the oscars

Last night were the Oscars! Since I was in middle school my family and I would watch it together and bet a quarter per category. To make it even more awesome my mom would make this amazing dinner with appetizers, dessert, the whole thing, and it was all themed with the movies up for that year. Once everyone started moving away, we decided to put $5 in the pot, and winner would take all. My family is pretty hard core about it and we all do our research. My mom goes a little more hardcore and creates a spreadsheet where she puts the winners from all of the award shows leading up to the big night. I don't go to that extreme, but I do read Entertainment Weekly, read the blogs, and keep up with the other award shows. 

Since I now have an awesome group of friends I knew I had to invite them all over and throw a party, themed food and all! I knew my friends wouldn't be as hardcore as my family, and it made me laugh when Katie texted me and told me her boyfriend said, "I don't know what the Oscars are but it sounds like a good time." It got even better when they came over and we were all talking about all the different award shows, and what they give awards for when someone, I think Katie asked what the Oscars were, and then what the Academy Awards were. A totally legitimate question, but with my insane families background with it, it made me laugh. I love my ridiculous friends.

So in preparation I started planning my menu about 2 weeks before, and thinking about what kind of decorations I might want that would be fun and not too corny. After lots of searching for the right recipes, and asking friends to help out on a few things, I was ready. First things first, I had to make labels for everything so people knew what they were eating and what it went with. I used my many corks to hold up the movie titles, and food labels. 

I set up the betting near the door. There were 12 people, including myself, and 9 bet which brought the pot to $45 for the winner. We already said everyone had to have their ballots set before the first award so I had mine ready to go before everyone got there. My family and I sometimes will change guesses at the last minute, but I knew with my friends they would call shenanigans immediately so I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

I had a bucket on the floor for wine and champagne, and then on the bar we had red wine, water, and of course little paper umbrellas for The Descendants. (It's set in Hawaii.)

There were several appetizers while I finished everything up. I had fresh popped popcorn and caramel corn with little dragon prizes. (Popcorn: Moneyball, dragon crackerjack prizes: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

"Parisian" cheese and crackers for Midnight in Paris. (Thanks Alli!)

Here is the dinner spread all laid out.

Zucchini, onion, avocado and tomato salad: The Tree of Life

Hotdogs with bacon onion marmalade and spicy mustard: Moneyball and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (The second is set in New York)

Minny's Oven Fried Chicken: The Help

The desserts! There were Hugo's Favorite Pasteries (eclairs and croissants, thanks Sara!): Hugo; Minny and Clooney's Chocolate Coconut Pie: The Help and The Descendants (no, I didn't poop in the pie)

Black and White Cookies: The Artist (Thanks Emily!), and behind that, Extremely Loud Pop Rocks: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Michael, my brother in law's idea. He also wanted us to eat silent food for The Artist, like pudding and stuff. Thanks Larry for the pop rocks!)

In the end I kicked everyone's ass, including my family's ass! I don't think I've ever done so well. I think it was because I couldn't change anything last minute. I won a total of $65 from the two pots I was in. Here is the awesome winning ballot and my winnings. I missed best actor and actress and I still won with 19!!

After planning for 2 weeks and cooking for 2 days, it was an awesome night! I love my friends, I love entertaining and cooking for everyone, and I especially love taking their money! Who's ready for next year?

upcoming races

I think I have a problem. I can't stop signing up for races. When there is a medal involved it's even more enticing! I am doing the Cap 10k on March 25th which I am really excited about! Part of my excitement is because I will be running down, and not up, that awful hill from my first half marathon. You know, the one that those idiots put at mile 12. It's also a race that I have heard about ever since moving to Austin 10 years ago. Now that I am a runner I will be joining in on the fun for their 35th anniversary race. Several of my girlfriends will be running in it as well which always makes it more fun. 

I'm also running a new race called the 10/20. It's a 10 mile race with bands every half mile. And the band at the finish line? Everclear! 

Who even knew they were still together and performing?! It's a flat course that will cover part of the 3M half marathon course I ran in a month ago. 

Two weekends later is the Run to the Sun! Last year was the first year of this 95+ mile relay from Mount Bonnell to Enchanted Rock. Without a doubt it was probably one of the most fun, insane 24 hours I have had in a long time. I mean who doesn't want to run in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere while your team yells at you and throws rock hard kolaches at you? I still periodically watch the video Larry made with my pictures and his videos. I am SO excited to do it again!!! Even more exciting is so many people from our school heard how amazing it was and now we have 2 groups from school running. Who knows what it's going to look like. I want us to just get a big school bus to drive around in. I guess we will find out. If you can, please click here and visit my fundraising page and help my team raise as much money as possible. 

