Baby Aiden

First, I want to thank all of you for your super sweet birthday comments. It's been a great couple of days and I am pretty confident that J had a wonderful birthday! I want to share all of the exciting details of the b-day festivities, but to be honest I feel like poop. I am beyond exhausted, my allergies are AWFUL (seriously who gets allergies in August???) and I am so sore from working out with my trainer that I feel physically sick. Ok, Ok, I'll stop whining! Moral of the story, I'm in no mood to write a super long post with a million pictures. Instead, I want to share some super exciting news and congratulate some friends of ours!

On Monday afternoon our friends Andrew and Candice welcomed a beautiful baby boy in to the world! Yesterday, J and I made a quick trip to the hospital to meet the little guy.

Everybody, say hello to Aiden Parker! 

 Looks good, right? HAHA, not yet! Not for a while!!!

Me and J with the proud new parents and Aiden! I really should have let Candice hold her own baby in this pic but I couldn't help it!

CONGRATS YOU GUYS!!! 

I hope you all have a great Wednesday! I'm going to take some Claritin, some Advil, eat some soup and take a nap (well, once I'm done with work) and hopefully I'll be in a better mood tomorrow!

The Big 3-0!

Thirty years ago today my best friend and love of my life was born. 

In celebration of  J's birthday I thought I would share all the things I love most about him.

He's smart

He's a hard worker and cares a lot about our business

He loves his family

He loves my family 

He loves ME!

He's really cute

He's good at sports

He knows how to have a good time

I know he would never do anything to hurt me

He's an extremely loyal friend

He appreciates and embraces my love for Gopher football

He gives me pedicures 

(well, that happened once but it's one more time than I ever thought it would)

He's not afraid of a little P.D.A

He carries my stuff, even my purse

He loves and is amazing with kids

He is the best puppy daddy I have ever seen!

I am so lucky and feel so blessed to have J in my life. He makes me laugh, keeps me on my toes and knows exactly how to lift me up when I'm down. He puts up with my crap but doesn't let me get away with baloney. He's strong, smart and sensitive. He's my rock. I've known J my whole life and I can only hope I'm lucky enough to be with him for the rest of it. 

I love you so much JJ.  

HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY!!!!

Sunday Fun Day

Oh my gosh, yesterday was the best day! J and I woke up at about 9:30 (which is an absolute miracle on a Sunday morning, usually we're up at noon) and decided to head to my old stomping grounds, the University of Minnesota campus for breakfast. We went to Steaknife which was one of my favorite places back in the day, and they have GREAT food. Plus, we recently found out the owner Tony (who I've known for years) lives right by Coffee Buzz and is now one of our regular customers, so it was great to return the favor and support his business (even though I pretty much kept him in business while I was in school). After breakfast we decided to walk around campus, and along the way we saw these new bikes from the BlueCross BlueShield "Do" campaign that are available to rent. For only $5 you can rent a bike for the entire day....so we did!

Neither one of us had been on a bike in years, so it took a while to get used to it. Once we got cruising, we were absolutely loving it. We rode around campus and made a stop at TCF Bank Stadium, the home of my Gophers!

From there we rode through the Northeast Minneapolis neighborhood, which is a super fun area of town. Then headed down to the Mississippi River through an area called St. Anthony Main, which is so beautiful and one of my favorite areas in Minnesota. We ran smack into a Polish Fair, which was filled with people and also got to see a bride and groom taking their pictures by the water. After that we crossed over the river via the Grainbelt Bridge and went into downtown Minneapolis. We stopped right by my old apartment to get a powerade and reminisce about my old neighborhood. Then we rode right down by the river near the Mill City Museum. I realize if you're not from Minnesota these landmarks mean nothing to you, but trust me when I say this was a BEAUTIFUL bike ride! And the weather could not have been more perfect!

Then we crossed the Stone Arch bridge, went back through Northeast and back to campus. After our bike ride we stopped at Gold Country, which is a store carrying all the essential and non-essential Gopher sports apparel items. I was very proud that all I left with was a super cool painting. I have a really hard time passing up Gopher paraphernalia. From there we went back to Steaknife to enjoy a much deserved beer.

After that we went back home to watch the Twins game, take a nap and eat some yummy turkey burgers, tater tots and baked beans for dinner. It was seriously the best day. Sundays are always such lazy days because we're exhausted from the week and are usually out and up late on Saturday nights. It was so wonderful to spend the day with J and really enjoy each other and our amazing city of Minneapolis. I think in our really busy lives we underestimate how important it is to really spend quality uninterrupted time with each other, just the two of us. I'm still giddy from how wonderful the day was!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well!

