One year.

It's very hard to believe that a year ago today I had the privilege of marrying this guy.

I'm so thankful to be able to wake up next him to every day.

I'm blessed beyond belief.

As I write this post I am reflecting over the past year, with the door open, homemade blueberry muffins in the oven, and our favorites vinyls on the record player.

Today is a great today.

Here's to many more great days and years.

(Lots of deep thoughts coming in tomorrow's post)

Starting 26 off on a good note

After the world's worst day of work (why is it legal to have to work on your birthday?), Josh and I somehow made it through the hoards of post-work traffic to downtown Dallas for my birthday dinner.

This was no ordinary birthday dinner.

This was a six course beer paired dinner at Meddlesome Moth hosted by our favorite local brewer, Michael Peticolas.

Remeber the Peticolas Brewery tour here?

The chef of Meddlesome Moth and Michael teamed up to provide six pairings of craft beer and magnificent treats.

Quite fancy treats, at that.

Side note:

I ate that.

All of that.

Me, the pickiest person ever.

I ate beef tongue and veal neck!

Followed by the world's greatest panna cotta and candied gooseberries.

Best meal of my life.

I'm so thankful for this guy, who has cultured me in so many ways.

. . . oh, and then Josh swears Charlie filled this "gift box" on his own with all of his favorite things for me.

He has excellent handwriting.

So thoughtful of him, right?

After a laugh followed by a heavy inquisition, I found out that Josh asked Charlie what he wanted to get for my birthday and Charlie truly did grab a sock and drop it in the box.

That's love right there.

. . . and a fine example of psycho owners who talk to their dogs assuming they are humans.

Birthday Weekend Getaway in the Ozarks

Last weekend, our little family or three spent some quality time in a cabin in northern Arkansas.

It was a short trip, but it was probably one of the happiest and most relaxing weekends of my life.

The views were incredible, the weather was perfect, and the company was better than ever.

Words and pictures won't be able to do it justice (but you know I'll try).

I am glad I finally dusted off the DSLR though, now I just need to remember how to work it.

We took in the sights, grilled excellent steaks, snuggled with Charlie, and drank coffee in the swing on the porch.

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect way to spend the last few days of my 25th year.

The view from the porch was perfection.

The guys loved cabin life.

A real, live fireplace with real, live firewood was icing on the cake.

We whipped up a classic breakfast with the help of some rhubarb strawberry jelly.

On our way out of town we visited a scenic overlook (21 dog years later) to recreate one of my favorite photos.

Charles was really into it, obviously.

Glad to start off my 26th year surrounded by these two weirdos!

The Texas State Fair

A few weeks ago, I convinced Josh to take me to the Texas State Fair.

Now, this fair is unlike any other state fair.

Right? 

. . . or am I just being biased and assuming everything in Texas is better than everywhere else?

For starters, the Texas State Fair is known for it's outlandish fried foods 

They fried butter, I mean who does that?

Second, it was extra special this year because shortly after the fair last year, Big Tex (the iconic statue welcoming everyone in the fair) burnt down.

It was tragic, but he returned even bigger and better this year, see?

I couldn't convince Josh to wait in the mile ling long to ride the Texas Star with me, but I did convince him to try a smorgasbord of fried goodies.

Warning:

Graphic images ahead

(Except for this potato chip on a stick thingy that I just haaaaaad to have)

THIS is graphic.

Fried cookie dough?

Fried nutella?

They even had fried Thanksgiving dinner and fried frito chili pie.

. . . but I present to you:

Fried butter

I'm not even gonna lie, it was pretty good.

Of course, I imagined an entire stick of fried butter covered in crunchy, greasy batter, but in all actuality it tasted exactly like a sopapilla (with extra butter).

The only recommendation I have is to first cut into the ball and let most of the butter drain out.

It was topped with honey and cinnamon, and it was heaven in my pre-hypertensive, pre-diabetic, pre-hyperlipdemia mouth.

We also tried the fried PBJ w/ bananas and the friend Cool Ranch Doritos Pizza (and then Josh woke up at 3am puking his face off, no lie)

. . . the PB&J was dang good though.

. . . for dessert (not that the previous treats were the entree by any means) we had a fried pop-tart.

It's not near as photogenic as the others, but it tasted phenomenal.

Next year, I swear we are going to ride rides, and not just stuff our faces.

Catch ya later Big Tex.

Cute butt.

...a very odd Halloween

Before you start reading this post, you need a warning:

We are really weird.

Sorry in advance.

Josh has one of the greatest (but also the strangest) senses of humor in the world. 

As for me, I'm just weird.

We've been planning Charlie's Halloween costume for weeks.

Well, it wasn't much of a costume.

We just wanted to buy some of that colored hairspray and turn Charlie into a fox.

No big deal, right?

Epic tail fail.

It was basically a sticky gooey mess (that's what she said)

. . . so instead we just turned him into the world's cutest Irish Settler.

See what I did there?

Now, before you start thinking we are losers who sit around and play dress up with their dog, hold that thought.

We also played about 20 rounds of dress up ourselves for Halloween.

I started off as a hippie for work.

. . . then we sat around dressed as pitiful adults waiting on all 398409283409328 zero of the trick-or-treaters who came by.

After that, I worked pretty hard ironing on the logos for our initial Halloween costume (with my curling wand because we are losers who don't own an iron. We are steamer folks, ok?)

Costume #1:

German Guts contestants.

Remember Guts? The greatest Nickelodeon kids game show of all time?

Sorry Double Dare and Legends of the Hidden Temple, Guts had The Crag.

Oh, and it is correctly pronounced Goooots.

We decided that was a little bit too weird, so we opted for a little less weird (which I think, ultimately was still too weird)

German Shepherds.

Get it?

Well, no one else did.

We went to a nearby bar and entered 100% confident we would win the $1,000 costume contest.

We left full of shame and defeat.

Our first red flag was after a foreign man walked up to me and said "as-salam alaykum"

I peed.

Not the look we were going for.

Josh immediately took off his shepherd garment and sadly whispered to me "I've never been around so many people who don't understand my humor."

Tragic day.

It was a Halloween for the books, I tell ya.

Maybe next year we won't require strangers to think so hard in order to understand our costumes.