I'm already thinking about what races I can run this summer. Maybe this summer will be my chance to do a race outside of Texas. I'm thinking California or Seattle would be really fun and pretty. Who knows, I'm just excited thinking about the possibility!!

conferences

Spring conferences are student led which are awesome because the kids get to talk to their parents and tell them everything they've been learning, the parents feel like they get a real sense for what their kids have learned, and how deep our learning is, and they finish before lunch. I love eavesdropping on the kids while they're talking to their parents to hear how they explain different things. One kid that cracks me up kept telling her parents, "Focus guys, you need to be serious." Her parents were really cracking me up with some of the things they were saying to her and asking her about her work. If I hadn't known better I would've said they were drunk. 

Another mom decided to call me out on my incorrect use of an apostrophe and said, "You should cover that up because my son is doing it now." Seriously? I can guarantee you he has never even paid attention to the sign with the apostrophe on it. She then gave me a lesson on apostrophes. Yeah right like I'm covering it up. I will leave it up even longer now thank you very much.

The best? One of the moms pulled me aside and told me about her son getting me chocolate for Valentine's Day. They all know I can't have dairy or gluten, and they know I love dark chocolate because it's yummy and doesn't have milk in it. So for Valentine's Day she said he was very insistent on getting me dark chocolate so they went to Central Market. She said they were there for over 30 minutes while he tried finding the perfect dark chocolate. When he finally picked out the right one he said it wasn't Valentine's-y enough so he made her buy me cookies with hearts on it even though he said I couldn't eat it. I don't think I've ever had someone take over 30 minutes just to pick out chocolate for me. How sweet!

the color run

This past Sunday I ran in The Color Run with my friends Katie, Sara, and Sheri. I was super pumped about it after having looked at the website and seeing all of the pictures. At every 1k there are people throwing powdered "paint" at you, and then at the finish line you get a color bag and everyone throws their color up for an explosion of colors. 

Well it rained Saturday night which wouldn't normally be a problem, except the course was an off road, grassy course. It turned out that we basically ran through giant water puddles (Sheri landed it one that went up to her knee! I had a hard time breathing I was laughing so hard.), and a huge mud pit. We were slipping and sliding while our shoes filled with water and mud. By the end it felt like I was running with 10 pounds of mud on my shoes. It also didn't help that after a week of 60-70 degree weather it was in the 40's with an insane amount of wind. Well, I don't have a white long sleeved shirt, so I wore a white tank top. It was miserably cold! But it would be worth it, right?

Trying to stay warm.

So the race starts, 30 minutes late, and we were off! Derrick, Katie's boyfriend was nice enough to take pictures of us running.

The first stop was green, then yellow, purple, and pink. There were supposed to be 5 color stops, but because of the rain and insane amount of mud the trucks couldn't get to one of the spots where the color needed to be.

Running to the finish with Sheri.

We didn't want to wait for the giant color explosion with the group because it was cold, so we had our own group explosion!

Katie and I then started having our own dance party. The DJ at the race had some pretty fun music.

Please make note of our shoes. And that was after we knocked as much mud off as we could.

I took a picture of what I looked like after the run and group explosion. (I had to wash my face 3 times, once rubbing the loofah all over, and shampoo my hair twice. I still had pink spots in my hair that didn't wash out.)

After all the complaining we did, it was totally worth it just for the pictures! I will probably do it again next year and make sure to bring Derrick along with us!

100th day of school

I saw an awesome project for the 100th day of school, and knew immediately that I would have to start celebrating the 100th day! (We don't usually celebrate it in 2nd grade.) After getting buttons from my Aunt, my grandma only wanted me to "borrow" her thousands of buttons she doesn't use, I had parents bring in old fabric, wallpaper samples, cloth, etc., and we were ready! After we made portraits of ourselves of what we would look like at 100, we wrote about who we thought we would be then. There were some hilarious things! One kid said they would visit their parents (I'm guessing who would be around 130 years old) "every half month." 

Enjoy my new favorite portrait project! (Although let's be honest, our beginning of year portraits will never be beat.)

The 2 writings I posted were the funniest of the bunch. I can't wait for next year's 100th day!