The Weekend

What a weekend.

I spent the weekend hanging around the house playing hostess and trying to keep myself occupied.

My husband accomplished much more than me.  He, and two other friends of his, climbed Mt. Baker this weekend.

Note: the mountain pics are taken by the guy on the left.  Not me :)

The American flag was mostly for the Olympics.. and to be silly.

I am so proud of him!  He is a pretty inspirational person.  He makes my simple going for a morning run today seem like nothing.

Last year he climbed Mt. Adams (also in WA) twice, but it's not a technical climb.  This year he said he was going to climb Mt. Baker and he did!

Their campsite Saturday.  Awesome picture.

Can I just say one thing?  I'm so glad I married this inspiring man, but being married to a mountain climber has one major problem.  The waiting!  I hate waiting for them to climb up and down.  Not knowing if they made it, if they fell in a crevasse, etc.  It's not fun.  Just sayin'.  

Right before they left (taken by me)

They hiked up to base camp (about 7000ft) on Saturday, climbed up to the summit Sunday morning (around 2 am) and were coming back down the same day.  Nick said he estimated that they would be home around 1 pm.

Well, let me tell you something.  They didn't get home until about 4:45.  That meant that I spent a couple hours jumping up at the sound of each car driving by trying to busy myself.

It worked though.  Look at what I made!  Inspired by this Pinterest find.

 And I also watched a good number of Office episodes (woohoo!).  Anyways, I'm very proud of them.  They all came home looking like zombies.  They only got 2 hours of sleep before climbing and so they were beat.  I made some awesome goat cheese burgers with sweet potato fries for them.  They demolished those pretty quickly and preceded to crash on the living room floor.  I wish I had a picture of it.

Their sunrise yesterday.  Wish I could have had the same view!

That was my weekend!  How was yours?



Linking up with:

New Stuff + High Five for Friday

Did you notice?

If you did, high-five for you!  If not, look really hard. 

Did you find it?

Yup, we changed our name! 

I was getting a little tired of a "typical" blog name.  I also didn't like to have our last name out for the world to see (well, it wasn't really our last name, but it was close enough.  Plus, most people don't really get the play on our last name).

Anyways, we changed it.  My husband and I really like it.  I hope you do too!
BTW, you can blame my husband on the new tagline.  Very clever.  Not me, him.  Ha!

I didn't change layouts because (1) I'm a little lazy & busy right now and (2) I don't have any layout changing inspirations.  Sorry!

I changed blog buttons as well, but if you grabbed one you shouldn't have to change it because I just uploaded the picture with the same name.  Easy for you and easy for me :)

PS.  Does anyone know how to get your blog name to change in Google Reader?

Now, onto the fun stuff!

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High Five for Friday!  Just a little recap of the past week. 

1.  I got to hang out with some pretty awesome girls at the beach this week.  Pretty cool that this is my job!

2. We came back from vacation to a clean house, jobs, and beautiful weather.  Thank you!

3.  I successfully made this awesome blueberry lemon loaf.  So good!  It's very lemony, but I love lemons!

4.  We went to see Madagascar 3 finally.  I took the girls with me and it was great.  Very cute and it was almost as funny as the first and second one.  I love those movies!

5.  My husband and his friends are taking over our living room with all of their mountaineering gear.  I'm so glad he's climbing a mountain with such great people.  I'm also glad I cleaned the house today (even if it doesn't look like I did right now)

Our Montana vacation

Sorry for the long wait, but it's been a busy week getting back into the swing of things.  On top of that, our neighbors (who we were sharing internet with) moved out last week and you all know how much fun internet companies can be.  Anyways, pretty much we were supposed to receive a call about installing internet, but I ended up having to call and make the appointment.  Very annoying.  This week has involved working again and stealing internet from wherever we can get wi-fi.  Come Friday you will have regular posts again!

Now, onto the vacation!

We left super early on Saturday, jammed into a bunch of cars (there were 19 of us), and drove off into the Montana wilderness.

My grandparents know a couple that owns a 200+ acre ranch in NW Montana and we were able to stay there for a week!

We had 3 cabins + a barn, our own private lake, kayaks, canoes, paddle boats, and lots of fun.

It's so nice to unplug for a whole week and enjoy each others company.  

My dad, step-mom, Nick and I had the pleasure of sleeping in this cabin all week!  It's even solar-powered! 

The other cabins are a little older, but very nice and cozy.  I would definitely build a log cabin for a summer home if I had the money.

