Great Weekend!

This is coming a little late, but I just had to post about last weekend.  It was a great one!

Friday night started off with Jonathon's birthday party.  On the way there, Josh and I went way old school and had a little date at Fazoli's (we haven't been there in at least six years).  It was pretty decent (hello, never ending breadsticks!).  Then, we headed to Jonathon's parent's house and partook in a margarita from their frozen margarita machine (yum!).  There were a lot of really neat people there including: Jonathon (duh, birthday boy), Mary, Trevor, Brandi, Matt, Maddie, Judith, Joe, and Thomas.  After awhile, we headed back to Jonathon and Maddie's place which happens to be where Maddie and I used to live (just a different apartment).  They did some great updates and it's a lot nicer than it used to be (not that it was not nice before).  It was a super fun night!

On Saturday morning, Josh was a good sport and got up at 7:30 with me to go workout with Jillian Michaels!  She instructed a workout at the Texas School for the Deaf football field in Austin and it nearly got us (the workout, that is).  She is one tough B (you know what I mean)!  It was a great time though.  It was cool to see the lady that's been yelling at me for the past month on Ripped in 30.  I videoed her coming onto the field, so here that is:

Still a little sleepy.

Jillian!!!  (the lady on the left did the workouts too and she was a total badass)

Photo stocking

Nerdy photo of me with Jillian in the background, haha

Then, on Saturday night after work, Josh and I went to a "welcome home" party for Becca's husband, Chris.  He just got back from some work in Afghanistan (he was/is a marine, but now is doing contract work or something like that).  It was so great to see Becca, Chris, and their adorable son, Xavier (who just turned four, if you can believe it!).  We also saw Becca's little sister Rae, Daniela, and some people from high school we hadn't seen since high school (Jared, Josh, and Gio).  It was a great time of catching up with everyone.  By the way, Becca's house is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!  I love it so much.  She also semi-recently got a new Canon Rebel, so hopefully soon we will go take photos together!

Okay, that was my fun weekend.  Now for a garden update!

OUT OF CONTROL!  Gnelson is officially lost in the jungle.

My first vegetable!  It's a little yellow squash (with two tiny friends growing to the left).

Bush bean blooms!

Zucchini bloom!

Also, just to let the interwebs know, I marked a couple of things off my summer to-do list.  I finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  What a great book!  It was about a southern baptist family that moves to the Congo in the 1960's as missionaries.  The father is misguided and the mother is a little lost in a different way.  They have four daughters who narrate most of the story and have very different personalities.  It's a very interesting story that ends nearly three decades later.  I really like how it was written with the different character perspectives and the satisfying resolution.  I read it for this book club we're trying to start at work (although I think I'm the only one that finished the book, haha).  I also cleaned my desk (a great feat if you had seen it before).  Now I can see it, there's no dust, and my laptop has migrated back to it with plenty of wiggle room.  And, finally, I've tried one new recipe (which, if you want to get specific, is only marking off one fifth of one of my to-do's).  Last night, I made Brown Rice Gratin which consisted of brown rice (duh), zucchini, carrots, baby corn, red onion, sunflower seeds, parmesan cheese, a bunch of herbs, and some bread crumbs on top.  It was a casserole and it was delicious!  The most exciting part about it was that I used basil and parsley from my garden in it!  Hopefully, I'll be getting some zucchini from the garden soon so I can make it again with those!  I'm off for the next two days (yay!), so I'm going to try to mark off some more to-do's.  I'll keep you posted, interwebs.