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.

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!

The Nut Warming

On Saturday, Ryan and welcomed our respective families to the Nut for our belated house warming party. Everyone got along, mingled and generally made merry, drinking sangria and feasting on Waldo Pizza.

Inside the house, people congregated around the food (devouring my black bean brownies and pumpkin muffins without knowing they were low-fat, mwahahaha!), and Ryan and I gave everyone a tour of house, noting what we had changed/renovated. I even created a nifty slide show that we displayed on the TV screen so that people could see before-and-after shots of the Nut and photos of us working on the house.

Here's everyone in the dining room:



Here's Nana and Pa outside. They were both in a jolly mood:


Here's Siena* with my grandma and my future cousin-in-law Brandi. Siena is shaking for pizza. I'm telling you, the dog has delusions of grandeur.


Here Siena realizes that she's not getting a bite of pizza. Sad.


But, don't feel too sorry for her. She got plenty of food from people dropping crumbs and received a ridiculous amount of attention, including endless rounds of fetch that left her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth. Here's one of those rounds:


The weather was beautiful Saturday, and I took a couple of minutes away from the party to take some pictures of the neighbor's lilac tree (without their permission of course). Our neighbor's yard is seriously a page out of Better Homes and Gardens. It's awesome, but, at times, makes me feel entirely inadequate. On a side note, Ryan* is getting sick of my flower pictures. With this spring being so bloom-alicious, I admit that I've gone a bit overboard. (I've taken like 40 shots of our potted plants in a week.) Despite my apparent obsession, I'm sharing this one. Sorry, babe:




And it just isn't spring without a toes in flip flops in the grass pic. (Plus, I'd just painted my toenails.)

Later in the day, the fam headed out, Ryan and I cleaned like Tasmanian devils, and the friends started arriving for the second round of the house warming. Here is Adam enjoying Ryan's home brew, aptly (and somewhat grossly) titled Ryan's Red Nut. I like to think that Jen's reaction below is in disgust of the beer's name.

Here, Siena participates in/disrupts another rousing game of backyard croquet.

That evening, Ryan and I both went to bed pretty late. I crashed at 12:30 am, and he called it a night at 2 am. After enjoying four glasses of sangria and little sleep, I awoke Sunday morning with a decent headache, but Ryan and I stayed true to our word and walked over to 75th and Wornall for the 7:45 am start of the Trolley Run. Heh. More on that later.

*On the day of the housewarming, two other events were being celebrated: Siena's six-month birthday and Ryan and I's six-month wedding anniversary. Woohoo!

Happy Belated Earth Day

I ended up taking Tuesday afternoon off and enjoying myself a beautiful Earth Day. In celebration, I went to Sutherlands and bought $60 worth of flowers and pots to perdy up our porch. (I had originally intended to put some out back, but after learning #2 in the post below, I thought better of it.) Here are the fruits of my labor:


Earl left this little stand that I believe used to go with a picnic table that was at the house when we first looked at it last June. Instead of it just taking up space in our garage, I decided to make it a plant stand. Quaint, eh?


I love the color combination of the red pot and the purple pansies (I really need to learn more about flowers, I'm guessing that it's a pansy based on the flowers I learned how to make in my cake decorating class.)

The flowers give me a fantastic reason to use this beautiful watering can that Tish's mom got me at my wedding shower:

Here's one of the Gerber daisies (I know that name cause I used them in the wedding!) before watering:

And, after:

Happy belated Earth Day to all! Go sniff a flower!

Back from the Big Apple

I blame travel for my recent hiatus from blogging. Darn work. Darn New York City. Darn fun (occasionally). Besides spotting the spry Seth Green ("Family Guy," "Austin Powers," redhead, etc.) at Comic Con (cah-razy), the trip was fairly tame. Days on the trade show floor and in seminars and the evenings sharing a room with my boss. However, I was able to see the Broadway musical "Curtains," starring the hilarious David Hyde Pierce (aka Niles on "Frasier) and spent a rushed two hours at the Met. I could have spent hours at the Met. Below are some of the highlights from the rooms I happened upon.

Warhol's interpretation of Elizabeth Taylor and Campbell's:


I LOVE me some Van Gogh:



And it turns out Van Gogh was obsessed with cypress trees, which I have been ever since I went to Italy. I think if Van Gogh was still around, we'd be best buds...except for that whole going crazy, cutting an ear off thing. That might be an issue...



I took this one for Tish and Erin. The woman in the statue is obviously celebrating KU's title.



After my trip, I came home to the husband, the pup, some beautiful KC weather and friends. Although I was a bit of a zombie from lack of sleep on Saturday night (we hit up Carmen's where I proceeded to drink a lot of wine and decided it was perfectly acceptable to stay up until 2 am), on Sunday I managed to get some things done around the Nut and take some photos of Ryan and Mike playing croquet. Yes, we roll like that.