Basically, our week was spent:

Kayaking/Canoeing/Paddle Boating

Swimming

Competing in a water balloon launching contest

The target! (don't worry, she wasn't behind the target during the competition)

 

Making/racing wooden boats

Photo scavenger hunting

Nick and I were in charge of a scavenger hunt.  We decided to make a list of things to find and each group had to take a picture of it WITH a stuffed monkey in it.  It was actually really fun and looking at the pictures afterwards was really fun.

Competing in family olympics

Exploring

and lots and lots of reading, game playing, and just relaxin'.

I love vacations that involve just relaxing with each other.  Definitely a stress reliever.

Our last day was spent at Silverwood theme park in Idaho.  It is an awesome park.  Half water park and half amusement park.  Most of us spent the morning at the water park.  It was beautiful, hot, muggy, and not too crazy packed (yet).

We were just about to head out and explore the roller coasters when a crazy thunderstorm took over.  It was crazy.  They closed both parks and most people left to go home.  We, however, stuck it out!  It was insane, though.  It rained HARD for about a solid hour and a half.  In that rain there was about a 20 minute window of very strong winds.  Umbrellas were flying off of tables, garbage cans flew over, lounge chairs flew into the wave pool, etc.  

Waiting out the storm!

 

It was extremely fun though!  Being in the middle (there was lightning above us) of a thunderstorm is so exciting!

After about 2-3 hours of storm, we had beautiful weather.  It went back to being hot and sunny.  It was perfect because most of the crowd had already left!  Short lines = even better amusement park time.

I'm glad to be back into real-life mode, but I wouldn't mind another vacation soon!  

Backstreet's back, alright!

Get it? Ha!

We're back! Woohoo!

We had an awesome trip to Montana and Silverwood theme park last week.  I can't wait to fill you in on all the fun happenings of our vacation.  You will get all the good juicy details in time!

I am so thankful for the awesome guest bloggers that took over my blog while I was gone.  You girls are amazing.  If you missed out on there posts here they are:

Mrs Robinson from My New Wife Life

Meg from Mr. C and Me

Lauren from the Merry Mrs. Mobely

Casey from Everyday Adventures

Malo from Life Feels Good on Portbail Beach

Go check them out because they are all pretty awesome.

Now it's time for me to finish unpacking and go back to work tomorrow, bummer.  

BUT, stick around because I'll be sure to have a nice post about our vacation AND a little surprise involving my blog and a possible definite BIG change. 

 

Guest Post: Malo from Life Feels Good in Portbail Beach

Today my guest is Malo from Life Feels Good in Portbail Beach.  She is pretty awesome.  Just sayin'. 
She lives in France, is a teacher, and is getting married soon!
I've been following her since the beginning of my blogging "career" and she is a pretty sweet lady.
You'll have fun getting to know her and I hope you go show her some commenting love!  She definitely deserves it.

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Hey Alison's readers, I'm Malo @ Life feels good in Portbail Beach. First, let me thank Alison for having me here. Thank you, girl! I've been a reader of her blog for a long time and was so pleased when she asked me to write a guest post! I hope she and Nick are having great holidays.

My name is Malorie but everyone calls me Malo. I'm French and live in Portbail, a small port situated in Normandy, France. I live next to Cherbourg, known for being an arsenal and one of Titanic's ports of call, and we even have a permanent exhibition about the Titanic in town. I'm also not very far from the landing beaches so you can see a lot of Star-Spangled Banners here. I live in a small house by the beach with my fiancé Ludo and our cat Garfield. We love being here, this is so beautiful and peaceful.

I teach English in a small rural secondary school and I love my job. I recently wrote a post about the reasons why I love teaching. You can read it here. Obviously that's not easy everyday but I can't see myself doing anything else!

I have three big addictions: I drink many cappuccinos a day, I would love to meet British Royals and I'm obsessed with TV series. I can easily be addicted to a TV show. A few weeks ago, I was completely obsessed with The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey and Mad Men, which resulted in me dreaming of zombies in my garden, talking with a Lady Mary's accent and wishing I could be friends with Joan. Silly I know. Buy me any TV series and I'm the happiest girl!

Let's keep the best for the end... I'm getting married next year! Ludo and I have been together for three years and a half and he proposed last February! I'm so proud to become his Mrs and we can't wait for the big day to come. I also plan to write a series of posts about the wedding planning so stay tuned!

Come visit Life feels good in Portbail Beach and say hi!! You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram.

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Guest Post: Casey from Everyday Adventures

I'm glad you all get to meet my next guest blogger.  We met only a few weeks ago via the blog world and I'm so glad we did!  Her name is Casey and she blogs at Everyday Adventures here today.  Her and her husband are very cute and even better, they only live one state away from me!  Show her some love and become her newest follower.  Do it!

