Dog Surfing, Hot Yoga, & a Celeb Encounter

Now that we are totally caught up from the 5 full days Kelsey visited (yes those 6 posts were over the course of only 5 full days haha), I am excited to catch up on all the between. It will definitely take a few posts to get there, but life is about to get pretty monotonous with school starting (not mad one bit about it though!), so these should keep things fun for a bit.

When Kels left on August 1st, I spent the rest of the day catching up on laundry, squeezing in a run, eating leftovers, blogging a tiny bit and crashing early. I slept until late the next day- the longest I have slept in a while- I never like sleeping past 8 am, but I slept until 10 am this day. My body needed to catch up on the zero sleep from the week before.

On August 2nd-3rd, I opted to a be an antisocial hermit for a couple days. I went to the grocery store, went for a run outside, and published the first of my Michigan posts. I caught up on a ton of e-mails, took care of some housekeeping for grad school, and tried to catch up on other blogs best I could. Despite having a fridge full of groceries I was not in the mood to cook at all. I actually was feeling slightly under the weather. I decided Pho sounded like the perfect remedy! I ordered vegetarian pho from House of Pho and it was phOnomenal. I don’t think I’ve actually had Pho myself (just sampled it), but this will was just perfect.

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Saturday August 4th was a blast. For breakfast I had some delicious oatmeal with PB2, Fage, cinnamon, and shakeology vegan protein powder.

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I drove to Pacifica to meet with my sister-in-law, Amy, and her boyfriend for an event unlike any other- The World Dog Surfing Championship!!!!

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Parking was difficult to find, but we finally found some on a side hill. You can see the mass of people on the beach if you look closely.

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My pictures are a bit grainy, but it was fun to watch these dogs take on the waves!! The pups were actually surfing, and great at it too. They had competitions where they even had two dogs on one board. Only in CA, right? This dog below was my personal fave.

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There were so.many.dogs. on the beach too. I passed this nugget and couldn’t help but grab a picture. I mean, can ya stand it? Would ya Jus’ look at him?!!

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I still wasn’t feeling 100% the rest of the day so I tried to nap, caught up on some easy to-dos, then went to sleep early.

August 5th after church, I went for a long walk outside, and listened to a couple podcasts. I saw that someone left a full bag of bread on this sign, and it broke my heart to be honest.

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How can you just waste good carbs like that? So sad. Should be illegal. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.

August 6th, I woke up early to do Hot Yoga for the first time. I absolutely loved it! This past year and a half was a very stressful one as you all are probably well aware, and my body took a beating from how much running and cardio I did to cope with the stress. My knees are particularly hurting lately, so I’m trying to do more walks and am going to try to replace a couple runs a week with hot yoga. It’s pretty great and the instructor at the place I went to in SJ was amazing. Now that life is about to be more regimented, I am excited to incorporate this into my weekly routine.

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After, I swung into Trader Joe’s, and made baked Atlantic salmon, roasted veggies, and zucchini pizza boats for a couple days.

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In the evening I went over my friend, Sara’s, house to hangout and have a movie night.

August 7th, I did an Insanity workout, lifted some weights, and then did some house chores for the week.  In the evening, I met up with my friends Tammy and Dani (whom I haven’t seen in FOREVERRRR) to get happy hour at Jack Rose Libation house. Dani just moved back to CA, so we had every single reason to celebrate. I’ve missed her! You may remember her last from us all meeting up last year at Aqui.

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This place is just so dang good. They have such great food, drinks, a fun atmosphere, etc. You cannot go wrong. It’s a local favorite for sure! Dani tried their side of paradise with vodka, house made blackberry jam, fresh lemon, sparkling wine, and lemon verbena.

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Tam went for their summer wind with the botanist gin, foro amaro, venus aquavit, north coast peach berliner weisse, giffard pamplemousse liqueur, and lemon. .( I think!)

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I ordered a boring ole’ glass of white wine, not really picture worthy haha.

But you know what is picture worthy? And aware winning worthy? And just some of the best cheesy goodness I have ever had worthy?! THEIR PIZZA!!!

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We split their artichoke spinach pizza with well, you can guess it- artichoke, spinach, mozzarella, ricotta, green olives, fresh herbs, and grana padano. It was perfection. I hardly ever meet a pizza I don’t like, but this just took it up a few notches.

