Fort Worth Fun and Fancy

Thanks to the discount shopping gods, I found a dress in my closet that covered my wounds for our anniversary dinner Saturday night. Purchased at Ross for $12.99 about 4 years ago, the halter drape perfectly obscured any and all oozing. Which is good because nothing says "I bet you can't wait to get home and get this off me" better than what looks to be a highly contagious skin condition.

I could be hiding anything under here

And dinner was wonderful. So crazy delicious, we started with an appetizer I still don't understand but was called "House Made Stracciatella" with "local peaches, golden beets, local radishes and fennel pesto." My previous experiences with stracciatella has always been the vanilla with chocolate chip gelato flavor, so we were pretty confused when our waitress so highly recommended it to start, but we always try something new when we go and her description of "it's what goes inside burrata cheese" convinced me and OH MY GOD it was amazing. Best thing I had all night until the dessert, which is really saying something when it was followed by my favorite salad of all time and a perfectly cooked filet covered in crab, Bearnaise sauce, and asparagus. If you have a chance to add house made non-gelato stracciatella to you life, you should do it. And you should add more of the gelato kind too.

EST 9.3.2005

Dessert was Bruléed Goat Cheesecake with bing cherries, port wine, pistachio gelato and kumquats. Zomg. I had no room left, but I managed half. They made a cheesecake with goat cheese and they bruleed it. It's like a triple threat of my favorite things and it was extraordinary.

Besides the food, the company wasn't bad either. Fifteen years after we met and had our first date and then openly talked about getting married (all in about two weeks; I do wonder what our reaction would be if any of our kids did the same at 18), I am still crazy head over heels nauseatingly in love with this guy.

2001; baby faces

The morning after our hot date celebrating our eleven years of marriage, we slept in... waking up in stages as the soft morning light filtered in through our sky lights. Curled in each other's arms, looking forward to a round of leisurely morning sex... Except, lol, no. We have children, and they never sleep in when they're supposed to.

I woke with a start at Claire's insistent tapping on my arm at 7:04 a.m. while she repeated "Mom, Cora went pee pee in her bed. Mom. MOM!" over and over, heedless of the fact I'd had most of a bottle of champagne the night before. James, deaf to the repeated calls of "Mom," FLEW up out of bed at the phrase "pee in her bed." The best part was Cora actually had not peed in her crib; she was dry, she just told Claire she was wet because she wanted to get up. She's wily.

So, since we were all up, we went to the zoo nice and early. Feeling generous, we splurged on the $1 carousel tickets for the first time ever and it was probably the best $3 we've ever spent. Look at Cora's face.

I mean, my god. Pure glee; bliss; JOY. There aren't words for this look.

She patted her horsey, bounced up and down, and maintained that level of excitement for all 12 revolutions. It was hilarious and exhausting just to witness.

The zoo train was also deemed pretty great.

So fun. I love our zoo. The kids are experts thanks to their weeks of zoo camp, Landon's nature club meetings, and our one million visits and we get lots of inside scoop from them as we walk around. We stopped for our favorite pizza on the way home and despite the harsh wake-up call, it really was a lovely bookend to our anniversary celebration.

Then I spent about an hour in the bathroom with Cora reading her books and trying to convince her to go poop in the potty. 11 years and that's all I wanted for my anniversary.

Though I can't complain, she's doing really well - no accidents and no pull-ups except for overnight sleeping since Friday. We went to the Zoo in Zootopia panties, which Cora found delightful and we found mildly terrifying, and when we got to the restaurant after, she politely requested the bathroom, peed on demand, and returned to our table. She immediately told our waiter she went pee pee in the potty and was getting her "n&m's" when we got home. He accepted the news with all due gravity and congratulations.

Which seems like a nice transition to the discussion of this week's menu:

Sun: Turkey tettrazini (really good! I doubled everything except the milk and it was perfect), served with crescent rolls
Mon: BBQ quinoa salad (our fave: quinoa + bbq shredded chicken + black beans + corn + tomatoes + avocado + cilantro + queso fresco cheese, topped with a swirl of bbq sauce and Ranch or Italian dressing), chips, salsa
Tues: Pioneer Woman's beef with snow peas (my favorite stir fry recipe, by far, though I always add broccoli and carrot too); rice
Wed: Leftover tettrazini, more crescent rolls because they're delicious and one classic deserves another
Thurs: BBQ enchiladas (with the leftover chicken, rolled in tortillas, topped with sour cream and cheddar jack cheese); refried black beans; avocado
Fri: Pasta with tomato cream sauce (so simple, but SO good; one of those recipes I always have the ingredients for and can make without looking anything up which is handy on a Friday)

BBQ quinoa salad!

I taught barre 3x this holiday weekend and it felt SO good! This week I get back to my usual 2x Orangetheory, 5x yoga, and 1-2x barre routine, but it was fun to hit so heavy on the barre and embrace the shake for a few days. But after 4 days without yoga - my longest gap since February - I am deeply missing it and am excited to return tomorrow. Less excited to return to the office after- holidays off are just the best, but I have some new and fun cases right now, so I can't really complain about that either. May you all have a short and wonderful week ahead!