Bye Bye Bank of America!!!!

We have finally paid off our car! WOOO HOO!! No more payments to Bank of America. ever. again. Now we just got to start plugging away at our student loans :) It looks sexier, now that it is totally paid for :) lol

Fun times!

The last few weekends have been packed full of fun times with great friends!! I absolutely love having a full schedule, I can't get enough of it. Last weekend I decided to take a couple days off of work and give myself a 4-day weekend so we could fit in seeing everyone that was in town. That Friday we drove out to the airport and picked up our friends Clay and Cara. Originally we weren't going to be able to hang out with them, but their flight came in like 6 hours late (apparently that can happen when you are flying from a tiny town in Alaska), so we were able to hang out and go to happy hour at Stanford's. It was fun! That night we had a game night with my friend Sarah, her fiance Lance and our new friends Geraldine & Bryan (and their adorable little boy, Bradley).

Saturday we met up with Becka, Brian (who was here from Alaska), Clint & Katie (who came up from Medford) and went to the International Beer Festival in the Pearl. It was fun, and hot. That night we went to Forest Grove where Brian & Ashlee and their boys were staying for the week and hung out and had a bon fire until late that night.

Sunday we went to church with my family. It was fun to go there since I hadn't seen a lot of those people in a while, then we went out to lunch at the Spaghetti Factory with my sister, she was in town from San Antonio (yes, it seemed like everyone decided this was a good weekend to come to Portland :)) Then we headed out to Shute Park in Hillsboro for a picnic that Becka and I put together for our college friends to get together and see Brian & Ashlee and the boys. It's always hard to come in to town and try to see all your friends individually, there is just never enough time. So getting everyone together in one spot was great!

Katie & Clint w/ Lucas

Becka & Lucas

That night Becka, Nate, Clint & Katie came back to our place to hang out at our pool and have a BBQ. Katie & Clint stayed with us that night before heading back to Medford. Then Monday I spent the day with my sister, we went shopping downtown and on NW 23rd. That is one of my favorite things to do, especially when the weather is SOO nice!

Then this weekend I took Friday off and we had Brian & Ashlee over for their last night before heading up to Seattle to see family. We took the boys swimming and then we all went out to Chevy's for dinner. It was a great way to end their visit! We can't wait to see them again, and hopefully 2 more years won't go by before seeing them. I think we have decided to go up to Sitka for Christmas this year and doing a stop off in Anchorage to them.

Me with Adam! How cute is this little guy!?


The Cook Clan :)

Saturday I worked for my dad's business and Colin finished up a tile job that he did for one of his co-workers. So we made some extra $$ and put it straight on our car!! We only have a little over $100 dollars left on the car (which will be paid this Thursday!!) and then we only have our student loans to pay off!!! Yay! Yesterday we did some planning and we could probably pay those off in a year and a half!! Becoming debt free is getting more and more exciting. We decided once we are debt free we will plan our next vacation. I think we both agreed we would like to go to Cancun or the Bahamas, somewhere tropical for sure. So now we just got to buckle down and get them out of our lives forever!


Yesterday was a nice relaxing Sunday, we went to church and then I went to our pool for about 2 hours while Colin did some training for his triathlon. Then at about 7pm we decided to paint our apartment. We have had the paint for probably a month and have been talking about painting since we moved in over a year ago! We were done painting by 8:30pm and it was dry by 10pm so we could put everything back in its place! It was really fun. The color is called Oat, but it turned out a little more yellow than I was thinking it would be. But I guess it's better than white!


We did a lot of eating out with all the friends we have had in town so my diet has not gone very well these last couple weeks. I am happy to get back into our normal routine and get back to the diet.

Recipes!

So it has been about 2 full weeks of being on my diet and it hasn't been all that bad. I will say I have not followed it perfectly and have discovered my major weakness (which I already knew) Starbucks coffee drinks! I can have coffee, but it's the milk and sugar that I'm not suppose to have. So I am slowly weening myself from them ;) The easiest way for my to stick to the diet is to basically have the same things everyday. Typical day: Egg scramble w/ cheddar, tomatoes & green onions for breakfast; fruit for morning snack; Tuna salad with pickle for lunch; nuts & dried fruit for afternoon snack; and grilled chicken with some type of steamed veggies or a salad for dinner.

So at the beginning I decided to try to make some baked goods with almond flour and coconut flour and none of them have turned out very good. So I have pretty much given up on that. But I have discovered a couple really good recipes posted below!

Homemade pesto- Just throw all of the following in a blender, we had it over grilled chicken.

huge bunch fresh basil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
3 cloves garlic
pinch of salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Homemade salad dressing- My salads have included Romaine Lettuce, Roma tomatoes, red onions, avocados & cucumbers- Loading up the veggies!! Throw the following in the blender. I will say this dressing only lasts a day or two in the fridge, the olive oil eventually becomes solid....maybe I shouldn't be keeping it in the fridge..?? haha

2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons orange peel, grated
1 1/2 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

I will keep you all updated on other yummy things I discover while doing this diet. I will say that even though it's only been a couple weeks I have noticed a difference in the a way I feel. And I pay for it big time when I deviate!!

