Something most of you probably don’t know about me, is I’m a blogger.  I’ve been a blogger for about 6 years now but I’ve never shared it with many people I know in my everyday life.  I figured it might be time for that to change and let people keep up to date with us a little better than my one paragraph updates 25 times daily on Facebook! Better late than never I suppose!

This last fortnight has been busy, our trip home and my trip to Iowa has meant that we’ve not really seen any of our Houston peeps for a long time so we’ve been playing catch up.  It’s one thing I’ve grown to love about living here, when you come back from a trip you are guaranteed to have a bunch of people chomping at the bit to see you and this time has been no different!   

Col is working hard as always, he’s taken to going to work early in the morning so he can come home early in the evening for us to see each other and spend time together.  He just found out that his company’s IT department is merging with the IT departments of 2 other companies which isn’t a great thing, because they now have 3 teams and they only need 1.  I have my fingers crossed it’ll turn out well in the end. 

I also finally nagged (not that I nag of course!) him enough to go get a haircut and a shave, so he’s looking sharp and probably half a pound lighter!

I took a few days off to recover from my travels but it wasn’t long before my calendar was full again! I had a crafting session with Helen on Monday and by crafting I mean a trip to Michaels! LOL! I got back in the pool with Lori for water aerobics on Tuesday, had lunch with Sharon, Julie (and Zane), Ann, Deb and Lori on Wednesday, Lunch and errands with Amee and Michael on Friday and Saturday was our trip to Austin.

It has to have been the cheapest trip we’ve ever taken, our hotel stay was free and we just had to buy a tank of gas and food.  Austin’s AHL hockey team got through to the Conference finals and we decided that since we were suffering from some gross hockey withdrawal to make the trip.  We packed the night before and just as we were getting in to the car Col tells me there’s been a change of plan.  I start to panic thinking that he’s cancelling the trip or he has to work before we can leave or something.

He holds his hand out with the car keys in it and says, ‘you’re driving’.  I look at him utterly stunned, start to splutter but he’s already chortling away in the passenger seat buckling up.  I drove to the gas station that morning (and the next day when we left Austin and headed to College Station I drove for a half hour then too) and didn’t even kill anyone!

The drive up was great.  Col has this thing about a place en route called ‘Franks’, he stopped there the last time he lived here when his family came to visit for pie and one day last summer he said, ‘lets go get some pie’.

At home, before the move, we used to take little road trips or drives up the coast every week so I was thrilled to reignite that here.  However, Col underestimated just how far it was to franks and 90 miles later we get there – and I wasn’t even sold on the pie! LOL! It has now become a tradition for every time we’re on that road.

After Franks (which was much better this time around) we headed straight for the San Marcos outlets.  I’m an odd outlet shopper, Yankee Candle, Bath and Body works and sometimes Carters baby is enough for me.  I picked up a bunch of Christmas presents and we headed on our merry way into Austin.

On the road, I turned to Col while he was driving and I said, ‘Hey, we should have brought our swimsuits since we took a lot less time at the outlets than we thought.  We could have taken a dip in the hotel pool’, he agreed and went back to singing whatever 80’s choons were on the radio.  Before long he was pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road and I’m utterly confused when he pulls into the Kohls car park.  He tells me we’re going swim gear shopping and 20 minutes later we come out of Target with some clearance, cheap as chips swimwear to get us by in the pool.

 After our swim we went to the arena, the game was great, Texas lost but it didn’t matter, we got our fix, the atmosphere was electric and we even had the banter with a couple of other Aeros fans who’d made the drive to Austin!

Sunday morning I got up early and did my coupon clipping and Col dropped me off in a Walgreens for an hour to do my bargain shopping before it was off to College Station. 

The last time we were in Austin (for our non-honeymoon) we visited the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library, since we both enjoy politics and we had a blast.  Col had done a little research that told us that George HW Bush had his presidential library in College Station so we went on our merry way.   It was great, very interesting and gave me an insight to a President I didn’t really know much about at all.

Monday we both came back to earth with a bump – which is how it always is when we do one of our road trip weekends or spend some quality time together.  I took a time out from activities to do laundry and what not but Tuesday I was back at it, lunch with Lisa at an Indian restaurant and she treated me to a Gelato.  She has resolved to ‘break’ my diet each time we’re together, but having done some research it turns out Gelatos aren’t bad at all – and they’re tasty to boot!

Yesterday Julie and Zane, Sharon and I all went to the Stomping Grounds indoor play park for Zane to run around and let us catch up.  Aside from lunch last week I’ve not seen Julie properly since before Christmas I think – it’s crazy! Her pregnancy is going well and Zane is getting ready to be a big brother – exciting times!

This morning was weigh in day, I’ve been trying pretty darn hard on this diet of mine and the results are finally starting to show.  I hit my first stone lost this morning.  14.5lbs down and I’m pretty happy with myself!

Tonight is dinner with the girlies, it’s a Cheesecake factory kind of night before they all go off and see Sex and the City – which, I’ve less than zero interest in!  Tomorrow we’re thinking of going to dinner and dancing in Town Square with Julie and Sharon (and their men!).  Saturday we’re going to see the Stevensons – I’ve not seen Colin since November I think it was so that visit is WAY overdue and Monday Lisa has invited us over to her house for a Memorial Day Weekend grill out where we eat, drink rum and swim in the pool – I just need to remember to take some high factor sunblock!