Hank and Layla

As most of you know, Hank is NOT welcome at the Schroeder household. Its very sad for all my Virginia friends that would love to meet him. So whenever Chris and I both go back to Va, we have to either kennel him or beg a friend to take care of him. Luckily, my friend Cassy travels as well and we watch their dog Layla and they watch Hank. Look below to see how cute they are!!

Usually, when we are watching each other's dogs, we send a picture just to let Mom know their respective dog is doing okay. This is the picture I got on Sunday just as I was telling a guy that Hank doesn't really hump things.

Our First Christmas Dinner

So Chris and I volunteered to make Christmas dinner this year using my parents house to host. I kept thinking how Chris and I will never be able to do this at our own home since we live so far away. We spent months figuring out what we wanted to make and putting together recipes. We also had to give other family members dishes to bring as well. I thought I did a good job telling people what to bring but you'll find out that we did run into some snags.

The first problem we ran into was my sister was supposed to bake a pie on Thursday night. I missed out on her pies for Thanksgiving so I really wanted one there. However, she just recently moved and couldn't find her recipe for the filling. She makes everything from scratch. So Chris and I just made two of his mom's desserts as opposed to the one we had planned. Although I can sympathize with Kat's situation, she still had to be punished. Therefore, she was given potato peeling duty. One large Costco size bag of potatoes.

After Christmas breakfast, Chris and I began prepping our dinner. Chris prepped the ham and put it in the oven. We had already made dessert the night before so we began washing lettuce, chopping onions, etc. Soon, we had nothing to do. So we went and showered and got ready for the party. At 4pm I started boiling the potatoes. I've made mashed potatoes before but never for 20 people. I had no idea how long it was going to take for the potatoes to get soft. As it turned out, I cooked them too long, but Chris managed to doctor them up and they looked normal. The family arrived as we were hitting the busy part of the night. Throwing everything together at the same time. Thankfully my mom has two ovens.

The other two little snags we ran into were the dishes that were brought to share. Chris wanted to make creamed brussel sprouts. I didn't originally think it was a good idea b/c my family doesn't really care for brussel sprouts. But Chris wanted to make something that was traditional at his holiday meals so how could I deny him this pleasure? Then my cousin, Alice, made carmelized brussel sprouts. I only gave three people directions to bring vegetable dishes and now so far we had a roasted root salad, two brussel sprout dishes, and a strawberry salad. Then my cousin Martha showed up (very late) and since she was late, she had just run by the store and gotten a container of mixed greens with an avocado. Now we have three salads and two brussel sprout dishes. I thought, oh well, it is what it is. Fortunately or unfortuanately, the creamed sprouts didn't come out very well so we bagged them and just served our meal. Here it is below.

My uncle Cy told me that when he heard we were cooking dinner, he was a little irritated. He didn't know that we knew how to cook and he thought it was going to be a disaster. He then said it was delicious. My uncle Brad said the potatoes were the highlight of the meal. My cousin Alice said that it was the best family meal we had ever had. Everyone went back for seconds. In fact, there was hardly any left over ham. I'm so happy and relieved that everyone liked it so much. And all in all, it wasn't the bad cooking the meal. We timed everything very well. The worst was cleaning up afterwards and having to hand wash all my mom's silver and crystal. Ugh!

2nd Annual Cannon IV White Elephant Party

Last night was the Cannon IV White Elephant party. It was supposed to be hosted the Drakes, however their basement flooded the night before so Jon graciously took over. Once again it was a success. Below is a picture of the whole gang with their prizes.

My favorite, of course, was the gift I received. I picked Ally's gift and received a Shirt Woot shirt of Krampus. If you don't know who Krampus is, google him. He's hilarious. Now Ally and I have matching t-shirts which we will definitely have to wear out when we go to the Vogue.

Poppyseed Chicken

Yesterday, I needed a quick, cheap recipe to make for dinner. I was hungry and poor. Thankfully, Dana came to the rescuse with her Poppyseed chicken recipe. Here's how it goes. You boil some chicken for about 10 minutes and let cool. Then shred it and line the bottom of a 9X13 pan.

Next mix a can of cream of chicken soup with one cup of sour cream. Pour over your chicken.

