Wedding Photos as Promised

Take a look at this lovely family and beautiful wedding!



The cake and matching champagne glasses:

The groom's cake had Dave lyrics written on it's side. Love it.

The table decorations (they were able to use the mirrored tiles from my wedding -- yay!).

The ceremony, not a dry eye in the house:

A sweet moment between Nana and Drew:

The well-dressed father of the groom:

Mother and son:

The Walters and Shavers watch on:

Seriously, it doesn't get much more beautiful than this (and Brandi in that dress!).

Four Awesome Things

1) My friend Mike was published on McSweeney's. Read it. Even if you don't follow the Royals and have no idea who Jon Lester is, you'll find it hilarious.

2) Call off the Orbit search party. I found the Sangria Fresca gum mentioned in a previous post.

I would give you a full review here about how it's good but not as good as I thought it would be (I really, really like sangria), but I found this other blog post that sums it up better than I could. She's as obsessive about new flavors as I am, apparently.

3) On Monday, Jim hosted the first-annual Yard Beer Invitational. I forgot my camera, so I didn't get any photos of the event, but it was glorious. There's nothing better than blind tasting cheap beer (with the help of Wonder Bread to cleanse the palette). Below was my beer of choice. It's smooth, easy to drink, watery and oh-so-inexpensive, a perfect beer for me. I shall drink copious amounts of it this summer.

4) And most awesome, my cousin done and got married yesterday evening. And it was beautiful. Congrats to the newlyweds! I should have a photo or two to share soon!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

I hope all had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. I know I did. Ryan and I spent lots of time with friends, family and the backyard. In our attempts to "go green" and save money on produce, Ryan and I spent five-plus hours in the hot, hot sun Sunday, planting our very first vegetable garden. We did some serious manual labor, but we're anticipating our sunburns and extreme soreness will be well worth it in a few months when we have fresh tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, green bell peppers and two varieties of basil. BLTs, cucumber salad and pesto abound this summer.

I've been slacking on the blog and photo front lately, so I made sure to document our 16-foot by 4-foot backyard transformation. (Taking photos also gave me a good excuse to take a break. hehe.)

First, Ryan and I started strong, removing the grass from our area. Then our wheelbarrow's tire went flat and Ryan broke the hoe (too many jokes). Here's the state of the "garden" before going to Sutherlands for the third time this weekend:



While there, Ryan and I upgraded our work gloves. They make purple ones!


It reached 90 degrees while we were out there, and Siena figured out that the coolest spot to be, of course, was in the middle of our workspace.


All of this tilling was done with love/cursing and sweat. No machine can do better, although next time I think we'll investigate our rental options...


Finally! We get to plant.


Tomatoes, yum.


And the payoff: leisurely watering the garden.


This weekend, Siena also learned a few things. First, her love of ice cubes continued to blossom. I've learned that if I fill her water dish with ice cubes and water, she'll stick her nose in and bob for them like you would for apples. Here you can see her cheating with her paws.

And, Siena made a buddy! Below is our neighbor's dog Izzy. She's half Whippet and insanely fast. Siena tries her best to keep up for the first five minutes or so of playing. Then she just flops down and wrestles around with her.

I love how dogs look up at you when they're happy.

Here they are patrolling the backyard.


Memorial Day weekend isn't over for me though. I've taken today off to get some things done around the house this morning, and this afternoon the hubby and I are cruising down to Springfield to see my cousin marry his high school sweetheart. I have to give them both a shout out. Drew's my only cousin and, having no siblings ourselves, we've always been more like brother and sister than cousin. So congrats Drewbaby, and welcome to the family Brandi!

Back from Sabbatical, for the Moment

Today marks a special day. First, it's my mom's birthday, which is awesome cause she's a pretty wonderful chick. I think I did a good job of spoiling her today with Pei Wei, cupcakes and a mosaic-coaster-making kit, too.

Here are the cupcakes:



In addition, today also marks the first day of this really cool blog "I found." You might want to check it out, nudge nudge. Sorry that I've been busy lately. But, I think it's been worth it, don't you?

p.s. Siena is still growing. Big surprise, right? Here she is, sacked out in the back of the car after spending a night at my parents and playing non-stop. She loved her little puppy vacation. (Thanks again, Mom!)

Another Day at the K

I know. We're obsessed with going to Royal's games, and the pics are getting old (and look the same), but here we are at another game. And one that the Royals actually won -- yay!

