It's Been a Whole Year, Folks!

We have had an amazing couple weeks of celebrating!! What a fun excuse to whip out year old wedding cake, drink champagne and eat great food!

Number 1, our wedding cake was perfectly amazing. To all the unbelievers out there who say it can't be done--believe it. We each ate 2 pieces and were sad to throw the rest away.


Note: The icing fell off the sides in transportation from NC to Cedar Falls! Definitely wasn't pretty, but was pretty delicious. I'm so punny.

Last Sunday on our actual anniversary I was so exhausted from working almost 2 weeks straight that we just took a day to rest, lay around and just enjoy each other and a dinner out to Texas Roadhouse, a family favorite! This was all in preparation for the true festivities:

Yesterday afternoon after I got off work we headed to Des Moines for a fun filled couple of days! We headed to our hotel to get dressed (complete with jacuzzi tub, thank you very much) and went out to downtown to a seafood restaurant named Splash. What an amazing experience. If you live in Iowa and haven't been to Splash, you are missing out!!

Excuse my awkward hand.

From the moment we got there we were just so spoiled. They checked our coats, my wonderful Dad had preordered a WONDEFUL bottle of red wine for us and our menus were even personalized for the occasion and were sprinkled with Happy Anniversary confetti! I know in my last blog post that I said the Emeril's restaurant in Florida was my favorite, well I just found my new one!! Check out these pictures of our fabulous dinner:

Our menus :)

Best bottle of wine we've ever had! Thanks Daddy!

Now that's a crab leg. One pound per leg. I've seen Graham get into some crab legs before, but NOTHING like this. I would love to see that whole crab!

Sake grilled shrimp over mashed sweet potatoes and black bean/mango salsa. This dish was created just for me and should be called the Joanna because I literally couldn't think of anything better to sum up all of my favorite foods! Yep, crab leg creeping in the background.

Our dessert. Key Lime Cheesecake...yum. The manager even gave us complimentary dessert wine to go along with it! Seriously the craziest tasting dessert wine of all time from Bordeaux, France.

At our table. Note the aquarium in the background complete with lion fish.

Taken at the front of the restaurant on self timer on the host stand. Yep. No employee was in sight :)

I've Got the Magic, Magic, Magic

A little over 3 weeks ago (my, how time flies!!) I headed down with Grahambo to the land of magic itself (no not Never Never Land--although we did stop in briefly while we were there), Orlando, Florida! We met my mom and dad as well as my sister Keri, her husband Joel and two kids Rami and Ada. First of all I would just like to say: I LOVE DISNEYWORLD. It makes me giddy now even thinking about it. Talking the monorail into Magic Kingdom just brings back so many fun memories as a kid that I can't even explain. Getting to see my nieces experience the magic for the first time was even more amazing. There really isn't anything better than seeing a little girl light up at the sight of a disney princess, folks. I get it, I get it, we are just promoting a society where little girls expect to grow up and be swept off of their feet by prince charming and live happily ever after in their ginormous castle, but you know what? Why not! Enough talk about the girls, when I got to hug Mickey Mouse I somehow forgot about the crazy person inside the costume and just enjoyed a big kiss on the cheek from the starter of it all. Who am I kidding? I am the one who drove to Atlanta from Chapel Hill in a day and a half so that I could try to be the crazy person in the mouse costume!! Yes, I auditioned to be a disney character. Preferably a pricess, but with my height restriction, more likely a mouse. Or Stitch.

I only have one little bone to pick with Disney. Why you gotta make every "children's" ride absolutely TERRIFYING at some point or another. For example, we are at Animal Kingdom, right? Perfectly harmless. We had just enjoyed a visit with the vine lady, who was absolutely amazing and we were headed to our first "ride" of the trip: A 3D adventure with Flik from A Bug's Life. It starts out nice with a butterfly right within "arms length" when all of a sudden the evil grasshopper guy pops out of nowhere, the fog machines and strobe lights cut on and it goes pitch black in there. I mean seriously??? My poor 5 year-old niece is now scarred for life and we cannot go on another ride for the rest of the week without her asking, "It's not going to be like that bug ride, right??" Thanks, Walt.

On another note, the first night in Florida we visited my favorite restaurant in the whole world (this says a lot considering how much I love food and how many restaurants I've been to) by Emeril Lagasse called "Tchoup Choup". Pronounced Chop Chop. With an asian flare the restaurant is decorated with brilliant blues, oranges and purples with hints of bamboo , an ethereal lily pad pool in the center and waterfall down the back wall. Needless to say, the meal was amazing. And as if we weren't all stuffed to the brim, in perfect Dad-like fashion we hop a boat to Universal's City Walk straight from the restaurant and make a b-line for cinnibon and split 2 caramel pecan rolls between the fam. I'm talkin' about somethin' down right good.

I have not done this trip any bit of justice by this blog post, so I will leave you a few pictures to express my excitement!

LOVE M-I-C...K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Mickey and Minnie!

At Mickey's Halloween Spooktacular! Love me some crazy family time.

New Years Resolution: Complete

Yes, I realize that I am WAY late on this blog post, but hey! It's not because I'm not excited!! So listen. I have made some ridiculous new years resolutions in the past such as:

1. No fried food for 1 year. For anyone who knows anything about me this might as well be a death sentence and I think I made it a whopping 15 or so days until I realized this meant I couldn't eat FRIED FOOD.

2. No Facebook for 1 year. Although I did go without it for a while, I think you all know how much of an epic fail that one was.

3. Audition for American Idol. This was back in high school and NO I didn't do it (although I did at Hollywood Studios a couple weeks ago but that is a totally different story altogether.)

Basically, don't talk to me on New Years Eve because I'm usually on some kind of kick that I can't stick with for more than 2 weeks. HOWEVER. After 23 years of trying, I finally kept my resolution. I did it. I ran a half and a full marathon in 2010. WOO HOO!!!!!

Hokay, so. I never, ever. EVER thought that I would be a marathon runner. I wanted someday to try and run a half marathon, but something strange happened on December 31, 2009 and my mind was made up. Well, I planned on running a half marathon this past April in Charlotte, NC with a friend. OBVIOUSLY that didn't happen. Why, you ask? Oh. We just moved to Iowa--no big deal.

At this point I'm thinking my hopes for completion to be over and done with, but then a close friend here in little ol' Cedar Falls, Iowa puts me back up to the challenge and away we went! Running up to 30-40 miles per week, we did it. We made it through training and we made it across the finish line. Did I mention I'm probably crazy enough to do it again?? When the time is right, I will, and I mean it, run the Disney World Marathon in Orlando, FL. Why not run it this year, you ask? The problem is that I live in Iowa and the race is in January. I promise you I will not be doing any 20 mile training runs when it is negative 20 degrees outside. In fact, I promise you I will not be doing much of anything outside when it is negative 20 degrees. Netflix, here I come!

Here are a few pics to prove that I actually did this thing:

I always imagine myself looking cool when I run.

Although a neat thought, I definitely look ridiculous.

Making it down the home stretch!!


Official photo time!!