#LiAR Throws a Party

#LiAR Throws a Party

Pretty sure in a recent post we mentioned that this entire year is just flying by for both of us!  Not only have we been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our babies (except now Teal’s is here!!), but we’ve also had quite a few friends also having their own major life events.  One of said friends is our dear friend, Bitner.  Now you’ve seen him before in race recaps because he’s also a runner and we’ve gone out to races with him (for example, Tour des Fleurs 2011, Rock n Roll San Antonio 2011, White Rock Marathon 2011, Tour des Fleurs 2012, Tour des Fleurs 2013 and some others that haven’t been documented on the blog).

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Bitner and his partner were tying the knot and he had asked both of us to be Bridesmaids in his wedding, so we decided we needed to throw him a proper wedding shower before the big day.  Sadly Teal’s due date and Bitner’s wedding date ended up being within two days of each other so she would no longer be in the wedding 🙁 , but this was a great way to still be apart of the festivities for her.

We like to think we throw a darn good party and we kicked it off by Beth’s sister, Kate, designing us the perfect custom wedding shower invitation.  This is the part of the blog where we say WE LOVE KATE!! No, really we do! She’s such a talented graphic designer and can custom make pretty much anything!  If you are ever looking for invitations, announcements, cards, cupcake toppers, signs, water bottle labels, etc. Kate’s Etsy shop is where you need to go! Just look at this beautiful invite that is now apart of her etsy shop!

ignore that we cut off the bottom so the address is removed and added a copyright

ignore that we cut off the bottom so the address is removed and added a copyright

We went with gold & silver for the colors since that’s what the wedding colors are.  They’re just such classic colors – you can’t go wrong and obviously, Bitner did not!  Since everyone loves a good brunch we figured we would center the theme around that and also to make serving mimosas acceptable.  Although these days amongst this group of friends we pretty much think any celebration calls for mimosas. 🙂 Are we really that far off?

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You might have already noticed but we opted to make a little photo booth for the shower too full of props and a cute background with a burlap love sign. Whoever it was that first thought up the idea of photobooths full of props at events such as these was a genius! They just add to the fun!  Just a little bit of the fun –

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All in all it was a very fun day!  We loved getting to honor and celebrate Bitner and his upcoming wedding. Bitner received so many gifts that centered around hosting his own party at his house we debated just heading straight there to continue the festivities for the day. 😉

We would tell you, Steven & Chaz, that we wish you a lifetime of happiness, but we in fact know you have a lifetime of happiness together in store.  We love you guys!

The Happiest Race on Earth Weekend [Part One]

Our labor day weekend slash Disneyland Half weekend started out with the two of us not getting to sit together on our flight out to Orange County. 🙁 You might remember from previous posts that Teal isn’t the biggest fan of flying, but as you can tell we made it there in one piece! Hooray!

Thanks to Beth’s friend Chris for picking us up from the airport and then grilling up a delicious meal for us. Once Saturday morning rolled around we were texting each other from our rooms to see if it was time for us to make our first trip to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Ha!

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We should probably mention what ridiculous creatures of habit we are – Teal definitely brought a snack bag on the trip. We were both prepared with single servings of Shakeology and Beth brought servings of oatmeal for breakfast each day. Don’t worry we also made a trip to the grocery store for almond milk, fruit and nail polish remover. We told you we have an obsession! We did paint our fingernails twice while on this trip. 🙂

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Later that day Chris took us to The Habit for lunch. Tasty salads and we love trying places that we don’t have in Texas! We did make it to a beach for about two minutes that afternoon too.

Then it was expo time! This year we didn’t really spend that much time here.  We, of course, got our bibs. We got our Coast to Coast Challenge wristbands! Eeeee!!

We got our race shirts.

And then we HAD to have a pic or two with the finish line.  You know just in case we didn’t actually make it across the next day! 😉  Chris also had some fun at the finish line too.

Shortly after that we were off to meet LISA!!!  Or as you might know her on the twitterverse – @runlikeacoyote.  We all decided to meet up at the Irvine Spectrum and hung out over dinner at the Yard House.  Lisa, thank you again SO much for treating us to dinner! That was so sweet of you!  It was so great to finally get to meet Lisa!  She is an incredible running inspiration and we love following along in all of her running adventures.  We are forever grateful to her for all of her support of us as well! Such an encouraging woman!  We are lucky to know for sure!

After that it was off to bed since our half marathon had a 5:45 a.m. start time.  Thankfully we were still on Texas time so we were both ready for bed pretty much immediately after getting back to Chris’ house.  We had to keep reminding ourselves when it was 8pm it was OK that we were tired and ready to sleep because it was getting late in Texas especially when you include all of our early mornings leading up to and during the weekend.

You will have to wait for our race recap until tomorrow! 🙂 [we don’t wanna make you read such a looooooong post – thank us later ;)]

After the race our friend Monica took us out for brunch at El Torito.  Let us just say, a brunch that includes sparkling wine is a brunch you can never go wrong with, or at least in our books!  It was the perfect celebration to completing our 13th half marathon.  Then Monica arranged for us to all drink some wine with Claire much like we had done this time last year.

We had a ton of fun hanging out with you, Monica & Claire! Thank you for sharing some fabulous wine with us!  There is never a dull moment with these fun ladies!

And with that our weekend was pretty much over! 🙁  It went by so fast and was full of so much fun we both will probably be recovering from it for a few days!

We got to sit together on the plane ride back!  We made our seatmate’s day by telling her she could have the window seat we wanted to sit next to each other instead of having her in the middle of us. 🙂

Check back with us tomorrow for our full race report! We hope all of you had a fun and safe holiday weekend!