Girl Crushes

There are a group of girls that husbie calls my 'girl crushes.'  they are all girls I would like to emulate in one way or the other, and each has their own characteristics that I think are fantastic.  And the list is...

TV Personalities

Kelly Ripa

Kelly's probably my longest running girl crush.  I started liking her a lot when I was preggo with Haley - she was preggo at the same time with her daughter.  It also helped that I was a SAHM during this time, so I had plenty of time to watch R&K and All My Children.  She is so adorable - personality, hair, clothes, etc., etc., etc.  I DVR Regis & Kelly every day so that I can see what she is wearing.  I try to pick up workwear that look like a lot of things she wears on the show.  Favorite things about Kelly?  She is a super mom of 3, works out like a fiend and has the body to show it, and she is so funny!  She doesn't take herself too seriously, either, and I think that is my favorite thing about her. 

Melissa Rycroft

Pregnant and adorable.  One thing I was and one thing I wasn't!  :)  I loved her on Making the Squad, The Bachelor, and Dancing with the Starts.  I only watch Good Morning America when she is on (what can I say, I am a Today Show girl!).  She seems so down-to-earth and sweet.  Her and her hubs are adorable and I can only imagine how super cute and adorable their little one is going to be.  How many times can I say super cute and adorable in one paragraph?  Apparently, a lot.

Actresses

Anne Hathaway

If anyone would make me want to color my hair dark again, it's her.  She is gorgeous, classy, and I love her in every movie she has ever done.  Who knew she'd end up as lovely as she is now when she did The Princess Diaries?  I can't wait to see Love & Other Drugs - it looks so good!

 Rachel McAdams 

I think she is great for a lot of the same reasons as Anne Hathaway.  Smart - check.  Beautiful - check.  Classy - check check.  She's been in some of my favorite movies of all time - hello, Notebook & Time Travelers Wife.  She is so graceful and elegant.  Morning Glory is on my list to see, too!  (I don't know how I'm going to scam all of these movies out of husbie).

Sports Chicks

Carling Coffing

If anyone watched The Big Break - Sandals Resorts, you know Carling.  She's just snarky enough to be hilarious without being a B.  She ended up winning (yay, my favorites never seem to win) and quickly became my golf style icon.  I'm still not sure about nixing a collared shirt on the golf course, but I've come up with some pretty cute Carling-esque outfits.  Not to mention my golf side ponytail.  

Lindsey Vonn

Hands-down, my favorite athlete of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  She kicked total butt with an injury and wiped that smerky smile off of Julia Mancuso's face.  Another bonus point - the absolutely adorable moment she had with her husbie after winning the gold medal.   

Do you have any girl crushes or icons (fashion, professional, or whatever?  Who are they and why?

Birthday Weekend Recap

This comes WAY late - but here's my birthday week recap!  Really, instead of birthday week it should be called food bender.  It kicked off Thursday (6/3) night with me coming home from work and husbie suggested we do my birthday dinner with his mom that night, since she was already at our house (and I suspect that he didn't want to cook dinner. Yes, I said 'he')  Anyway, I had a meeting scheduled with the Board VP I am replacing in my women's league at 7:30, so this meant our only option, pretty much, was Chili's.  I have never been a Chili's fan, but the one up by us had a good run for a year.  We keep remembering that one good year, which is why we keep going.  Then we had a horrible experience there on Easter Sunday, after which we swore we would never go back.  Well, we did.  Dumb.  Dumb.  Dumb.  They were so ssssssllllllllloooooooowwwww, food was not amazing (not to mention I can never find anything healthy there that I like, and the stuff that is bad for you is SO bad).  I had to leave early *note - we had been there for an hour at this point* to head to my meeting.  Good times.

I was off work on Friday and putted around the house with Ava, then headed up to Haley's last day of school party, like the good little room mom I am.  It was HOT.  We've decided next year's party theme should be an 'every event involves water' one.  The kiddos had a good time and after we headed over to Sonic to get Sparkling Lemonades.  If you haven't had one, go get one.  Now.  They are yummy!  Here's Haley's class at the party.  She's the one on the left in the white shorts.

Friday night I headed down to Northpark to have a dinner and movie date with my sister, her best friend and her daughter who, incidentally, is my age and her birthday is 4 days before mine.  I hadn't seen Rachel & Robin in forever, so it was fun to catch up.  We had dinner at Luna - MUCH better birthday dining choice.  Yummy margaritas, salsa, soup, etc.  We headed up to the movie theater and saw Sex & The City 2.  Movie was good, I liked that it was WAY less stressful than the first.  Carrie's first outfit out was amazing - my sis said she heard it was a $100K ensemble, by the time you added the Loubouton's, jewelry, etc.  And that diamond, don't get me started.  Gorgeous!  I actually gasped.  I would be perfectly fine toting that little baby around on my ring finger!