We have been eating so much chicken tonight we are going to try making some ground beef and using lettuce as a "taco shell" We'll see how it goes:

SCD Taco Meat

I lb of ground beef
2 -4 garlic cloves, pressed
1 small onion grated (Use fine grate)
1 tsp cumin
½ cayenne or Chipotle chili pepper
salt to taste

Brown beef in olive oil. Add garlic and onion. Try to collect onion juice and put into pan, too. Add cumin, cayenne and salt to taste.

Serve with romaine lettuce leaves (as taco shells), cheddar, homemade salsa


And we are going to try the recipe below to made our homemade salsa. Basically chop and mix the ingredients below and let sit for an hour before serving!

5 Roma tomatoes
1 white onion
1 clump of cilantro
3 tomatillos
1/2 a lime
1/2 tsp. of salt
pinch of paprika
dash of olive oil (optional)

Ocean Shores Tri

This last weekend we made the trip up to Washington for the Ocean Shores Triathlon. We first went to Yelm to pick up my brother Tim from a camp he is working at for the summer and then drove to the beach. This was a great triathlon to watch, it was fairly small compared to some of the others we have been to but that made it super easy to get good pictures and be able to see both Tim and Colin at their transitions. As always this triathlon got me thinking about doing one....I think I might just start doing more spin classes and lap swimming at the gym and kind of pretend like I'm training for one. Then when I actually get a bike I might just sign up for one.

Colin was the second person out of the water, he really did great on the swim! Since he was out of the water so fast the race officials didn't have everyone out directing them where to go on the bike, so Colin missed a turn and ended up going about 4 miles out of the way! But he still did great and improved by almost a half an hour from last year. He got 1st in his age group and 14th overall!



After the triathlon we drove to Yelm and dropped off my brother and then headed to Olympia to hang out with our good friends Brian & Ashlee, they are down here visiting from Alaska and we haven't seen them since our wedding!! It was kind of a spontaneous visit and I am really glad it worked out. We got to meet their 8 month old twin boys. They are the cutest little things ever!!


Here I am holding Lucas and Ashlee is with Adam :)

Blogs

So I have a few blog obsessions. I've had fun googling "design blogs" or something like that and seeing what comes up.

The first blog is one that Colin's cousin was recently featured in, it is called Apartment Therapy. It is pretty cool and highlights some of the cool ways people have set up their apartments. And since I am all about apartment living right now it's a cool place to get some ideas! Here is the link to the feature: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/house-tours/kims-personalized-mount-pleasant-flat--120264


The next one is called Oh Joy! I came across this blog when it was listed as one of the top 10 home design blogs to check out. I really like the style of things on this one: http://ohjoy.blogs.com/


This last one is a blog as well as a newsletter you can subscribe to through e-mail. It's called GOOP and is actually created by Gwyneth Paltrow. One of my co-workers was talking about this one time and I had to check it out. It has everything from fashion, food and entertainment. http://goop.com/

Fun in the sun!

Well, the little sun that there was this last weekend, we had fun in :) This week we are finally getting some heat! and believe me, I'm not complaining! I get to enjoy the sun from my office and by the time I get off work it's still warm enough to enjoy some sun poolside :)

This last weekend Colin & I both got to enjoy a nice 4-day weekend for 4th of July! We went to a wedding Saturday night, at the Overlook House, where we got married! It was fun to go back! Then on the 4th we went out to Scappoose to hang out with my grandparents and my parents for a BBQ. Then Monday Colin & I spent most of the day at Ikea & other home stores to buy a few new things for our place. We bought new curtains, new pillows for our couch & for our bed, new bedding, a new lamp and some kitchen gadgets! It was way fun! Of course we spent more money than either of us were planning on, but it was worth it!!

This was a difficult weekend to start my diet, I think I did ok considering. At the wedding I tried just to eat the veggies, and fruit, but I had a little of the breaded chicken too. At my grandma's BBQ I did pretty well, I only ate fruit and some shrimp, and Monday while we were out shopping we stopped at Red Robin cause that was about the only place around that would be close to having anything I could eat and I got a salad with a vinaigrette dressing on the side- but really I wanted big honkin burger w/ fries. Yes, this is going to be hard. I've decided it will probably be best if I stop obsessing about it and not get so worried if I slip up here and there, that will help with quality of life...

This weekend we are headed out to Ocean Shores, WA for another triathlon! This is a big one for Colin- a half Iron Man, 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run! And my brother will also be racing in the triathlon. He is doing the Olympic distance which is .9 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike and 6.2 mile run! I am excited to be able to cheer both of them on. When looking at the race they also have 5k, 10k and half marathons. If I knew that sooner I would have signed up for a run!

Serving Others

Our small group completed a service project last night, we helped do some much needed yard work for an older couple that goes to the church. It was so fun to get together and do something for someone else! God has really been laying that on my heart lately. I am a selfish person, I can say pretty confidently that we are all selfish. Jesus was all about serving others and just participating in relationships with others. I think we often forget that and we stay in our own little worlds doing whatever we want and not taking the time to love our neighbors! Here is a pic of the crew. It's a little blurry...



Memory Verse for the week:
Hebrews 12:1-2
1-Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

2-We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.