Gulf Shores

You can never say that Bryan and I aren’t spontaneous… Friday afternoon, he got a call from his dad saying that the condo was open. Saturday morning, we were on our way to the beach!! When we were getting into Gulf Shores, we almost decided that Alabama had it out for us. 2 years ago, it rained the whole time. Last year, the oil hit the beach the same day we did. And this year, a massive, 600-acre wildfire broke out. But luckily, it was contained relatively quickly (no injuries). It didn’t interfere with my UV rays at all :)

 

There was a wedding on the beach. And yes, I took pictures of random people, but it was really pretty!

The waves were pretty large for Gulf Shores, so Bryan pulled out a boogie board. Of course, he had to wait to make sure he wouldn’t be the only one over the age of 5 doing it. Lucky for him, there are more grown men who like to boogie board!

One night we went to eat at Live Bait at the Wharf. They have these seafood nachos… Mmmm… so good!

A couple more random pictures:

This was taken Father’s Day. Ella loves when her PJ puts her in the wheelbarrow, or anything else that PJ does.

 

Random thoughts

It’s that time in my school career that I have to write a paper. In order to get a PhD, I have to write at least one paper that gets published in a scientific journal. For the past 3 years, I’ve been doing research, and it’s finally to a point that I have enough decent results that I’m ready to share it and hopefully get published. But… just like with studying, I’m procrastinating. I hate writing. I’m not creative. My grandmother was incredibly creative and would paint, make out random shapes from clouds (“look, there’s a dog!” me –> what???), and all sorts of other things to keep us entertained. However, that gene did NOT get passed to me. So I’m doing anything possible to keep from writing. By the way, I have a week and a half to get this finished.

A friend of mine talks about skinnyrunner on her blog. The skinnyrunner is a girl who runs like crazy then blogs about it, along with whatever she did that day. Like one day, she ran 8 miles with a friend. On her drive home, she saw a trail she wanted to run, so she did another 5 miles on that trail. When she got home, she did strength training then walked her dog another 2 miles. That afternoon, she did some other cardio. That would put me in the bed for weeks! Her blog links to another blog called “Shut up and run!”. This woman is even more psycho. She listed out her day as something like this -- 6am ran 12 miles, 9 am cooked breakfast, 12pm ate lunch, 2 pm ate dessert, 4pm strength training, 6pm run with dog. She obviously has no job. And I’m pretty sure that skinnyrunner doesn’t either. Or maybe they work from home?

So when are the rest of us supposed to do all of this to get in the crazy shape that these 2 are in? I don’t have the most hectic or stressful work schedule in the world, but I still can’t find the time just to workout enough to be healthy and not gain weight. And I definitely don’t cook enough to eat healthy :)

Today’s blog is nothing but avoiding the inevitable. Plus, we really haven’t done anything lately that would be of any entertainment value whatsoever to anyone else. Back to writing…

More yardwork

We have grass!!! This yard has never seen a blade of grass – just weeds, ivy, pinestraw, and leaves. Now that we’ve cleared all of the mess out of the yard and built it up, we can grow grass.

Before..

 

After…

 

Then we made a walkway around the corner. Or least we started one. It was so much easier to lay the grass than to move all of these rocks and lay them out so they fit together!

We finished the day with a dip in the Reservoir. And again… Bryan just LOVES having his picture taken.

Working on the house

Saturday morning, at 8:02, a guy called and said he was pulling in the driveway with a load of dirt. And thus began our weekend. He would bring 4 more loads throughout the morning. Bryan drove the tractor, loaded up the dirt from the front of the house and unloaded it around the back of the house. I sat out with a shovel and moved the dirt that he dumped. It was long, hot day. And it continued into Sunday. And for Bryan, it continued into Monday. He said he ended up with about 90 yards of dirt, whatever that means. Our backyard looks so different! Now, we just need some grass!!!

  

Those are the before and after shots. The main part we worked on was the right corner where the foundation was showing and there was only enough room for one person to walk around. Now, a tractor can drive around the side!

Not much left of the deck…

Headed to Oxford

Tomorrow, bright and early, I'm headed to Oxford for a conference. Since I've never really been to Ole Miss except for sports camps, I'm looking forward to it. I did go to an Ole Miss/State game once, but since I had on a State shirt, I didn't spend too much time hanging out...