Wow, what a week! I am very fortunate that I was able to go to Houston for work and during that week, I also spent time with my family and friends, some of which I hadn’t seen in WAYYY too long! I would also like to note that I managed to be in Houston during the hottest week EVER. Yes, that’s right ever. Not this month. Not this year. Hottest EVER!!! Here is a bullet recap (with some pictures) of how my week in Houston was spent!
Monday
- Woke up at 3:45am (yes, I am dead serious) to get ready to catch my flight to Houston. Remember that this is 2:45am Houston time. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wake up earlier because my amazing husband was kind enough to drop me off at the airport on the way to work. It was nice to spend a few extra minutes with him in the morning before I left!
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| From my window on the plane! |
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| Getting closer to Houston 🙂 |
- Make it to Houston and got my luggage just fine. Then I got in a fight with the rental car lady because she said that I made my reservation in the name James Gougler. Granted, he is my husband, but I made the reservation through work and they don’t have him in their system. Thus this is impossible. The lady spoke very quietly and this annoyed me even more, but eventually after a LONG discussion, I got my car.
- Work, work, work. Seriously I worked my butt off in Houston, but this isn’t a bad thing! Staying busy means my company needs me 🙂 That’s how I see it at least. I did get to take off at 4:45pm since at that point I had been up for 15 hours and my mind was wandering. Mind you, this is the only day I got off before 5pm!
- Picked my baby bro up from his first day of school/football practice. I was able to see a dear friend/role model of mine, Lia Johnson, and it was so nice to catch up with her! (I coach all of her daughters in cheer and can’t believe her oldest is in college now!)
- Hung out at the house with Matt and Dad since Momma had to work. We had a random dinner of salad and boudin with crackers, but it was just perfect.
Tuesday
- Started my day off right with a hot and humid 4.5 mile run! That Houston humidity spoke directly to my lungs!
- Work, work, work! I made it out of the office around 5:15pm so I couldn’t complain too much!
- Drove over to Rice Village and met up with Nikki, Olivia and Ben! We had dinner at La Madeline and it was so yummy! Too bad we don’t have one in Pittsburgh. Then Nikki and I walked around the shops for a little while and believe it or not, we did not buy anything. Not one single thing 🙂
- I then headed home to hang out with my parents and Matt. We watched some t.v. and quite honestly, I don’t think I moved from the couch until I went to bed. Between waking up early for my flight and then waking up early for my run, I was pooped!
Wednesday
- I grabbed Starbucks on the way to work knowing that this was going to be a long day. I got into the office at 7:30am and left at 7:00pm. No lunch break. Well, I ate lunch, but we ordered in and ate while working. This day was full of idea sessions which made my brain hurt by 7pm. I’m more of a doer, so all of the thinking got me frustrated since I wasn’t able to see anything come of it. I need to remember that I have an engineer’s brain and I work with a bunch of consultants. Concrete and tangible outputs aren’t always going to be the results from meetings.
- When I finally made it home, my momma had cooked up one of my favorite meals! I guess you could call it sauteed veggies with pasta and chicken. Heavy on the veggies and light on the pasta, just the way I like it!
- No work out for me on Wednesday. I needed some sleep to rest my aching brain 🙂
Thursday
- Another morning run to start my day off the right way! This time I woke up feeling refreshed even though it was 5am (maybe it was my 9:30pm bed time?) and I got in a solid 6 miles!
- Work, work, work! Less stressful than the day before and I was out by 5:30pm.
- I walked up to the grocery store once I got home to pick up all the ingredients I needed to make dinner for my family! Mom would be working late, so I wanted to do something nice for my parents since they are always so good to me.
- You may recall the menu for the night from last week’s post CrAzY Busy Week. The pizza and zucchini sticks were a big success.
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| Matt’s meat and cheese pizza – I forgot to take a picture before he dug in! |
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| Mine and Dad’s pizza – Mine has all of the delicious veggies and Dad’s has veggies, ham, pineapple (anything you can think of to put on a pizza) and way to much cheese for my taste buds, but whatever works right? haha I love you daddy! |
- To top it off, I made an AMAZING dessert. (Dad, Matt and I have a terrible sweet tooth so dessert was obviously a necessity for me to win the best daughter/big sister award for the week!) I decided to make Funfetti Sandwich cookies. I found the recipe on Pintrest and they are to die for. Not healthy in any way, but it tastes like Heaven.
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| Source – Mine didn’t look this good (close but not quite) and I forgot to take a picture, so this will do! |
- After dinner, I had a visitor stop by! Alex Dutka came by and hung out for a few hours before bedtime. It’s always nice to be able to hang out and catch up with people you don’t see or get a chance to talk to very often!
Friday
- FINALLY!!! Work, work, work! Another busy and successful day at work to round off my time in the office!
- Alex and I went out for dinner and I finally got MEXICAN FOOD!!! It was wonderful in all of it’s greasy goodness! After dinner, we drove over to see Miss Kathy Durand before heading to Courtney and Luke’s apartment in midtown!
- We went out to Howl at the Moon that night for Alex’s birthday and had a blast! His birthday is actually today along with his twin brother, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX AND ANTHONY!!! Love you boys!
- Here are some pictures of our epic night out. Excuse the quality since these were all taken from my phone! I left my camera at home 🙁
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| Me, Kathy and Courtney with bucket #1 – we were remembering the good old days when we had Spring Break and we could go to Destin! |
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| Bucket #1 all gone 🙂 |
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| My loves <3 |
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| Courtney!!! and Kathy’s finger! haha |
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| Kathy, me and Colin with Cordes in the background |
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| Me and the birthday boy! |
Saturday
- NOTE: This was the HOTTEST day of the year thus far in Houston. It reached 109 degrees and was a record breaker!
- That morning Mom and I drove to Bellaire to pick up Trisha and her babies Cayden and Alexis!!! Trisha lived with my parents for several months with little Miss Alexis (now 14 months) and now she has another one Cayden who is a newborn and not quite 2 months old!
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| Alexis! She is very mobile and like to get into things, like mom’s onions! |
- We hung out and chatted before I decided to take Alexis swimming.
- That evening, Mom and I went out to Katy for Nikki and Cliff’s couples shower and we had a GREAT time! I got to see so many friends and we ate delicious food 🙂
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| Here I am with Nikki (bride), Cliff (groom) and Katrina (Nikki’s cousin and other MOH!) |
Sunday
- As always, I kicked off my Sunday bright and early with my long run for the week. I was supposed to do 9 miles, but since the hottest day of the year was Saturday, it wasn’t exactly cool come Sunday morning. I decided to cut my run short for safety reasons since I was going at it alone.
- After running and finding some way to cool down and get ready, Dad, Matt and I went to church followed by a stop at Buckee’s for breakfast tacos and banana chips!
- That afternoon, I drove down to Rice to pick up Ben and Olivia so I could see them one more time. We went to lunch at Baker Street Bar and Grill, but it was far too hot to walk around Rice Village afterwards so I ended up just taking them back.
- The rest of the day was spent hanging out in the pool with my dad trying to stay cool. You know it’s hot outside when 92 degree water actually cools you off some!
I had an amazing time in Houston and I’m sad that I probably won’t be back until Thanksgiving! Though I had a great time, I’m glad to be back “home” in Pittsburgh with my handsome husband and sweet puppy!
Until next time…
With love and God bless,
Amy
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