Life lately

Some pretty fun times have been had lately. And as you can see, I'm also still learning how to use my fancy new camera. I'm improving, but it's a slow process for sure. Anyhow, these photos aren't exactly in order. J and I caught the Stephen Malkmus show at The Bottletree almost two weeks ago with his brother and sister-in-law. It was a good time, even though I truly didn't know any of his music.

We also took a trip to Mississippi a couple of weekends ago and stayed with his friend Matt and then drove over to Oxford to see an Ole Miss basketball game (but not before breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast, of course). I love walking around the Square, such a great area. And this time the bonus was stopping in several restaurants and getting meet people that J was friends with and/or worked with at one point or another. One of these guys hooked us up with baseball tickets, so we basically caught a double header of a bball game and a baseball game. We ended up grabbing dinner at Ajax and heading back to Tupelo to stay in for the evening with Matt. After we were back in Bham, it was time to celebrate Nicole's birthday with Mexican food. Feliz cumpleaños Nicole!

One thing I am pretty pumped about is the fact that J bought a bike last week! I'm not really a biker, more of a runner, but I did buy a bike a longgg time ago to compete in a triathlon (thanks to peer pressure from Ashley). So I pulled it out of the basement and had Redemptive Cycles work their magic on it. We're picking it up today and taking our new toys out for a spin tonight. It's funny how quickly you forget how much fun riding a bike is. Especially when you're just out riding around town and not really looking at is as some type of a workout that you're doing. Maybe on our bike tour de Bham we'll make another stop by Paramount today and play video games again, who knows?! Stay tuned!

Life lately

 

As usual it's been a fun and busy couple of weeks. One of the Mountain High Outfitters locations here in town had this cool music event in the store one Tuesday night, so J and I decided to go check that out and ended up running into a couple of folks we knew. Good times!

Other than that, it seems that everything else I have done lately has revolved around (which is actually the story of my life). Joy and I finally got to have lunch one day to catch up and I eagerly chose the Lyric Hot Dog & Grill since it is shutting it's doors for forever at the end of the month. So sad about this, but it definitely had a good run!

J & I also got to spend some time with Joy and her husband Justin this past week with dinner at Slice followed by a trip to the Alabama Theatre to see It's a Wonderful Life. I love all of the film series the Alabama hosts, but the holiday series is of course my favorite.

The night with the Martucci's was a good jump start to an equally fun weekend spent in Mississippi to see several of J's friends who were home for the holidays. We headed over on Friday night to visit Hannah in her hometown at a tacky Christmas party hosted by one of her friends. The next day we all drove to Jackson, making a quick pitstop in Oxford for some Big Bad Breakfast. Totally worth the stop!

Saturday night was spent meeting several new faces that J has known pretty much his life. Yeah, you can say I was just a tad nervous! But we had a great time and I think most of them actually liked me :) The next day we had lunch with another friend who couldn't make it Saturday night. He chose this great little drug store called Brent's Drugs where The Help was filmed, and of course the greasy spoon food treated us right! Such a great weekend. I mean who knew you could have that much fun in Mississippi?! jk jk jk.

Anyhow, after a big fun-filled weekend like that, you really only want some quality rest and downtime, but it's just not happening this time of year. Just two days after we got home from MS, J and I headed up to my neck of the woods in Alabama to see my immediate family for lunch on Christmas Eve and then he also endured met my dad's side of the family later that night. 

We got home pretty late after a day of driving, eating, playing with kids and opening presents and we were up again early the next day for more of the same with his side of the family. I was pretty tired but it was so worth it watching his niece's open their gifts Christmas morning. I haven't done the Christmas morning excitement with kids since I was a kid myself, so I felt pretty lucky and special getting to crash J's family time like I did. 

The rest of Christmas day was blur with tons of great food and opening fantastic gifts and I also enjoyed a late afternoon nap :) J and I wrapped up the day with a trip to the movies with my friend Peaches who is in town from NYC. It's so good to have everyone home for the holidays! Hope you all are enjoying time spent with loved ones, too.