Fashion Friday

Before I can talk about fashion, I have to briefly talk about dancing! The So You Think You Can Dance finale was last night and it was AMAZING! We got to see all the best routines from the season, got to see Ellen bust a hip hop routine and the amazingly talented Lauren Froederman took home the title of America's Favorite Dancer! I have loved her from the beginning, and even though my loyalty switched to Robert halfway through the season, I was so happy to see her win. These top three were my top 2-4 dancers of all time (Twitch is number 1). This season was so fabulous and I am super sad it's over.

CONGRATS LAUREN! 

Back to business. Last night's Project Runway was one of the unconventional challenges. The designers had $100 dollars to spend at Party Glitter to get the materials for their design. Normally, these challenges bring out some horrifying designs but I was really impressed with this season's creativity and ability to make, overall, some pretty cute stuff.  
My favorites were.....

I LOVE this dress! Valerie made this super cute, sexy, stylish and fun dress out of napkins! It's made out of frickin napkins people! The back was super cute too (I couldn't find a picture) but it had braided napkin straps. Unbelievable. I think Valerie has been snubbed for the win two weeks in a row.

Gretchen had yet another amazing design, but her personality is getting more and more annoying with each passing episode. She has quickly become the most hated among the designers and I foresee some drama with her. This look was adorable though. She was able to make three separate pieces....using party supplies! Pretty remarkable. I'm not a fan of the boots with the look, but overall I really liked it, especially the skirt!

The not so much looks for the night were....

AJ's design, oh boy! I looks like a bachelorette party threw up on this poor girl. All we heard about the whole episode is how this is "AJ's challenge" because he typically uses these kinds of materials in his designs, really? This is what you do and you come up with this design? I was super disappointed because AJ's designs have been my favorites the past two weeks, but this one is just straight up bad!

Cassanova should have gone home. This is the second time in three weeks that he has put something so despicably ugly down the runway. First of all, he completely disregarded Tim's advice to stick with un-fabric like materials a la table cloths. Of course, Cassanova grabs every table cloth he can find and blames it on the language barrier. I think the only reason Cassanova snuck through again this week is because he is highly entertaining! I mean that accent is pretty amazing. I almost cried every time he said "Plush Puppies." Whose with me?

WINNER

Andy won this challenge, and I'm OK with that. His dress was very innovative and well constructed, it's made out of ribbon! It wasn't my favorite look, but I can appreciate the judges choice on this one.

PEACE OUT CUB SCOUT

Sarah was the unfortunate designer who bit the dust last night. Now, I agree this design is not good but at least she knew it. She had a hard time being inspired and putting together something she liked. I realize that's not an excuse, especially when the whole point of the show is to design something amazing under extreme situations....but this dress is not worse than Cassanova's and even AJ's. I though it was unfair she went home.

What about you? Did you watch last night? What was your favorite or least favorite look? Anything else fashion related you want to share? The grab the F.F. button and go to town! 

A also have to take a quick second to thank Desiree from Hitting My Stride for this award! Thanks lady!

 If you don't read Desiree's blog you ABSOLUTELY need to! She is smart, sincere and hilarious. Her blog is one of my absolute favorites!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Heart of the Matter

 I just finished Emily Giffin's newest book, Heart of the Matter, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Here's a quick recap from emilygiffin.com:

Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her mother’s warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.

Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie---a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance---and even, to some degree, friendships---believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.

Emily Giffin definitely has a gift for making you relate and route for each and every character she creates. I'm just not sure I liked this book as a whole. It kind of depressed me. So much of book's storyline was about men cheating on their wives, which is not a topic I tend to enjoy. Because of Giffin's descriptive representation of each character I couldn't figure out who I wanted to love whom and how I wanted it to end....which made it more depressing. Am I routing for the guy to leave his wife and kids? Do I want him to break someones heart? It was tough and has left me feeling all around bummed out. 

The book's theme is about relationships in a marriage, relationships with children and friendships and although I am fully aware of the complexities that arrive in any kind of relationship, this was too much. I'd like to believe that marriages can work and there are men who don't cheat. I'd really like to believe I'm with one of them. I'm not so naive to think marriage comes without a lot of hard work and many ups and downs, but I'd like to think the fairy tale is possible and things can be overall good from beginning to end. The book did raise some really good points--one that really stuck out was that relationships, of any kind, are two way streets. You need to put in to be able to take out and sometimes if one is down the other needs to raise them up. Even though the themes from Giffin's first two books, Something Borrowed and Something Blue are similar, I found those to be much more lighthearted and more fun to read. This one just made me feel overall, blue.

Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?