Spread it evenly over top, almost like you're icing a cake!

Mix 1/2 a cup of melted butter with one jacket of crushed buttery crackers (aka Ritz)



Then spread evenly over top and put in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

There you have it! It was delicious. I served it with white rice which I actually liked with it a lot better than I thought I would. Anyway, I highly recommend this recipe. You are supposed to sprinkle poppyseeds over top. Dana said she didn't think you could taste them and it was really just to make it look pretty. So I didn't buy them to save even more money. Shout out to Dana!!

Meeting Melvin

I got an e-mail last week about the Colts having a friends and family night at the pro shop in Lucas Oil Stadium. The kicker was that Melvin Bullitt would be there to sign autographs for an hour. My heart leapt! Then I realized how many times I've heard of him doing an autograph session and I didn't go. So I immediately told Chris about it b/c I know that would help solidify everything.

So Wednesday night, I got home, we had a couple drinks for some liquid courage (I know, but I was really nervous), and off we went to the stadium. I have never been to an event like this before but I also read that the first 300 people got t-shirts that say "Beat New England." I was hoping that it was going to be dead. And it was. Haha, maybe 30 people showed up for this. Yeah for us! It made me much more comfortable to ask for a photo with him.

When we first walked in, we ran into Blue, the Colts mascot. I asked for my picture but of course, we both had to fluff our hair. Don't we look cute?


Chris wanted his picture taken as well although they got a little more goofy than I did!

And here is my new favorite picture in the whole world (except the ones of me and Chris, of course). He signed a mini helmet for me but accidentally smudged part of it. Oh well, now I have his finger print. :-)

Colts/Eagles Game

Okay, Dana. I'm doing this through blog b/c that's about all I can do. Congrats on your Eagles winning. It was an ugly game, but your team came out on top. I'm so happy for you. (sweet smile)

Now that is all I will discuss about it. I don't care if the Eagles fans thought it was a bad call, it was a helmet to helmet hit which is no bueno.

When you sign on, we can talk about my gay bar experience on Saturday night. :-)

Congrats to the Godfreys!

Last Saturday, my cousin Liz finally bit the bullet and married Tracy. Chris married them and we hope they along with Trent, live happily ever after!

Goose the Market

What what?? 3rd blog today? Sorry, I've been super busy and just so excited to share everything that I'm doing! Today Chris and I decided to go to Goose the Market on 25th and Delaware for lunch. I've been DYING to try this place out for at least 2 years. They have an amazing selection of meats, seafood, cheese, and wines. Not only can you go in there and grab your dinner for that even to toss on the grill, but they make fancy sandwiches! Now I'm usually a ham, lettuce, cheese, mayo kind of a girl. I follow Goose on Twitter and am familiar with some of their crazy sandwiches so I was prepared. Here's what I ordered:

It's called Ike and its smoked ham, fontina, watercress, and whole grain mustard on a baguette. It was DELICIOUS! I almost asked them to leave off the mustard, but I decided I needed to be more open minded and try new things. They also had a small selection of vegetables in there along with a little section of special vingerettes, syrups, jellies, etc. They even had quail eggs there! I can't wait to go back one day and go down in their cellar of beers and wine to check that out!

NFL 5K

Wow, I really think I did too much last weekend! I already have two posts about events and I still have two more! And I'm not even going in order. Sorry!

Last Saturday, my friend Ally and I decided to walk in the NFL 5K. This is a new event that I thought was supporting the NFL's Play 60 program and the American Heart Association. It turns out that it was really to promote the NFL's new women's line of the NFL gear. Don't worry. I wasn't too upset. I like the idea of promoting women being fans of the NFL. It's not just a sport for boys anymore!

Here's Ally and me at the start line getting ready to go!

My parents were in town so they came down to watch us finish. It was nice to have some cheering for you at the finish line. Afterwards, we ran into the Colts Superfan. This guy is at every game and every rally. He is crazy!

Peyton, of course, came to cheer us on as well. Here is high fiving me, but I'm pretty sure he's having an affair with Ally. Look at them holding hands! How rude!

I believe the idea of this 5K started in DC and so they got Dan Snyder's and Chris Cooley's wives involved. We thought we would get our picture with them to make the Redskins' fans jealous. Did it work?

