Back To Reality

It's always a little hard to come back to work after a week of vacation, but that's just part of it.  I did think for a second how great it would be to be a career vacationer but that's just not reality! Another positive thing is that I missed seeing my wonderful friends at work and working out with the Be Well girls (Kathleen and Rainie). 

Of course I'm running late on Monday so I grabbed a Luna protein bar for breakfast and ate it with a big cup of water while I dried my hair this morning.  As always coffee is a requirement before going to work so I had a cup in the car on the way to work this morning.  

On Saturday, I made an orzo salad with tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, basil, mint, and feta with a lemon, red wine vinegar, olive oil dressing and it was a big hit when I took some over for my sister's house for lunch on Sunday.  I had some left over do I took it in my lunch today.  With my orzo salad, I had some cheese cubes and pretzel thins (didn't end up eating the apple pictured).  

I was SO glad to get to run and catch up with Kathleen and Rainie today!  This was the beginning of a great afternoon/evening!  We ran out normal 4 mile loop in downtown Birmingham and it was great!  We were very thankful for the rain cooling things down for us a little today!

To wrap up what was already a great day, Elizabeth, my roommate/best friend since childhood (don't want to sell our friendship short and I feel like that's what I am doing if I call her just my roommate) and I had our friend Foster over for dinner. There is truly nothing better than friends around a table sharing a meal and catching up and that is exactly what we did.  Elizabeth cooked a southwestern quinoa bake and made homemade pico de gallo.  Both tasted very fresh and had the perfect amount of heat from the jalapeños.  It is the best time of year because you can get the best spring produce and good, fresh veggies can add so much to a salad or any other dish!  I mixed up a salad (spring mix, red onion, sweet peppers, tomato, feta and homemade balsamic salad dressing.  

For dessert we had chocolate cookies and vanilla bean ice cream.  You can't have a friend over without giving them dessert, right?  I have a sweet tooth and desserts are my weakness as I have mentioned before.  I am going to go ahead and apologize for my dinner photos because they are not the best.  I forgot to take pictures until the end of dinner so I had to take what I could get!  

Drinks:  12 oz coffee, 12 oz diet coke, 12 oz diet grapico (after our run), 12 oz caffeine free diet coke, and 144 oz water

Today was a really good day and that made it much easier to transition out of vacation mode!  

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Orange Beach

For the past 8 years my family has been going on the "Anderson/Radford beach trip" with my brother in law's family.  This is something I love because I get to go to the beach with some of my absolute favorite people!  Also this year was fun because my 2 nephews were there and Preston (almost 3 years old) LOVES the sand and the water.  Anderson is only 7 months old but loved napping on the beach.  It was such a fun, relaxing trip!  

The Anderson/Radford crew! 

Preston and "Gran" (my mom) enjoying watermelon on the beach!  

Preston said:  "make me a brachiosaurus" so this is what he got... 

I ate so much good seafood that I am just going to highlight a few restaurants/meals.

1.  Shipps Harbour Grill:  I ordered the coconut grouper with smoked Gouda mashed potatoes, green beans, and a house salad. This was definitely my favorite meal of the trip and probably ranks pretty high on my list of all time favorites as well! 

2.  Ginny Lane:  I had the special which was salmon over mashed potatoes and green beans and it was cooked perfectly and the flavor was great as well.  The part I want to highlight from this meal was dessert.  We shared the white chocolate bread pudding and it was a hit!  If you ever want REALLY good bread pudding, I would recommend getting it from Ginny Lane!   

3.  Cayman Grill:  I got the wood grilled red snapper with lemon risotto and mixed vegetables.  The lemon risotto was amazing, I really want the recipe!  

4.  Wolf Bay Lodge:  My broiled scallops, sweet potato fries and green beans were delicious!  These were probably the best sweet potato fries I have ever had!  

Shrimp dinner at the condo:  It is a tradition for my parents to cook BBQ shrimp each year and this is a meal I look forward to all year!  It is shrimp with a blend of delicious spices and lots of butter (I never knew how much butter it had in it until this year and it is a lot...so much that I can't even put it on the blog!).  One of the best parts is dipping French bread in the spice/butter mixture.  Mom also makes homemade key lime pies for dessert every year and I think the ones she made this year were the best yet!  The leftover shrimp was peeled and made into shrimp salad for lunch for the next day.  

During the day we ate in the condo.  My wonderful mom cooked so many delicious foods for us to have for lunch.  We had homemade chicken salad (my Granny's recipe which in my opinion is the best chicken salad there is).  Mom also made pimento cheese and her recipe makes it light and fluffy which I love.  We had West Indies salad and boiled shrimp one day for lunch which was quite a treat!  If you have never had West Indies salad, you are missing out because it is a delicious oil/vinegar based crab salad that is made mostly of jumbo lump crab meat!  I can't forget about the pound cake and strawberry shortcake toppings.  We also had a huge bowl of fresh cut fruit that lasted the majority of the week.  

Well I think that's a pretty good overview of my beach trip, can't wait to go back in about a month for a long weekend over Labor Day!  

Almost forgot to mention that I did get in some exercise at the beach.  Lyle (my brother in law) and I ran about 3.3 miles twice and I ran 2.5 miles and did 12 flights of stairs one day as well.  I went on at least a 3 mile beach walk on the days that I didn't run (except for 1 lazy day).  

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