We also split the hummus plate with chickpeas, garlic, cumin, tahini, smoked paprika, hazelnuts, pizza bread, and veggies.

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After catching up for a looong time that felt like only two minutes, we stopped by Safeway to grab some mochi to share for dessert and settled in at Tammy’s for the premiere of Bachelor in Paradise!

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This summer I have blown up Tammy’s Instagram with mochi pictures, so we just had to try some. I have never had the ice cream type before (only the muffins you may remember). These were my/mo brand, and they were GREAT…. except for the matcha flavor that literally tasted like dill pickles. I am not exaggerating. When I took a bite, I was like, “y’all it taste like pickles”. They thought I maybe was being dramatic, but sure enough they agreed- somehow pickles must have found their way into the matcha batch. Haha.

While enjoying our mochi, we jammed to some new songs of Chris Lane’s before revving up BIP. I posted it to my story and then we glued ourselves to the TV for the night. Such a fun time.

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In the morning of August 8th, as I was getting my day started, I looked down at my phone and saw this….. (yes, I need to actually put a picture for my background, I know I know… I’m too indecisive to decide)…

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Chris Lane stinking A. WATCHED our video, B. COMMENTED on our video, and C. POSTED IT TO HIS OWN STORY. I had to pinch myself give or take ten times to make sure it was real life. This was such a big deal to us and really special because we actually bonded over Chris Lane’s music. The first time the three of us hung out was even at his concert.

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I guess I’ll wrap up here for now. Real quick though- August 8th is actually me and DJ’s anniversary! We weren’t planning on celebrating the actual day of since we had plans in the city for the next day, but with DJ getting off work early it seemed a perfect time to use up a gift-card we had been saving for a special occasion (thanks, Bro!). I will recap in the next post where we ate and what of course, but that requires a fresh page of it’s own 🙂

xo <3

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Crazy Wildfires & DJ’s Birthday Celebrations!

Happy Thursday, ya’ll (well, Thursday by the time anyone reads this- although it is currently Wednesday evening)! How’s it kickin’?

We said goodbye to one of my favorite charge nurses last week; I was super sad to see her go 🙁 (This send off banner was too funny not to share though!)

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DJ’s birthday was October 6th!!! I can’t believe I am just shooting this post up now. Sheesh! Anywho, we had a gift card to Open Table that was put to phenomenal use at the local Forbes Mill in Los Gatos!

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This sweet man.. I would usually not pull my phone out at places this nice to snap food pics, but he convinced me that it was just us two and it wasn’t a big deal…. I obliged pretty easily 😉

We started with the giant prawn cocktail. There is nothing better than a fresh shrimp/prawn appetizer. It’s easily our go-to!

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We also tried their crab cakes! They were tasty, no denying it…yet a far cry from the cakes we had in Baltimore.

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I also had their generously sized beets and macadamia crusted goat cheese salad. It was one of the best I have ever had,  and it’s so simple to throw together! I definitely will be recreating this at home.

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DJ tried the ULTIMATE surf and turf with a combo of waygu and lobster tail. I sampled the waygu because it’s supposed to be the highest quality of meat, and I couldn’t let the opportunity pass….. butttt I had an aversion to the flavor. After not eating meat for about four years it didn’t do anything for me.

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We also dabbled in a side of creamed spinach.. if it’s on the menu you know we are jumping on it! We absolutely loved it. I still think the creamed spinach from Ben and Jack’s in New York is the best of all time, but this is not far behind.

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And I couldn’t pass up the epic, rave-worthy, award-winning scallops….. I think the only ones that contest are Farallon’s in San Francisco. Gosh, just the thought is making my mouth water all over the darn laptop. They were served over forbidden rice- a new obsession of mine officially. Has anyone had this magical grain?! It’s ah-may-zin!

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I could go on for days and days about how amazing DJ is. He is a man of God, handsome, humble, hilarious, loyal as they come, my rock, courageous, intelligent, witty, intuitive, hard working, dedicated, and genuine. Those qualities just scratch the surface. I don’t know why God blessed me with such an incredible man, but I won’t argue with His provision 😉

The days are all kind of blurring together from the rest of the last few weeks. I do want to share of my favorite snap shots from random runs and of course, even more random pics of all the foooooodddd we’ve been scarfin’!