Siena enjoyed the weather, too:

See? That's a happy dog.

And here she is disrupting the game entirely:

After one round of croquet, the boys called it quits, and we ran the dog until her tongue hung outside the side of her mouth. Here's her and Katrina playing fetch:

More blogs and photos from this week coming sooner rather than later (including a post on my Earth Day celebration, wheeeee)!

Freezin at the K, Part 2

You saw it in video. Now, here it is in photos. Because it snowed at a Royals game in mid-APRIL, I feel as though this event must be cemented in PH Balanced blog history (despite the fact that I don't actually have photos of the snow. I tried but you can't actually tell it was snowing.)

First, we arrive at the stadium. Each of us has at least 3 shirts on plus a coat and long johns under our jeans.



I spiked my coffee. Can you tell?



On the day of the game, Ryan's firm gave Ryan the company seats, so Sarv attempted to sell the tickets we had bought two weeks prior to the game. Because of the weather, we didn't have much luck. We ended up selling them to another scalper for $12 total, which is about $60 below ticket value. But, it was buck night so that equaled a hot dog fund of 12. Awesome.



The good ole days. #5!



Cold and losing but happy.



Slugger takes the stage.



Sarv caught a hot dog! [Insert any obvious hot dog joke here.]

Crown vision, baby. Billy Butler, yo!

Despite Billy's best efforts. We're losing and still cold. Sad face.

But hey, if we relied on the Royals winning to be happy, the entire population of KC would have been depressed for the last 23 years, so, smile Sarv!

Freezin at the K, Part 1

Ryan, Sarv and Adam and I bundled up and went to the Royals last night. Despite a Royals loss, being surrounded by Twins fans and even a bit of snow (yes, snow), we had a blast. Here's video from the event.

Happy Twinkies:

Watch the game:

Give me a hot dog, Slugger:

Hot dog derby:

Just grillin'

Here are the pics from the impromptu grill out last Sunday. As you can see below, the weather was beautiful, and I spotted some more sights of Spring:



I'm such a sucker for close-ups:


Now begins Siena's first experience with a grill. At first, she was puzzled. What is this thing that billows smoke and feels hot but smells like meats?

Going in for a closer sniff:

Back to contemplating the Weber:

Siena's token "Orphan Annie" face. Can I puh-leaze have a brat?

Impromptu Fabulousness

I seriously had the best, most relaxing weekend. We only had a few things really planned and the rest of the weekend just unfolded awesomely. Friday night we hit up an open house at our friend's new design firm. The place was swanky and the food was delicious. (Not to mention that our friend had brewed some tasty beer for the event.) If you're looking to get some graphic work done, Lagom Designs in the place to go!

Saturday afternoon we drove about 30 miles south to "the farm." My friends Alli and Gabe have the sweetest country set-up. With a beautiful home, land, a pond, a barn and a bunch of animals (3 dogs and 2 cats, plus lots of other visitors, including goats, more dogs, horses and cows from their neighbors' land), there's always something interesting going on. We spent the afternoon, chatting it up, enjoying the nice weather and feasting on bbq and margaritas. Can't beat a Saturday afternoon like that.

Here's a few shots of their nanimals:

Of course, Ryan and I brought Siena along to enjoy the country with us. After a couple of hours of playing/tormenting Alli and Gabe's dogs, Alli decided to see how Siena would do with some agility exercises. First, Alli and her dog Cheyenne showed us how it was done, easily jumping over and through an obstacle course. Next it was Siena's turn. Although I wouldn't characterize Siena's attempts as particularly graceful, she did catch on pretty quickly.

Look how long her legs are getting:



She's becoming quite the jumper. Check out that look of determination:

The boys, neighbor dog Buddy and Cheyenee watch on:




Next, Siena and Alli tackle the hoop. Cheyenne gives Siena advice:




It's amazing how focused Siena can be when there's turkey given as a reward:


Finally, success!


After our excursion to the country, we returned back to "the big city." Siena was quite pooped and decided to rest in her backyard spot of choice:


Later that night, we watched KU destroy UNC and then had friends over to play some Wii and drink some Keystone Light. I NEVER drink beer--especially beer like Keystone Light--but I managed to drink three of them, and I kind of enjoyed it. (Must have been a total mood thing. I don't think you could get me to drink three of them again.)

Sunday, Ryan and I watched the Royals win, cleaned the house like a mo-fo and then randomly decided to grill out with some friends. (I'll have to post more pics of this later. It was Siena's first encounter with the grill, and it was pretty funny.)

The whole weekend was just so relaxing. I've always said that fall is my favorite month, but spring is giving it a run for its money this year. There's really nothing better than being outside and enjoying sunshine and warmth after a horrendous winter. Plus, it's really fun to see Siena experience spring for the first time. So many new plants to destroy!