Can I get some dinner with my dinner please???

Hey guys! Why does it seem like the weekend last about 5 minutes and the weekdays last about 5 years? UGH!

So have YOU voted for Pippin today??? Voting is open through Wednesday at 5 pm CST, so please keep voting! Friday am we got up early for our walk and to put out the cute flyers Brent made. We put them all up and down our street and hoped all the tons of walkers and bar enthusiasts would see them! Friday afternoon when we came home it didn't seem like anyone had taken one of the tags with the website on it. Oh well. I did get a comment this morning that some people were talking about it in a local cafe/bar this weekend, but did they vote (I know the person who left the comment did, but did the other people)???

We went to the running store to return Brent's trail shoes and unfortunately they just didn't have any that fit him well. On our way out we decided to try out the Trace for dinner. It's really pretty and just so happened to be in one of our coupon books. We swear by the Entertainment Book and the Citipass book, we save some serious bucks eating out through them and always end up trying some neat, new places. So, we walked in and instantly felt a little underdressed. Oh well, who cares! It's an old house (prob 1930s by our estimation) turned into a restaurant. She took us to a back room that was pretty quiet until your typical loudmouths in a Hawaiian print shirt showed up. Their food was pretty expensive - $20-$30 per entree, but we didn't care because our coupon was buy one get one free. We opted against a appetizer or salad and when our food came we realized that was a major mistake. Whoever says portion sizes are out of control should eat at the Trace. Poor Brent ordered some sort of "Hen of the Woods" which was basically a chicken wing in some sauce and my salmon must have been the smallest salmon ever. Then I remembered why Brent and I are soulmates. "Hey, wanna go to Panera Bread after dinner?" I had been thinking the SAME thing. We died laughing and made tons of fun of our tiny portions. When the waitress (who was SUPER nice) came to clear our plates she asked if we wanted dessert and I nearly choked myself up saying "No, I am just SO full!". Their food was good.....really good...but tiny. Not worth the $51 our bill would have been without or coupon. And all we had was our tiny portions plus water! We both walked out laughing insanely hard about how it felt like we just had nothing to eat. We stopped at Panera Bread and got a brownie for dessert and a muffin for Sat am's breakfast.

I set my alarm to wake at 6:30 on Saturday. Luckily I set it for 6:30 pm so we slept in until 7:30 am. It really didn't matter because a nice cool front came through Friday am and gave us a really nice fall-like weekend. We muffin-ed up and headed over to PWP. The original plan was to run 17 miles of the marathon course but I am so burnt out of training for this marathon that we threw caution to the wind and ran the trails instead. And let me tell you, it was WAY more fun. I was looking for a good 2-2.5 hour workout and we GOT it. We ran the cross-country grass sections and then the red trail forwards and backwards. It was so peaceful and serene out there. Not very crowded at all. We walked the steep uphills and ran everything else. We got into a really good groove and made some good time out there. I really wished I had thought about it and wore my new trail shoes!!! My Mizunos aren't very stable so a lot of the rocky portions I didn't feel like I had a lot of support, and my left ankle has been bothering me lately. Anyway, we had a blast and ran probably around 11 miles. Next weekend we are doing 23 of the marathon miles, so all I wanted this weekend was a good workout. It was so nice, when we were done we didn't feel like we had done that many miles, it was just FUN!

On our way home we passed a Palettas and I've been dying to try their popsicles so we stopped in. They have all these organic, fresh popsicles and I've heard rave reviews about them. I got a mango one and Brent got a coconut. OMG, they were GOOD! His was SO creamy, not like a popsicle at all. Mine was so fruity and you could tell they are actually made from fresh ingredients. YUM!!

The rest of Saturday we did some shopping, upgrading our cellphones since we had had our current ones for 2 years, and a stop at Home Depot to get some fall flowers. So.....that means most of today was spent planting said fall flowers. I got lots of mums and pansies. It's a bit frustrating because next spring we plan to totally overhaul the flowerbeds, so I basically just planted them where the existing flowerbeds are. There's just so much to do, but it all needs to be done in particular order at the right time of year. It still looks loads better than the crap that was there!! (BTW, Mr Dirty and Miss Dirty that we bought the house from got married this past weekend. They didn't even invite us!! We had half a mind to drive by and dump some of the crap we've cleared out from this house on their lawn in the middle of their hoity toity wedding. Anyway, I am certain their new house is filthy already because they are just GROSS. Enough said.)

We worked HARD this weekend on the house and it really shows. The yard looks even better, Brent filled in a lot of strange holes we have with dirt and we got the garage really organized and shelves hung. I don't think there's a single box let out there to be unpacked now! I also got some Halloween decs up outside. More paint went up on the bedroom walls and in the kitchen. It's going to take us a while to get this house where we want it (esp considering where it was when we started!) but we've been here almost 3 months and as our next door neighbor told us this afternoon we've done a LOT in 3 months. So take that Mr and MRS Dirty.

Well, I'm tired of typing and ready to kick back so we'll end it there!!! Have a great Monday everyone!!