Ganassi Tour

My cousin Liz has a friend named Shelley who I have come to know over the last couple of years. Her husband is one of the chief engineers for Chip Ganassi Racing. I have mentioned several times to her how big of an IRL fan my dad is and she always said, when he's in town, bring him by for a tour. Well, I'm not a mooch and I certainly don't use people for things so I felt uncomfortable bringing it up. However, at Liz's wedding this weekend, and we had Eric, Shelley and my dad in one room. My dad was good and waited until the breakfast at my aunt's house the next morning to bring it up. Much to our surprise, they said let's go right now!

So we ditched my cousin (she did show up three hours late to her own breakfast!) and all headed up to the northwest side. The inside of the building is very impressive. I don't think we saw a speck of dirt anywhere. I was almost afraid to touch anything!

Here's Chris with the winning car!

This is inside one of the truck rigs that hauls everyone and the cars around the country.

Look at all of our trophies!

This was just one of the tables of trophies. There were at least three more! We were not allowed to take pictures inside of the garage area where they are working on the cars. But it was so cool getting to see the process from the inside. It is amazing how much of the materials they produce on their own. I'm not sure I understood about half of what Eric was saying, but it was neat seeing the pieces of the cars and how they put them together. This is what I love about the IRL, they are so accessible!

Shout out

Just wanted to give a little shout out to myself today! Have a great day Leslie!

Benjamin Harrison's Home

Yay! I crossed another item off my list! I have been wanting to go do a lot of the touristy things in Indy since I moved. However, I was always too busy or would forget about it. So my list has been helping do so many new things! My parents were in town for my cousin's wedding and so we did a little sight seeing after my 5K. We went to President Benjamin Harrison's home. It was where he would campaign from during his election years.

The whole house was beautiful and our tour guide was awesome. He was very knowledgable and knew a lot of little side stories. One of the coolest things we saw was this Reginaphone. My parents have one of these in their home that has been passed down in the family for years. I had never seen one anywhere else! It's basically the first version of a record player.


The other cool thing that we saw there was this letter from Helen Keller to First Lady Harrison. Mrs Harrison got very sick and when the country found out, letters flooded in from all over. Some were saved and years later, the museum volunteers found this one. How amazing that at the time, Helen Keller wasn't famous and yet her letter was saved for us to see!

Me hanging out with Benji on the caboose of the train.


My mom and I in front of the home.

2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Party

Well last night was our 2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. We had the Honorable Jerry Schroeder as our judge. BooBah made an appearance in his Halloween costume.



Everyone huddled around the table and started carving. For some reason, the new table cloth kept slipping. I'm going to have to do something about that.

Here are the ladies carving their pumpkins!

Zach, Justin, and Jon

Ally, me, and Kate

Pumpkins!

I wish I had a better picture of Chris'. He did an amazing job. He actually used two pumpkins and this one has hands coming out that are throwing the horns.

All in all, it was another success. Libby and Jon's pumpkins won although I failed on getting prizes. That is the problem with trying to pack a million things into one month. Although I did try a new beer called Sun King Cream Ale. It was very good, but I went straight back to my vodka!

New Recipe!

I have been keeping an eye on my list of 101 things and trying to see what else I can cram into October and check off my list. Smart? No. But I like it when things are crazy. Then at least I have an excuse as to why I'm not getting everything done. Last night, I tried a new, very simple recipe. Tomato Basil sandwiches. Yum! All you do is take a tomato, cut it in half. Then put some chopped garlic, salt and pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Then cook the tomato for an hour at 350. Take your favorite bread (the recipe actually called for a baguette, but we used ciabatta bread) and slice it. Put a couple leaves of basil, the tomato and sliced mozzarella. You're done! Enjoy your somewhat healthy sandwich. Here's the picture!


And here's a picture of Hank staring at me while I eat my sandwich. I don't know where he learned to beg.

Skins/Bears game

Wow! What a fun weekend! About 6 months ago, Heather told me that she, Stacy, and Kristen would be driving through Indy to go to the Skins/Bears game in Chicago. I checked the Colts schedule and we were on a bye. So I invited myself along.

