Monday's Memory: the one with the second anniversary :)

our first picture ever together: august 2008

our first anniversary: august 2009

visiting jack: september 2009

fall in tennessee: october 2009

nerd alert...

celebrating the anniversary of his grandpa and grandma: november 2009

titans/colts game in indy: december 2009

playing in the snow: january 2010

at the pub: february 2010

at our friends wedding: march 2010

date night: june 2010

fourth of july: july 2010

playing at dragon park

celebrating 2 years: august 2010

not every moment has been wonderful
but each one has been blessed
we've shared joy and laughter
as well as tears and pain

i think we're stronger together
than we ever were apart
and i thank God daily
for such a wonderful man

it's a great day to celebrate 2 years

Anthony and I are celebrating -- 2!

ok, so he's sick (fever and general yuckiness)
but that doesn't mean i won't take him his anniversary card
(we're buying tickets to Les Mis for our joint anniversary gift)
and spend some time with him

likely sitting on his couch
watching 30 rock
and attempting to convince him
to eat something for dinner so that we can eat together
:0)

not exactly how we planned to spend the day
but we'll be together
and that's what matters

happy 2 years, sweetie :)

fitness friday: to process or not to process

yesterday i was in two different houses with two different philosophies on eating and nutrition

yet the meals i served the children in both families both ended up to have about the same nutritional value

hot dogs in one home
macaroni and cheese from a box in the other
fresh fruit abounding in both

processed next to unprocessed
so i started thinking
which is dangerous, admittedly

what are my foodie confessions?
yes, i prefer unprocessed, whole foods
but honestly, i don't always do the best job of providing them to myself

for example, i know that pop-tarts have no nutritional value, whatsoever
but because they satisfy a sweet craving and have less fat/calorie content than many things that i could substitute
i allow them once in awhile

and while annie's mac and cheese is organic and all
it's still processed
and the blue box is even worse

i justify it because i don't eat these things every day
just "in a pinch"
when i'm in a hurry
or when nothing else sounds good and i just need food in my body

so...what can i do
what can you do
to ensure that healthful, REAL food is what you put in your body?

i think, for me, i'm going to be more purposeful in keeping healthful, whole foods on hand
actually preparing them when i bring them home, so that the temptation of fast and easy is removed
and it's actually JUST as fast and easy to have something real :)
and not falling victim to couponing--while it's AMAZING, i also think i buy more processed crap because i can get it cheap
(so now i have to somehow unify the part of me that wants healthful food with the part of me that wants to save money. THAT could be a blog project all it's own!)

what do you do?

Thursday's Ten: The KCMO edition

we had a GREAT trip to kansas city last weekend.
and while i meant to post the trip update earlier in the week
clearly that didn't happen

and so because i'd like to comment on other blogs
and, i dunno, have a life
outside of car shopping
ughhhhh
i thought i'd combine the weekend wrap-up with my thursday's ten this week

hey, it's my blog
i can if i want :)

it began pretty eventfully

1. the plane ride for example. beautiful. for the first hour and 15. the last 45 minutes were spent first circling the greater KCMO area and THEN pummeling through the air in a sickening, treacherous, tumultuous, turbulance. when the flight attendant walking down the aisle immediately stops and buckles herself into a passenger seat, you know you're in trouble.
(and yes, a part of me was wishing for an island crash landing. but alas, we made it safely. all on friday the 13th)

my facebook status upon landing was:

Lora B was definitely on a flight worthy of being on friday the 13th...but she and anthony are safely on the ground in KC.

2. we had a bit of trouble with the rental car (like, we couldn't figure out how to unlock the steering mechanism and turn the key and had to go ask for help like idiots). but once we got on the road we called my brother who had assured me they would be "partying til late". it was nearly 11 when we called. i'm 80% sure we woke him up. so much for late...
so we headed to his ex-wife's, where we were staying, and ended up staying up until 2ish talking. this was the first time anthony had met any of my KC family, and they hit it off.

on our way, however, we stopped by a taco bueno (which anthony had never seen outside of texas and i had never had) and split a quesadilla. this sort of set the tone of the weekend: food, food, food!

3. the next morning, we woke up, showered, and went to oklahoma joe's for barbeque. now, anthony is a HUGE lover of all things bbq. so he had REALLY been looking forward to this one. along with karen, we ate with my niece liz and her partner melissa, and my other niece aimee. scott (my nephew) wasn't able to join us since he was the best man and stuff.
the barbeque was awesome. the company was even better :)

4. after lunch we quickly went back to karen's house and changed. and then ran to hallmark to grab a card (which thankfully i found on the first try). we headed to the church, taking note of one set of directions in particular which prompted the following facebook status from anthony:

Anthony N is driving towards Rainbow Boulevard... Oh, the irony.

the ceremony was tasteful and short, and we visited with "the kids" some more at the reception. headed out when the cake had been eaten :) and gave gaylen our love...with hopes to see each other again before we left.

