4th of July, Fishing & Birthdays!

Hi guys!! Happy belated 4th of July to you – and Happy Birthday today to me Today I am 26. Twenty…six! How the HECK did I get to be this age? I still feel like I’m 17 or something! It’s hard to believe that it’s been 8 years since I was a college freshman and it’s even harder to believe that it’s been 12 years since I was a high school freshman!! Wow – time flies when you’re having fun!!!

So, the birthday weekend activity that Ben had planned for us yesterday had to be canceled due to COLD and rainy weather!!! Yes – it was freezing here!! It was a bummer too because he was going to take me to one of my favorite places – Living History Farms!! I’ve talked about this place so many times on the blog and we were going to get to go all day yesterday. So sad… BUT, we are going to pick out a weekend in the next couple of weeks to take our “rain check” so I will get to go eventually

So, what do you do when it’s rainy, cold and grizzly out?? Go fishing!! Fish hide when it’s hot and muggy out so we thought today would be the perfect day to go. First we tried out a river location:

Me and my tackle box.

Ben getting ready to bait our hooks:

Selfie!

Aren’t we just a couple of fisherman Actually, neither of us know a darn thing about fishing. This is actually the first time I’ve been fishing outside of stocked pond!

 

Ok, well the fish weren’t biting at the first location and the river was carrying our lines way out and tangling them on the sides of the bank. So we moved on to a nearby lake!

THE FISH WE’RE BITING HERE!!!!!

OMG I cannot express to you how happy I was! I caught this baby on my second cast! The bobbin literally hit the water and went right under – it was like the bait landed straight in this fish’s mouth!!

I couldn’t stop gushing. I think Ben and I were just shocked at how quickly we caught him. Don’t worry, we let the little fish go

 

Oh.My.Gosh. Poooooor Ben’s line got all tangled up so he couldn’t cast from his pole. After multiple attempts at untangling, he just cut off the 10 feet of line that he couldn’t reel back in and and tried casting with that from his hand. On about his fifth try…he accidently let go and lost his whole line, bobbin and hook into the water Don’t worry, I let him use my pole

After about an hour, the rain clouds started coming back, so we packed up and headed to dinner at one of my favorite Italian restaurants – Bravo Cucina! Yeah, it’s a chain, but I don’t care because I like it

They give you some delicious foccacia bread and sun-dried tomato dipping oil to start off with.

For an appetizer, we got Grilled Steak Flat-Bread Pizza. This was actually less than sub-par. It was like they made a piece of flat-bread, put on some tomato sauce and cheese, then just laid some chilled steak, arugula, red onions and parm cheese down. Why would you want chilled steak on a hot flat-bread I ask you?

Although it didn’t taste amazing – it sure looked pretty!

Now, my dinner WAS amazing! I get the same thing every time I come here – Wood-Grilled Salmon Salad. This dish did not disappoint!!

It’s got mixed greens, fresh chopped tomatoes, asparagus, feta cheese, wood-grilled salmon, shoestring potatoes (insane amounts of these, actually) and an aaaaamazing Asian dressing!! The combo of flavors in the dish are just perfect!

Ben got the Chicken Piccata with Herbed Pasta. It was delicious too and had GIANT slices of portabella mushroom under the cheese. I tried it and…it wasn’t pretty for me. I just can’t do the mushroom texture!!! The rest of it was fantastic though.

After dinner we headed to the grocery store to grab a DVD from the Red Box and get some ice cream treats. We got “Taken” with Liam Neeson which was really, really good – I highly recommend! We also got some ice cream treats that I have been eyeing for like 2 years and have never picked up…until now Weight Watcher’s Cookies & Cream Giant Bar. I was wishing there were more cookies than cream, but hey – for the nutritional stats, this baby was a winner!!!

After the movie was over, we watched the fireworks at Washington DC on tv. Holy cow – they last forever!!! It is my goal to one day be there in person for those

On the agenda today:

• Grocery shopping (yep, unfortunately errands don’t wait for Birthdays!!)
• Birthday dinner at my parent’s house
• Birthday dinner at Ben’s parent’s house
• Exercise somewhere in-between!
• Reflect on what I’ve been doing for the past 26 years of my life, and what I want to do with the next 26!

I hope you all had an amazing weekend – talk to you later!!!