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The fall blooms are just as gorgeous as the spring blooms!!! Even though we don’t have the leaves change like back in the good ol’ midwest, we still have the beautiful array of flowers to admire in this season.

Unfortunately, my autumn runs had to come to a quick halt when the wildfires started last week. It smelled pungent with smoke in the hospital (which is closer to the fires than our apartment is), and then eventually the air around our home was saturated with the unescapable burning scent. In the morning when we woke up our eyes itched, our throats scratched.. it was surreal. We just keep praying for everyone affected by these horrible fires. I truly hope the madness stops soon and mother earth cools her jets.

If you would like to help, please visit this link with multiple options you can contribute!

Back to the random food mess… I’m still on the egg kick for suure. (I put some of the leftover creamed spinach on a piece of toast and then the egg on top, good heavens).

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I also have been CRAVING a Whole Foods trip. Since they have always been ugly pricey, I usually only go every once in a while. However, now that they are bought by Amazon their prices have gone down tremendously!

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Using many of the ingredients from whole foods, I made a fall salad that I’m ridiculously obsessed now. I was inspired by Stein’s Beer Garden’s salad. It contains jicama, roasted butternut squash, quinoa, light craisins, and I use a homemade apple cider vinaigrette (with some apple cider, a touch of oil, and a touch of sugar).

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I think ya’ll get the point. Haha.

Another thing I, and the rest of everyone, has been loving is spaghetti squash! Ugh, it is SO good. I have been mixing it with vegan butter, vegan meatless crumbles, and a touch of parmesan on top. So easy, so scrumptious. I know many of you out there have tremendous recipes for the spag-squa, please share em’ with me!

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And I’ve been whipping up a lot of capreses for DJ. This is one of his favorite snacks and the heirloom tomatoes were on sale at Whole fuuds and, oh man, were they ever fresh!

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I’ve been decompressing from the studying with lots and lots of running. I have been mixing in Insanity workouts, but as soon as the smoke settled and the air cleared I booked it back outside.

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I’ll just slide in another picture of morning toast with dried apricots, chia seeds, oats, high protein plain greek yogurt, and stevia.

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Something else I’ve been devouring lately is smoked salmon on pita with caramelized onions and a fried or poached egg. This has been hitting the spot and has been a great high protein/healthy “comfort food” during this super stressful time.

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I took my GRE yesterday …

I crammed for about two and a half weeks in my time off work for the exam, and just didn’t score as well as I would have liked on the quantitative. Algebra and me do not exactly tango in the moonlight. Ask me to tell you the symptoms of Moya Moya or the proper medication to treat tuberculosis..we can chat. But I don’ t have the faintest idea what in the Westeros math has to do with it. It’s not even real math. Like I get 1+1=2… or me +math= disaster….. but I will be the first to admit I do not know how to solve “If Tommy had five oranges and Shelly had 12 and 2 were taken away and thrown at a cactus, why is the square root of the Eiffel tower a bag of potatoes?!”

*Deep breaths, deep breaths*

*It’s not about the problem, it’s about the procccessss*

I get that people study for a looong time for this, but only one of the schools I’m applying to out of five require it. I just don’t think it’s worth it to slave over the study material when majority of MSN-FNP admissions don’t require it, and the app deadline for the one that does is November 1st. (Which is actually great because then I don’t even have the option to retake it for now). Now I’m rambling. *clearing throat*. Oh well, que sera sera.

HOW ARE YOU?!?  I am jumping off the crazy train now, and heading to bed before an early morning wake up call. Muah!

Blog Birthdays:

Cassie at Cassie’s Cookery on October 17th. Sweet girl, Happy birthday. You have changed my life more than you know, and you inspire me every single day. I am SO beyond thankful for ya, sweet thang. You are strong, loyal, empathetic, lovely, beautiful, and full of God’s grace and goodness. You exude His love more than most I know. Our conversations are always close to my heart, and I love you to absolute pieces, sista! <3 I hope your birthday was beyond perfect and you know what a treasure and gift you are to this earth.

PS. Cassie has an amazing cookbook out! If you wanna check it out go HERE. I know I am getting my copy ASAP! 🙂

xo <3

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