(anthony, me, tommie, melissa, gaylen, liz, scott and aimee)

5. while we were in kansas city, anthony really wanted to see arrowhead -- where the chiefs play. several people had told us it was a pretty quick drive from where we were, and not too far out of the way. after my iphone took us through the projects and down a street that was closed, i began seeing signs that we were near the stadium -- there were street signs that had pictures of football players on them. i also noted that it was strange, there were also pictures of baseball players...but i supposed that made sense because that's the season we're in.

when we drove onto the grounds, we noticed there was a sign that said "toll plaza ahead". we thought this strange, but didn't think much of it since it was off season...until we saw that there were indeed attendants. anthony at this point said "never mind, just turn around..." to which i replied "uh...i can't..." as we both looked in astonishment as cars began to FLOOD in behind us. what the heck?

we were able to explain our situation to a nice parking attendant, who explained to US that the chiefs stadium is indeed next to the royals stadium. and the royals were playing the yankees in just a couple of hours. he told us that he'd give us a ticket, and as long as we got out of the stadium in under an hour we could get our money back.


we didn't stay an hour. long enough to take 4 pictures and speak to about 13 other parking attendants.

(this experience prompted my facebook status of:

Lora B ‎'s notes to Kansas city visitors: 1. the chiefs and the royals have side by side stadiums. 2. they share a parking lot. 3. it's ill-advised to attempt to visit the chiefs stadium on a day the royals play the yankees. Oops.

6. we left the madness that was the baseball game (by the way, yankees won that night, royals won the next day) and headed down to the plaza. now, kansas city is known as the city of fountains. my mom tells me stories of going to college back in the day and ice skating on them when they froze. something i think is *way* cool, and i totally canNOT picture my mother doing!

i was excited to see some of the fountains, but mostly i was excited to be spending time with my wonderful boyfriend. although our 2 year anniversary is the 21st, we decided to spend saturday evening as our "anniversary date" for two reasons. 1, we were in a new city and thought it would be fun. 2, his birthday is the 17th, and we decided to celebrate his birthday over our anniversary weekend so that he could celebrate in nashville :)

(even starbucks has a fountain...)

7. our first stop? the apple store. the real reason was for me to get a new cable for my iphone (my cable was shot). however, that didn't stop us from playing for awhile. which prompted THIS facebook status from me:

Lora B is out celebrating her anniversary with her wonderful boyfriend...currently playing with ipads at the apple store in the plaza. Dorks? Nah...

8. we took liz and melissa's recommendation of a tuscan restaurant, and went to brio to eat dinner. omgoodness, y'all. if you have a chance to ever eat at a brio (or it's sister restaurant, bravo) please do yourself a favor and GO. i can definitely say that anthony and i plan to go back there next time we visit kansas city!

our waitress was amazing. when we told her we were flying out of town the next day she immediately said "and you don't want leftovers, right?" and suggested not only a meal that we could split, but a soup/salad to go along with it to stretch it out some...and her favorite dessert to top off the night. we LOVED her.

our menu that night consisted of minestrone (me) and lobster bisque (him), both of which we shared--just kept passing the bowls between the two of us
gorgonzola lamb chops
and a dessert trio with chocolate hazelnut cannolis, chocolate chip brad pudding and caramel mascarpone cheesecake

after our dessert we asked her to take our picture. she obliged, and then said

"ok, this kind of looks like your first date. get together or something."

and took another.

(yeah. we hearted her)

after dinner we walked around, took some more pictures, and headed back to karen's (which was an adventure in itself). a couple of fun pictures to note:

there was a diamond store being built or remodeled on one of the streets. on it's temporary walls was a simple question: "kansas city, how do you know you are loved" and surrounding it were answers that people had texted or tweeted in. i thought that was SO cool.

my favorite

anthony's favorite

the one i think is "us"

and us in front of the wall

we also found these romantic streetlights on a bridge, and i decided to snap a picture of the city street just as an older couple strolled by. i LOVED the way this shot turned out. yes, i had romance on the brain, but it was still sweet :)

9. the next morning we went to church with karen, then to lunch at her family's favorite tex-mex place, jose pepper's. the choices were endless!

we both ended up with amazing things (anthony, by the way, chose barbeque chicken quesadillas. told you the boy likes his bbq) and enjoyed chatting with karen, her brother kevin, his wife mary, and their cousin paul.

sadly, we returned home only to throw things in a bag and have a fun little photo session. then we were off to our last stop.