Everyone drove up on Friday to Indy where we went to dinner at the Claddaugh. If you haven't been, I strongly recommend it and get the Monte Cristo. It's delish! Then we went back to my house for drinks and to catch a couple hours of sleep. We got up early Saturday morning and headed Chi-town. It was a nice drive. I'm sure we annoyed the hell out of anyone that is friends with all four of us on Facebook. I believe we were updating about every 30 seconds.

We got to Chicago around noon and headed straight to Niketown. The girls like to go there to stock up on Bears gear. I found a Blackhawks snow hat for Chris. :-) Here are the girls comparing their hands to Michael Jordan.




After that, we headed to Gino's East to try our first authentic Chicago style pizza. It was very good, but I'm sorry Chicago, you don't hold a light to my NY style pizza. And it takes too long to cook!

Next up was a stop at the hotel to get checked in and get our tickets for the game on Sunday. Here was the view from the girls' suite. If you look closely, just to the left of the tall buildings, is Soldier Field. :-)

Saturday night, we headed to Wrigleyville to meet up with people's various friends and/or family members at this bar called Trader Todd's. Which of course, we call Trader Joes about a million times. It was a very fun bar. Not too packed, but had enough people to make it fun. Heather tried to convince me that Reggie Bush was at the bar, but when I saw him, I told him that he was too short and his bling bling wasn't big enough. Whoops! Oh and the bouncer thought I was hot. Made me feel good, but not a chance, my friend!

For being as drunk as we were, we got home pretty early. We only made one more stop after Wrigleyville at the bar across from the hotel called Kitty O'Sheas. I think Stacy just wanted to see if she was still kicked out of that place permanently. I don't want to know.

Sunday morning, we were all up at 7:30am ready to go downstairs and grab some breakfast. We did that, came upstairs, showered, and started drinking by 9am. Good decisions made by good people. We got a nice buzz going on and headed out for the game.

Here's the view from our seats! They were pretty good even though I hate sitting in the endzone. They were in the second row and we had some awesome bears fans behind us with the cutest little boy.

Here are the actually fans of the two teams there.

And one of me and Tim, the poor guy who came on our girls trip. I think he will be spending a lot of time alone after a weekend with us!

I didn't really know who to cheer for since I don't care for either team. So I cheered for every interception (a lot), taught the Redskin fans that their punters nickname is Hunter the Punter, and I showed the Bears fans that real football fans stand up when their defense is on the field and its third down. We also threw several dance parties in our section, drank a ton of beer, made friends with everyone, and even kept a friendship going despite someone's team losing. Check out the last pic. :-) Friends forever! And I get to check another item off my list of 101 things.

FML

These are the types of conversations that I have on a daily basis:

Dana: i know. random.org is random
me: wow

Thanks Dana for the stimulating conversation!

SHOUT OUT!

5K!

One of the items on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days was to run a 5K. Kristen Dadi and Amanda Carter had really inspired me to do this. So back in July, I picked the Community Health Network 5K. As it turned out, Amanda was going to be in Chicago for business until the Friday before the race. So I suggested that she take the Megabus down to Indy and then just fly home from there. I really didn't want to run this alone and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do something together.

So we got up bright and early on Saturday morning (after the neighbors very graciously made us a pasta dinner the night before) and headed to Fort Harrison. It was FREEZING! We were so cold, but we sucked it up and headed in.


I really love when people make a big deal of hanging or displaying the American Flag. I thought this was pretty neat.

Here is us before the race. Some people were keeping warm and then shedding clothes right before each race started. Not me. I was too much of a whimp. I said, I'm running with this fleece on.

During the race, we ran most of it. We had some intervals with walking. It was a really pretty course through a neighborhood and then through the park. I felt pretty good the whole time. Don't get me wrong. If Amanda hadn't been there, I definitely would have walked the majority of the time. But we crossed the finish line running and high fiving each other. I did feel a little silly b/c as we were approaching the finish line, I couldn't help but smile. I'm not a runner AT ALL. Never have been, but it felt really good accomplishing a goal. And the neighbors said I looked super skinny after the race. :-)

Big thanks and shout out to Amanda for coming out to Indy and doing this with me. I really appreciated it and couldn't have done it without you!