Saturday morning we lounged around and took the girlies to the pool.  My fav thing about our neighborhood is that we have an awesome pool!  The girls love it and we love it, mainly because there is an upper section that is shallow with lounge chairs in it.  We sit in the chairs, Ava swims around in front of us, and Haley swims in the big pool.  There are always a ton of Haley's friends there, too, so she doesn't have to stick around with A in the baby pool.  Saturday night we took them over to my mom's who kept them while we went to Benihana.  Yum yum yum!  I got the standard - hibachi fillet - and a peach sake sangria.  It was delish and I would almost go back to just sit at the bar and have a few of these little glasses of heaven.  *Note to self - I must learn how to make these!*  Here we are when I got my birthday ice cream and songs.  Yes, we are a little scorched from our earlier pool time. 

Sunday morning, we met the girls and my mom at church, then headed over to Mattito's for their brunch buffet.  This has become a favorite birthday tradition of mine.  Mimosas and all of the yummy Tex-Mex you can get.  Yes, please!  More swimming and a nap followed.

I took off work on Monday (my actual birthday) and headed over to the gym for my very favorite dance class.  Sadly, our teacher is moving to Austin at the end of the month and our last class is on the 28th.  :(  So, I'm trying to get in as many classes as I can between now and then!  Afterward, we took the girls swimming there, they have an enormous waterpark.  Here are the girls lounging in the kiddo area.  By the time Monday night rolled around, I was SO sick of eating out that husbie grilled some fillets and we picked up some ready-to-go twice-baked potatoes from the store.  He also got me a small cake and some ice cream.

Much of Monday, I spent thinking about this little guy.  He was born to Megan and Brent at 8:55AM on the 7th.  Lucky for him, he got the best birthday on the planet - shared with me, and Prince.  Lol!  He is such an amazing little fighter.  Prayers are still needed for him, though!  Check out the Send Love to Cohen blog and his facebook page to stay up-to-date and see what kinds of specific prayers are needed for his healing.

Lastly, I got a nook for my birthday!  I really love it.  I love to read but have been slacking off lately in lieu of pointless reality television.  I'm hoping this will help with it.  From now until the end of  June, Barnes & Noble is giving $50 gift cards with the purchase of a nook.  Basically, this pays for a cover (highly recommended) and a light (not mandatory, but a good idea).  They will let you split your transactions so that you can use your gift card at the same time as when you buy the nook.  I plan on doing some book reviews on my blog and should have one ready to go over the weekend.  I'm currently reading Best Friends Forever: A Novel.  The jury is still out on this one, so stay tuned.

All in all, it was a great way to spend my birthday weekend!  Lots of family time and WAY too much food.  :)

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Catching Up... SO MIA!

I have been SO completely MIA from my blog!  I knew May would be crazy, I just underestimated how completely crazy it would be.  I zig-zagged across the country all month long and I couldn't have been happier to be home the entire Memorial Day weekend!  

In the midst of everything, I also caddied for my dad in the Byron Nelson Pro-Am and attended the tournament the rest of the week.  Here we are a couple of years ago (I forgot my camera this year.  Oops!):

Here I am with Vijay Singh, who my dad's team was paired with:

A couple of weeks ago we had the bachelorette party for one of my girlfriends.  I did wear the cute little romper/jumpsuit I picked up at Express before my Vegas trip.  It worked perfectly!  The only thing that is not-so-great is when you have to go to the restroom.  Having to almost completely take your outfit off in a bar bathroom is not so fun.  

Before we went out, all the girls went to a lap dancing class at The Girls' Room in Dallas.  I'm not sure what I thought of the class - I was pretty excited going in.  I expected it to be learning sexy dance moves for my husband.  What I didn't realize is that we would be practicing on each other.  Yep, that's right, grinding on your friends.  I would have been much more comfortable with a dummy, as Austin suggested.  Here's the bride getting demonstrated on by the teacher:

There were polls in the private room we were in, which all the girls wanted to give a quick little swing on - no reason not to channel your inner stripper, I suppose.  I can tell you right now that I would make a crappy stripper!  No upper arm strength.  A few of the girls might do well, if they ever lose their day jobs!  Here's the teacher demo-ing the move we were supposed to try.  I got no where near close to this position.

All-in-all, we had a really great time.  It was fun to have a girls' night, which I hope to do more often!  It gets so easy to get caught up in suburbia with the husband, kids, dog, house, yard, etc, etc, etc, that I forget to have me time with the girls.

There's lots to catch up on, which I will be trying to do this week!  My June schedule is nice-and-easy.  I think our only big events are Haley's last day of school, her recital, and a quick weekend trip to Hot Springs for Father's Day weekend.

I hope everyone had a great memorial day weekend and has a great (and short) week!