I love how Ryan looks at me so lovingly. I believe this is before he said, "Are you seriously taking more pictures during a Royal's game?"


This was the Mother's Day 1:10 game, so all the ladies were soaking up the rays. (Hence my hat in the above pic.)

Nothing says baseball like a frosty malt!

I swear I'll blog about something other than the Royal's game until at least mid-June. That's when we're going with Ryan's company to the all-you-can-eat seats. Yum.

Happy 100th post to me!

Today is a historic day for PH Balanced. This is its 100th post! Woohoo! That's a lot of blogging about random stuff. In honor of this joyous occasion, I'm posting about two of my favorite things: sheep and sugar-free gum.

One of my friends recently sent me this article, which features the below insanely cute photo. All together now, aww.


Now that our cute quota has been filled for the day, on to the gum. Orbit is probably my favorite brand of sugar-free gum because they're always coming up with new fun flavors. For example, about a year ago they released Mint Mojito, which I adore:


Recently, I stumbled upon two new flavors of Orbit Gum: Fabulous Fruitini and Strawberry Mint. Fabulous Fruitini wasn't exactly fabulous, but it was pretty tasty and tasted very similar to old-school FruitStripes gum, so it had that nostalgia thing going for it. Strawberry Mint was also pretty good, although both didn't keep their flavor long. (If anyone from Orbit stumbles upon this, work on that, OK?)

The new flavors got me curious though...what other flavors are out there or about to be released? The Orbit site wasn't very informative in that department, but wiki, as usual, came to the rescue. According to this, Sangria Fresca should be out and about. I MUST find it. If you see it, buy it for me, please. I'm good for the $1.33.

And, if you happen to be traveling in Russia, Germany, Israel, the Czech Republic or Bulgaria, keep your eyes peeled for even more fruitier flavors. Grapefruit Mint...Orange Berries...Fruit for Kids (really interested to know what that is...I'm guessing fruit punch)...it's an exciting sugar-free gum world out there, and I must sample it!

God, I love Spring

This weekend was Spring-freakin-tastic. After weeks of rushing to get the house ready for the Nut Warming, Ryan and I took a weekend off to enjoy the fruits of our labor and just be. Aaaahhh. It was great. The weather was gorgeous so we spent plenty of time outside, including walking down to the Brookside Art Festival, jogging at Loose Park (love their rubberized track and hills for training), and sniffing the flowers. Here's a few pics.

First, Ryan and his dad planted these trees last winter. I didn't think they had a shot of survival, but guess who was proved wrong?





Here, we leave the Nut for the art fair. Just like a stereotypical dog, Siena loves the fire hydrants:





And here we are at the art fair. I held the beers. Ryan controlled the beast. (She looks quite poised here, but she was pretty freaked out by the crowd and the kids, so we didn't stay too long.)





Here's the obligatory, hold the camera out, hope for the best and snap shot:





Here, we're walking back from the festival and down the Trolley Trail on Wornall. It looks like Siena is actually talking (not just woof woof) to Ryan, which cracks me up.





I got my chance to walk the dog, too. Thankfully she was pretty exhausted by this point and was walking well. Good lord I'm white.

The obligatory flower close-up. Respect to Missouri's official tree:

And, here's a totally random and unrelated shot that shows how big the big dog is:

Happy Cinco de Mayo! I'm gonna go make fajitas now.

May Day

Gotta love KC in the spring time. We spent two hours last night watching the weather and listening to sirens go off. While we didn’t get hit with anything bad, many KC metro communities did, and it sucks. Not to mention that the hardest hit areas are places where my family lives – up north and in Independence. Talk about freaking a girl out this morning when I turned on the news.

The only good thing about the storms last night (and I’m making light of the situation here for sure) is that they broke Siena of her fear of the basement. She was deathly afraid of the basement. Before, we couldn’t get her to go down there on her own free will, even when we were bribing her with a hot dog (magic word training time). So, yesterday, the sirens go off and Ryan grabs the computer and phone, and I grab the 35-pound dog. The second time we have to go to the basement, little Miss Siena trots down the stairs like it’s no big deal. Seeing as she’s a cold-weather pup, I think she finally saw the benefit of chillin’ in the cool basement. Not to mention, that we didn’t have a lot to do down there, so she ended up getting a lot of undivided attention.

What a start to May. Hopefully this spring isn’t too bad tornado-wise, and this was the worst of it for KC this year. I’m just happy the Nut has a basement!