Super Failures and Great Successes

This weekend was a mish-mash of good and bad.

Saturday Marc was able to play with his new lighting equipment and took some absolutely wonderful pictures of Vince. He watched Vince for a little bit while I went with a friend to do some community service.

I don't know if it's really considered community service when it involves hugging puppies, but either way the Southeastern Guide Dogs need people to come in and play with their puppies to help socialize them. They're a wonderful organization training and providing service dogs to the visually-impaired as well as veterans. You can read more about their mission and training here.

So we visited the puppies and then walked an older dog around the property a bit. It was a lovely morning.

Sunday we went to visit my parents and get in some geocaching. I had laid out four cache points that would be along the way. We only stopped at three locations and didn't find ANY! It was a complete failure in terms of finding the boxes. Clearly someone came by and moved them all before we got there...or that's what we're telling ourselves.


This week I'm hoping to try out some really neat recipes. I'm working on using meat that we have in our freezer instead of going and buying new stuff, which always brings out the creativity.

How did your weekend go? Did you watch the Super Bowl? Congratulations to all the Giants fan!

Our Weekend

This weekend was definitely a busy one, but it was full of wonderful things.

Saturday we did some errands and then had the honor of attending a friend's wedding. It was absolutely wonderful to see them get married and they were so happy. I really do adore weddings. The food was fantastic as well. Marc was so wonderful, he gave all of his broccoli to me. :)

Sunday we spent a lot of time recovering. We hadn't stayed up that late in a LONG time. Thankfully Vince was down with having a very sleepy, very chill day too.

We did do some geocaching at the Tampa Electric Company (TECO)'s Manatee Viewing Center. Every winter manatees move to warmer waters to avoid catching a chill. Because the electric company is right on the water it heats the water attracting the manatees. TECO then built a boardwalk where you can go and watch the manatees. Cool, huh? Well, it was a gorgeous day and insanely busy, so we didn't get any good pictures of the manatees. Here are a few snippets from the day:

Vince all strapped in and ready to go adventuring!

At TECO

The geocache

We visited a favorite recipe that's been highlighted on here before: Blackened Chicken with Guacamole This time we subbed out the white rice for brown. We had leftovers so I re-heated some and wrapped it up in a tortilla. There's enough to have some more for lunch tomorrow - which means this was a 4 time meal making it tasty and cheap! Hooray!

I gave myself 5 points for plating this good!

So overall it was a pretty exercise light weekend. I'm kinda ok with that though. We needed the break mentally. 

What did you do for the weekend? Anything exciting happen?

Weekend Adventure: Geocaching

The weather has finally cooled down in the lovely state of Florida (read: we finally made it to the mid-60s). I've been bugging Marc to go out to Bok Tower to walk through the gardens and have a nice day outside for a while.

When I saw on their website that they had 3 geocaches I knew the plan was a go.

We had gone geocaching on our trip to Tahoe last winter (You can read more about that adventure here). Ever since we've wanted to go again but never got around to it. This time we were ready. 

The first geocache. Can you spot it? I nearly missed it and I had written instructions for it. I'll give you a hint: left side, near the logs. :)

Vince watching Marc open up the box. Vince handled the off-roading excursion very well. He even slept through part of it.

Inside was a buckeye along with a letter about what buckeyes are!

I'm pretty terrible at spotting them, so we had to take a picture of the one I did find!

Our ducky!

During the vacation in California, we found a small rubber ducky in one of the geocaches. Shortly after we returned home, the cousins we vacationed with put a trackable onto the rubber duck with a goal of getting it to us in Florida. (A trackable is an item inside a geocache that has a tracking code. You can log onto geocaching.com, input the code and see where the item has previously been and is currently located.) We bought a tracking tag and put it on this ducky. His goal is to reach them in California! Check up on the ducks using codes: TB41ZNR and TB41342 respectively.

It was a lot of fun. We spent about 2 and a half hours actively hiking about and as you can see, it wasn't exactly an easily paved road:

We are looking at going out again this coming weekend for another geocaching adventure. Most of the calculators I've utilized estimate I burn 1,100 calories. That's incredible in my mind and if I am able to couple that with more walks during the week, it's an excellent push towards healthier living.

The boys taking a well deserved break.

Do you take adventures? What's the most fun you've had while exercising at the same time?

California Adventures

Whoa! What an adventure! That is the only way to describe the past five days we've spent out at Lake Tahoe and briefly in San Francisco. We left Friday morning at an hour no one should know exists and arrived back into the Tampa Bay area late last night.

Marc's cousin Brian picked us up from the airport and we went over to his apartment so he could finish packing and so we could catch up with his lovely wife Iris. We stopped by this incredible burrito place, Papalote (http://www.papalote-sf.com/). This place was so good, it has been on Throwdown! With Bobby Flay...and they won (Food Network, February 2010). I have no doubt that this was not on our “diet”anywhere. But it tasted amazing. Then Brian and Iris kindly took us over the Golden Gate Bridge, simply because we asked. It's a pretty neat and they're pretty awesome.

^Brian and Iris

Afterward we drove up to South Lake Tahoe and did some grocery shopping. Brian's cousin (on the other side of the family – get a marker...I'll draw you a flow chart) Si Si met us at the cabin we rented. Iris made some pasta with snazzy sauce (jarred sauce with some seasonings) and then we settled in.

The next day was suppose to be skiing/snowboarding at Kirkwood, however, they didn't rent ski suit clothing and Marc and I didn't particularly feel like investing in the clothing and then finding out we hate the sport. Brian's friend Rodrigo also met us up there, so Marc and I drove back into Tahoe. We were able to snap some good pictures on the way home and get a closer look at people ice fishing. Marc and I brought the spice rub for the blackened chicken with us, so that was cooked that night. (Recipe forthcoming...I promise!) Rodrigo's wife made some amazing organic oatmeal. I'm currently waiting on the recipe for that one and can't wait to make it here. It was nothing like the “traditional” oatmeal that you heat up and whatnot.

^Kirkwood

^Kirkwood

Sunday was a quiet day. We attempted to do some hiking but found the snow deeper than anticipated. I would say it was approximately thigh deep based on falling into some: We got some nice pictures on Emerald Bay (part of Lake Tahoe – Google it if your curious, otherwise here are some of the pictures).

^Emerald Bay

^Lake Tahoe

^Thigh Deep in Snow

We did find a paved path that led down to the lake, so we went for a hike that way. It was really weird to be on the beach with snow at the same time. We also found random people hanging out, lounging on the beach that were really nice. 

^The water was incredibly clean

Monday was the real adventure. We went over to Northstar and went snow-shoeing. Thankfully snowshoes have been modernized past the tennis racquet looking things. So, snow-shoeing. It's winter hiking, but you strap these shoes to your feet in order to disperse your weight and not sink the snow. It also helps get to areas that would otherwise be inaccessible. On top of this, we went geo-caching. It's basically a high-tech scavenger hunt using a GPS. You enter in coordinates and then go find a box full of trinkets. You take a trinket and leave one. It wasn't an easy trek. We were high up (thin air) and it was super dry; two things that you won't find in Florida. At some point we managed to climb over a hill that had a, “Danger Keep Out” sign on the other side. Oops.

Some of our expedition:

^ Our intrepid adventurers

(L-R) Marc, Nicki, Iris, Brian and Sisi

^Opening a geocache

^We were pretty hardcore

On top of all of this, according to the Self.com calculator we burnt approximately 1,680 calories over a three hour span. Woooo! Overall, it was an amazing vacation. It was a great combination of relaxation and adventure.