

Replacement Needed

Okay friends, thanks for all your support and no, I haven't completely gone off the deep end (yet).  To prove it to you, here's a post full of silly dog pics.

I'm looking for a garden assistant.  My old one (Jack) got fired because he kept trying to pick my one and only tiny little pepper... the only thing growing so far.  He kept telling me he was going to pick it and eat it.  Finally I had enough... now I'm looking for a replacement.

I've only seen one candidate, and he's lacking some important gardening skills.  When I asked if he has a green thumb, he showed me that he doesn't actually have any thumbs.  This could be a problem.  Let's take a look.

"Must water tomatoes... wish I had thumbs."

Note:  it is super classy to put your tomato plants in Lowe's buckets.  Although, it might embarrass them so much that they refuse to grow.

"Okay, I got it.  Now just tilt my head like this..."

"Bah.  Stupid watering can.  This is a lot of work."

"Maybe if I shake it all around like this!"

"Wait, why won't this thing hold water?"

This guy has gone through two watering cans this week.  I don't think this is going to work out.

In other news, the black thumb is in full force.  I have tons of vegetable plants growing, but no vegetables are being produced... except my tiny little pepper which I'm guarding with my life*.

Patience Grasshopper.

*Don't even think about it, Jack.

Strength is the Product of Struggle

Typically when I'm seeking clarity or words of wisdom, I seek it out in the form of yoga.  After lying awake for hours with a racing mind, I decided to do something productive and got up to go to Spinning this morning, not really expecting anything more than the possibility of an endorphin rush... or at least heavy enough breathing to drown out my thoughts for an hour.  What I got was better. 

Our instructor said she'd found this quote and found it inspiring, so she wrote it down to share with us:

"Strength is the product of struggle."

As much as I know that she was speaking of strength in the form of exercise, the bike in particular, I felt a powerful connection to those words this morning.  I think they can translate into any facet of our lives, be it our career, our relationship with God, our family, or our marriage.

I think we often avoid the struggle, because no one likes to endure pain.  And as a result, we experience no growth.  We miss out on the process by walking away when things get tough.  In the end, we feel no pain, but we never reach our potential.  We're never as good as we could be. 

So, for better or worse, I'm going to keep on going.  I don't know God's plan, but I know that I won't give up.  I hope you keep fighting too.

Hot Hospital Hill

Oh hey, I ran a half marathon this weekend.  Did ya know?  I signed up for Hospital Hill before I actually ran Big D.  It was a dumb decision because I didn't know how my body, especially my knees, would react to the marathon.  But we've all done dumb things after drinking too much wine and surfing the internet in the middle of the night, right?  Riiiight.

After the marathon my left knee, which was my good knee, decided he was not happy with all this running and basically gave out.  I ordered new knee sleeves and made a weak attempt to at least be in reasonable shape for this race.  Fail. 

BTW, if you thought one knee sleeve was hot, you should see me in two.  I think I'm starting a trend in the running world.  They also make for some super sexy tan lines.

As race day approached, I knew I was undertrained* but I was still really excited.  Hospital Hill is beyond a doubt my favorite race ever.  It is really well organized and I just love running through Kansas City.  I love this town.  Love it.

My personal cheerleader braved the heat to follow me around.  Unfortunately, not a lot of photos were captured.  The race sold out this year, so it was super packed!  I'm so happy that so many people love my favorite race. :)

Oh, hello.

I didn't arrive downtown early enough and got stuck in the porta-potty line before the race started.  I ended up outside of the corral and couldn't start with the pace group like I'd wanted to.  This may have actually been a good thing.  I wanted to start with the 1:50 group, but it took me 3 miles to even catch up to the 1:55 group.  I decided just to stick with them.  I'm pretty sure I would have died if I'd tried to speed up anymore.

The race was hot.  It was hotter than Big D.  Hot!  There were plenty of stretches of shade, and there was a nice breeze.  But when running in the sun, I thought I was going to die.  There were so many times I just wanted to give up and just walk.  But the pacers really kept me going.  They were amazing.  They encouraged us and really kept us going.  As I made my final push at the end and left the group, I said thank you to the Larry the pacer and told him I wouldn't have finished this race if it weren't for him.  Seriously, he was that good.

My official time was 1:54:20.  Not my best time by a long shot, but I'm still pretty happy with how I raced.  I have a tendency to give up when things get rough.  It took everything in me to continue on and really push through the end.  So for that, I'm pretty pleased with the results. 

Finished!

There were popsicles at the end of the race.  Genius.  That was the best popsicle I've eaten in my entire life. 

Is it just me or do I look like a cancer patient in my Bondi Band?

Now that the race is over, I've decided to give the distance running a bit of a break and let my knee heal.  However, Drew has agreed to run a 5K with me in July!!!  This is huge, friends!  We start training this week.  If you want to join us, check out Rock the Crossroads for more details.  Its a night race followed by beer and a concert.  Fun, right?

*Understatement of the year.

Chickpea Tacos

Oh hey, it's Monday!  You know what that means... Meatless Monday yo!  Also, Kaitlin will admittedly not be reading this post.  That's fine Kait.  I've seen your pantry.  I know you don't cook.  But you could at least humor me.

