ACL 2011

Hi friends!

Since I just started back blogging, I wanted to share about the most incredible experience Andrew and I had a couple of weekends ago...

ACL Music Fest is a music festival in Austin that takes place at Zilker Park. Zilker Park happenes to be 1 mile from my front door-which is pretty cool. So we live in a pretty great location for ACL. Well, ACL is pretty expensive. I think tickets for all 3 days were somewhere around $150.00. Which is really not all that expensive, but for Andrew and me-that's over $300.00 plus any food and drink costs (a beer was $7.00-and not special beer. Bud light...). So we had resolved that we weren't going to get to go this year. I was super bummed because one of the headliners was Coldplay. I have told Andrew that 3 bands I want to see most in concert are: U2 (saw them in Dallas in 2005), Dave Matthews Band (saw them at ACL in 2009) and Coldplay. They were going to be so close, I just HAD to see them. But alas, it wasn't in our budget. WELL, in June, one of my old youth kids turned great friend of mine, Christa Scholtz, told me she was coming for ACL and her dad would have two extra 3 day passes for me and Andrew! Woo-hoo! We were so excited. So when ACL acturally rolled around and Christa gave us our passes, she also had another special pass for us. It was an AMD pass. Now the AMD pass is kind of like gold. There are like 6 or so stages at ACL and of the 2 biggest stages where the headliners play, one of them is the AMD stage. With these passes, we could come and go in the private AMD area as we please. This private area has shaded areas, lots of seating, huge screens with live ACL shows streaming on them and the best part, free all you can drink tea, water, beer, wine and snow cones-and free meals catered by central market. It was heaven. But the BEST part was this-you can also get to the side stage of all of the shows on the AMD stage with these passes. But, if you have these:

Sweet Christa and I with our super sweet VIP passes!

you can go straight to the front of the line for back stage or side stage of the show!

These are the stairs leading to the side stage of the amd stage!!!

So Christa tells us we have side stage for Bright Eyes (I had never heard of them, but they are great), Iron and Wine, Ryan Bingham and best of all COLDPLAY! Here is a pic of what its like to be side stage for a show!

Here is my view of Coldplay. Yes, that is Chris Martin doing a backwards roll. Rock stars...

Anyway, backing up a bit to our first side stage experience was for Bright eyes and as we were up there we noticed that there was a camera crew filming someone. As we looked a bit longer, we realized it was CHRISTIAN BALE! Of course I screamed at him until he looked at me. Then we waved at each other. It was kind of a big deal. Whats even better is we saw him everyday and he and I exchanged waves all 3days. We are kind of friends...

Here is a stalker pic I took of Christian, my new buddy.

Anyway, back to our side stage Coldplay experience. We were literally RIGHT THERE for the whole show. Not only did I get to see the show, but when you are on the side stage, you feel like a PART of the show. Andrew and I were just so happy. Amazing that we got to walk to a music festival a mile from our house, amazing that we got free tickets, amazing we got VIP passes and free food and drinks, amazing that we got side stage, amazing we saw Christian Bale and Coldplay-but best- we got to experience all of this TOGETHER! That's the MOST amazing! We literally will tell our kids about this incredible experience!

And, I'm back

Hi friends!

I know it has been a long while since my last blog-since the end of may- to be exact. I took the summer off from blogging. But now I am back and ready to go! A quick update on my summer...

I had a great summer. Super fun, lots of outside water activities, a great week at Fun in the Son (the conference I work for), a wonderful week in Lubbock with family and an amazing time at my 10 year reunion. But, I also just stopped taking care of myself. I didn't exercise regularly, I ate whatever I wanted, I was lazy. So while my summer was fun and good, it was not my best. I didn't really figure out how bad it was until I saw a picture of myself. I could NOT BELIEVE that was me!! So I just faced reality. I went back to weight watchers 3 weeks ago. I have just flipped my switch. I've started making decisions to live in a way that not only makes me feel better, but glorifies God. So, I am back. I have lost 4.2 lbs since re-joining weight watchers. I really like my meeting leader and I am just really feeling refreshed.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you guys a GREAT meal I have been eating lately that is SOOOO good and is healthy and it satisfies one of my main cravings-Buffalo chicken!!! I love buffalo chicken (but not wings-I hate bones. gross.) My favorites are from Cheddars-especially this meal they have called their buffalo chicken wrapper. Chicken strips covered in buffalo sauce, then put in a tortilla with shredded cheese, pickles, slaw and covered in ranch. I literally am salivating typing about it. BUT, I found a HEALTHY weight watchers friendly version of this and here it is:

I purchase some pre-cooked grilled chicken breasts from central market or HEB. I can get them cheap and they are already fully cooked and seasoned. Easy. Cut up one breast and heat it in the microwave for 2 minutes or so. I place it on a flatout tortilla/flatbread. Flatouts are these great super low calorie and high fiber tortillas( http://www.flatoutbread.com/). I use them for EVERYTHING. Great for fajitas, sandwich wraps, breakfast tacos, pizzas-great. Then I use franks buffalo style hot sauce for my buffalo sauce. It is 5 calories per table spoon. So you can be pretty generous with it. I will warn you, its hot. But amazing. Then I use 1 table spoon hidden valley light ranch (I hate fat free ranch. Tastes like glue to me-but the light is good and way less calories and fat than regular) Then I chop up some dill pickles and wrap it up. To me, it tastes just like-if not better than the cheddars original. And, its only 8 points on Weight watchers for the huge wrap. I have a great salad and a few baked crinkle fries (15 for 3 points!). Its an amazing swap and it good for you too!

Excited to be back blogging!!!