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Hey all! My name is Casey and I write at a blog called Everyday Adventures. I like to think of it as a way to share my daily adventures in crafting, cooking, teaching... really whatever pops into my head. Today, I would love to share a little recipe with you all. This is a great make ahead recipe. It is perfect to give a new mom/family, its full of veggies and can be tweaked to fit whatever is in season or whatever your tastes are.

I found this recipe last year when I was scouring the Internet for new ways to fix zucchini. Zucchini is one of those plants that you have to be a moron to kill off.

Oh wait, that's a picture of my "garden." Seriously I don't know how I killed it. It must have been defective. Or something. Do you know who doesn't kill off zucchinis? The grocery store. So that's where I went.

Zucchini Casserole

• 3 zucchinis- sliced (or the giant one that was hiding under the leaves in the garden)
• 1 small onion- sliced
• handful of baby carrots
• 1 package of sliced mushrooms (Usually they are the same price as the bulk mushrooms)
• 1 small head of broccoli- chopped
• 1 container of plain Greek yogurt (I decided to swap out the sour cream with the Greek yogurt. This was mostly due to it being healthier expiration dates.)
• 1 box Stove Top Stuffing Mix (I shop the sales, and Stove Top was not on sale today. Hy-Top it is!)
• 1 can cream of something soup 
• 1/2 c. butter, melted
• Red pepper flake
• Parmesan cheese

Slice vegetables and place in a large pot filled with water. Bring water (with vegetables) to a boil. Get annoyed that your pot is too small and you never really see a boil. Let boil for 2-3 minutes and then remove from heat. Drain vegetables. Set aside.


Mix together the yogurt and cream of something soup.


Melt the butter and pour on top of the stuffing mix.  Combine until the stuffing is moist. Add red pepper flakes to the stuffing mix.


In a 9x13 pan, pour 1/2 of the stuffing mix on the bottom of the pan. Add the drained vegetables on top of the stuffing. Spread the sour cream and soup mixture on top of the vegetables. Cover with the rest of the stuffing mix on top. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.


Here is the stopping point if you are giving it away or are making it ahead of time. Wrap it up and put it in the fridge.


When you are ready, bake it at 350 for 30 minutes or so until its bubbly and brown.

Enjoy!


Thanks Alison for letting me guest post for you! I hope you like this recipe, it's one of our favorites around here. If you try it, let me know how you liked it or what changes you made to it!

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Guest Post: Lauren from The Merry Mrs. Mobely

The lovely Lauren from The Merry Mrs. Mobley is blogging today!  She is adorable and you will fall in love with her and her cute family, especially her dog Daisy.
Make sure to hop on over to her blog and follow her as soon as you show her some love on this blog! 

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Hello readers of Life of Two Sokools, my name is Lauren and I blog over at the merry mrs. mobley!

No matter where you are these days, Mother Nature is rearing her nasty head and showing us what she is all about by throwing hundred degree temps at us. Here in North Cackalacki not only are we getting the heat, but we're getting the humidity too. I cannot express how grateful I am for ceiling fans and AC on these days:-) Today I am going to share with you some of my favorite ways to beat the heat. . .

Hit the pool, beach, sprinkler! 

We are fortunate enough to live four hours from the beach, four minutes from the pool, and four seconds from the sprinkler. These sources of water are a great help when I am in need of a quick cool-down. You can even be a redneck like us and wait 'til your yard's irrigation system comes on to cool off. No sprinkler set-up there;-)

Watch the Olympics

 As a former swimmer, I absolutely adore the Summer Olympics. What better excuse to stay in and watch them than these ridiculous temps? We are a few short weeks away from weeks of entertainment. Who are you rooting for?? As NC State grads we'll be cheering on Cullen Jones from our couches!

Drinks

 Whether they are virgin or not, it's hard to deny the thirst quenching ability of a good iced drink. I'm a big fan of the Strawberry Daiquiri, or anything fruity really!

Library 

This teacher loves to hit the library on those blazing days and get a few good books. Our library allows drinks, so you can often find me curled up in a corner with an iced latte and a good book. Books aren't really your thing? Grab a magazine!

Movies

You often hear people complain about how cold movie theaters are. This is not the case come summertime! Don't have a lot of money to spend? Go during the day! Our local theater has tickets for $5 Sunday-Thursday during the day.

Come on over to my little corner of the blog world and let me know your favorite ways to stay cool this summer!

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