Today's recipea is inspired by Mama Pea.  I've been resisting her blog because of the kid focus.  Confession:  I don't really care about other people's kids when there isn't a personal connection.  But I finally gave in to the draw of delicious vegetarian recipes... and must admit that those kids are pretty hilarious and cute... especially the pickle-eating one.  Now I'm hooked.

I was pretty excited to see a recipe for Chickpea Tacos.  Pretty sure chickpeas are my favorite legumbre*.  But I really don't like them roasted.  So I kind of tweaked the recipe to saute the chickpeas instead of roast them.  I thought it turned out pretty good.

Chickity Peas.

Confession: I was planning these but then chickened out because Brooke was coming over for dinner.  I don't mind force-feeding Drew veggified food, but since we were having company I felt like I should offer something more meat-eater friendly.  So I also made this recipe for chicken tacos.  I didn't eat them, but heard they were tasty.

He didn't even try the chickpeas.

Brooke mixed the chickpeas with the chicken for a chick-chick taco.  She said good things!  I told her if she's gonna be featured on Meatless Mondays, we need a shot of her eating.  Don't worry, she'll get used to it... just like Drew did.

Oh hell no.

And, I thought the chickpeas were fantastic.  I don't think I've had a taco since going meat-free last summer.  So it was a nice little treat.  Plus, have you used chipotles in adobo?  Rachael Ray always uses them, so I knew I'd like them.  They were Spicy!  But in a good way. 


Roasted Chickpeas Tacos

Ingredients

• 2 t. chili powder
• 1/4 t. garlic powder
• 1/4 t. onion powder
• 1/4 t. dried oregano
• 1 1/2 t. ground cumin
• 1 t. sea salt
• 1 T. lime juice
• 2 chipotles in adobo, chopped
• 2 T. water
• One 14 oz. can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 8 organic taco shells (i.e. Trader Joe’s brand) You know I used Taco Bell brand.
• Taco trimmings: shredded cabbage, tomato, guacamole,cheese, etc.

Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, combine chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, cumin, salt, lime juice, chipotles, and water.

Add chickpeas and marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Place chickpeas on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray.


Bake for 20-30 minutes, stirring once during cooking, until chickpeas are slightly crispy.

Saute onion and pepper in olive oil or Pam, for like 5 minutes or so.  Add chickpeas and marinade to pan and cook until heated through. 

Prepare taco shells according to package directions. Fill with chickpeas and desired toppings.

Eat up!

Try these tacos!  They make great leftovers too.  Drew actually ate them the next day... so there ya go.

Happy {meatless} Monday!

*Beans and shit.

Never a Dull Moment

Friends, I don't know why these things happen to me.  Maybe it is because I'm at home during odd hours of the day.  Hopefully when I start my full-time gig (in August!!!) I will avoid some of the ridiculous occurrences that are becoming a bit too frequent in Jamie Land.

Who was it that said something about how bloggers naturally have crazy things happen to them so they'll have something to write about?  The situation was not helped by the fact that Drew & I are balls deep in a 24 Marathon and I currently suspect everyone around me of being a terrorist.

The following takes place between 2:45 and 2:52 PM.  Events happen in real time.

2:45:  I sit down on the side of our house to plant some marigolds that I just picked up.  I start to ho.  Ha.

2:46:  My attention is temporarily drawn away from my marigolds as I hear two men shouting.  I look up to see two cops, guns drawn*, walking down the street, shouting at my neighbor to "Put your hands where I can see them!"

2:47:  I sit amongst my marigolds with my hands in the air.  I can barely hear my neighbor talking as two more cops approach, only one with a gun** drawn, who yells, "Get on the fucking ground!"

2:48:  My mind is reeling, thinking through all the terrorist organizations he may be connected with, what they're planning, and how I definitely never trusted that dude.

2:49:  I hear my neighbor say something to the effect of, "I don't know who to listen to!" and one of the PV cops yells, "The one with the biggest fucking gun!"  Okay, PV Cops.  I know this is ultra serious terrorist business, but come on.  You all have the same size gun***.

2:50:  Big scary PV cops continue to assert their dominance on silly terrorist neighbor.  Cop without his gun drawn sees me across the street, amongst my marigolds, with my hands in the air and motions for me to put my hands down.

2:51:  Not so scary PV cop starts heading my direction.  I recognize him as the cop who came to check up when I called in that crack head a couple of weeks ago.  He asks if I saw anything.  I say no.  He explains that someone called my neighbor in for shooting a gun and that apparently it was just an air gun and my neighbor was shooting it into the trees.  I have no idea what these words mean.

2:52:  Cops leave.  Silly terrorist neighbor mows lawn.  I leave my marigolds to write blog.

And there you have it friends.  Now, what have we learned?  1. My neighbor is way too dumb to be a terrorist.  2. PV Cops get super excited to use their big big guns.  3. Ho-ing is best left to the weekends. 

Have a nice day.  I hope you don't get shot.

*Big fucking guns!!!
**Dude.  That is a big gun.
*** Yes.  They are huge.  As I'm sure your ____ is.