10. my brother had invited us to brunch, but since we were going to church we asked if we could meet later. he then suggested lunch, but i thought that might be a little too much for him to eat brunch AND lunch, so we suggested dessert or coffee. i called him as we were packing and he suggested a gourmet ice cream place. considering the kind of food we had packed in over the weekend, ice cream was about the ONLY dessert that we could have added to the mix, so we gladly agreed and set out.

we ended up at a place called glace, right off the plaza (which we had already fallen in love with). i loved this place--because it had iced lattes, first of all, and i hadn't had any coffee that day. considering it was already 2 pm, i was all set to be pretty grumpy if i didn't get any in me soon!

but the ice cream flavors...omgosh. i settled on strawberry thyme mixed with lavender. and while you may be gagging on the other side of your screen...let me just tell you it was AMAZING.

gaylen and i laughed, because we matched that day...

we really, really enjoyed our visit with gaylen and tommie. since they had been rather busy the day before, anthony hadn't really been able to properly chat with gaylen, and i hadn't been able to size tommie up :) he won me over though, just with his attire. ireland shirt? gets me every time :)
my final status of the weekend was:

Lora B is preparing to board a plane back to nashville...kind of wishing she could stay longer or bring a few people with her...

anthony's the next day was:

Anthony N's weekend was complete Saturday by lunchtime when he got to eat at Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City, where Adam Richman from Man Vs. Food visited for that very show. Add on to that celebrating two years with Lora B.. yes, it was a good weekend :)

so that was our kansas city trip. definitely different, exciting, crazy, wacky, and wonderful. all in all...pretty much the perfect weekend. we're already planning our next trip up there :)

...commitment...

this past saturday
in a small kansas city church
two people stood before a minister
and pledged their love for one another
they were surrounded by family (more for one than the other)
friends
and a supportive community
words were spoken to bless their "commitment" and their life together
and hardly anyone seemed to notice
that they were both men

i noticed
after all, one of them is my brother
and i was sitting next to his children on one side
who love him dearly,
even if they still harbor hurt and pain from the way their parents split
and my boyfriend on the other
who had never been to anything like this ever in his life

there are few topics i won't touch on this blog
religion/faith
politics
the relation of the two
my opinions on a multitude of things
all those are pretty much fair game

but this is one
that i won't
(at least not that i can forsee)
because i would have a hard time talking about
something as if i knew how i felt about it
when i haven't got a clue

when you're raised to believe one way
but experiences share a different view
when you're taught one thing
but your heart...well, you have one.

this much i do know:
i love my brother
the man walking beside him is sweet, funny, and sincere
and there is a genuine love between them

this much i also know:
God loves them too
and they love Him

beyond that...
i don't have to know

and THAT
is an amazing release

ps in case anyone is all "reporting to the authorities" or whatever: this was a commitment ceremony, NOT a wedding or civil union. it was held in a sacred space to profess their commitment to each other in front of a community. that's all.

fitness friday: the non-edition

fitness friday will return next week

i'm a little overwhelmed with car stuff, packing, and cleaning.

so...yeah.

fyi, i'm entertaining the idea of having guest posts on fitness friday. so many of you have such wonderful fitness routines or healthy eating habits--i'd love for some of you to share those here! please let me know if you're interested in that!

i'm hoping to catch up on reading blogs this weekend and early next week...unfortunately my life has been consumed with other things this week :(

much love to you all!

Thursday's Ten: the "new" car edition

ugh.

car shopping is exhausting.

it's especially exhausting when your car was 7 years old, and the payment from the insurance is reflective of that.

it's especially exhausting when you have little money of your own to couple with it...and when you don't at ALL want to go down the road of financing because the only dealers who will finance a recent foreclosure are going to be basically loan sharks (plus, you don't want a car payment. at all.)

sigh.

but then i remember that God has amazingly provided for me countless times this year

and so

why not now?

i remember texting some good friends that the car may be totaled, that i was really sad about that (Ali was my BABY), but that maybe this was God's way of saying "ok...now here's a new car".

and so i said "bring it!"

(still hopeful that i could have MY car back. but no, not this time)

i mean, really. in the last 4 months i've been stripped from the house that i loved and the car that i loved...and both were "taken" away. in the house's case, it was due to a humongous error on the mortgage company's part. in the car's, it was due to me parking on the street and the wrong person coming down the road to play tackle football with my car. yes, i played a part in both...yes, i can shoulder some of the blame in both cases. but in no way was either completely my fault.

which is kind of nice. no shame there.

SO.

since God is clearly up to something here

i'm making a list of what i'd like in a car. a couple of them are non-negotiables (the sunroof, for example. i seriously get a slight case of SAD when the time changes in the fall, and i NEED to have access to the sun). the others are just "what the heck. why not ask for this too?"

1. sunroof (or a convertible...haha)

2. a color that i love. this is different for me based on what kind of car it is, since different cars look good in different colors to me.

3. i'm not picky about leather or cloth interior...but IF leather, then i must have heated seats

4. good sound system (i'm not one of those lovely bass boomin' people at stoplights, but i do like to get in a groove)

5. a sporty look. please, please, no boring sedans. sedans with a sporty edge, sure.

6. good gas mileage. i'm not opposed to an SUV, i just want it to get decent mileage

7. lowish mileage. i drive a lot. i have family scattered all over. i'd like to get a few years out of the car.

8. trunk access in a car (rear fold-down seats, preferably 60/40 split). suv, well that doesn't so much matter.

9. FUN to drive

10. a good value. i don't want to rip anyone off, but i certainly don't want to be ripped off either. i would prefer not to use my entire insurance settlement...i'd like a few hundred dollars leftover to stock away in savings for awhile.

what would you add if you were me? (or you were looking)