Week End Wrap-Up (#5)

Hey y’all! I’m linking up with HoHo Runs and MissSippiPiddlin again this week for the Weekly Wrap.

This weekend was all about celebrating Daniel’s birthday!

Anyone else have a birthday close to Christmas? I learned fairly early on in our relationship that it was of the utmost importance to differentiate between the birthday and the Christmas celebrations, especially with the gifts. Never, ever wrap a birthday gift in Christmas wrapping paper and never, ever combine a gift for both occasions. Both are highly frowned upon.

We kicked off the birthday festivities Friday evening after work. My mom used #HBED as our hashtag (Happy Birthday Eve Daniel). She wrote this on the outside of his card and then asked, “Isn’t that a hashtag?” She’s getting super hip on us. Watch out, world.

Daniel loves to grill out and sit by the fire, so that’s exactly what we did Friday night.

He opened a few gifts that evening. If anyone is looking for a cool, manly gift idea, check out Man Crates. I got Daniel the “Grill Master” crate and he really liked it! It came with lots of grilling gadgets, like a meat tenderizer, a cast iron smoker box with hickory wood chips, and four steak thermometers, along with several sauces and spices.

After the standard Saturday morning group run at Running Wild and post-run caffeine fix at Coffee Loft, we headed east to 30A for the weekend. We got an awesome Black Friday discount code for one night at the Watercolor Inn, and we decided that Daniel’s birthday would be the perfect time to use our night.

We had an awesome gulf view! It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed walking around and did a little bit of shopping.

We walked over to Seaside for dinner at Great Southern Cafe. We got the black-eyed pea hummus appetizer, I got the dinner salad with grilled salmon and Daniel got grouper with fried green tomatoes and sweet potato fries. Everything was delicious! As soon as the waiter brought out our food, Daniel made sure to get a picture. He got his phone out, looked at me and said, “Do you want me to get a picture for the blog?” I didn’t even have to ask. He’s good! It definitely reminded me of this article about Instagram (<– follow me!) husbands.

We came back and sat outside by the fire pit for a while. Unfortunately it was a gas fire and it didn’t put off all that much heat, so we basically sat in the pit, instead of beside it. It was so chilly this weekend! Last weekend we went to the “mountains” and it was really warm and this weekend we went to the beach and it was freezing. Totally backwards. I was completely happy with the cold weather though. It’s time.

The sunset definitely didn’t disappoint.

We woke up and had coffee Saturday morning while Daniel scoped out Strava segments. He made a route for us so that he could take two segments while we were out. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Strava is basically a social media platform for runners and bikers. Daniel is in the “Lower AL Runners” group. You can follow along and see what workouts and routes your friends are doing each day.

There are also “segments,” which are fuel to any athlete’s competitive juices and allow you to compete with other athletes by running or biking the same segment that they have done previously and beating their time. The segments are all varying distances and are all over the country. If you go to a new town, you have to find a segment to take down. It’s an addiction. If there was a Stravaholic Support group, Daniel would definitely need to join.

We ended up running 8 miles and he took two segments during the run. The first one was a one mile segment. He took that one in 5:56. The second one was three quarters of a mile. He took that one in 4:29. He was smokin! I don’t do Strava, so I just enjoyed running at a slower pace and he waited for me to catch up each time.

After our run, we walked on the beach for a little bit. I absolutely love running and walking on the beach. Daniel is nice enough to play along with my shenanigans. The water was so pretty!

We ended up walking back to Seaside in search of some breakfast. We had been wanting to try the Airstream food trucks for a while. A little history lesson Some random facts for you … in Seaside’s early days, many of the owners building homes stayed in Airstream trailers, aka “land yachts” while they waited on their houses to be completed. Some of the town architects did as well, as they spent long nights working. The trailers became part of the landscape and style of Seaside. They were comfortable and wonderfully designed and represented the adventurous spirit of the people who were making Seaside what it is today. Those “land yachts” are now all little independent food vendors.

As a side note, I am fascinated with the idea of living in an Airstream and traveling around the country. Daniel tells me that isn’t a realistic aspiration … something about having a steady job (and some other details that I’m kind of fuzzy on). Major bummer. Anyway … let’s get back on track here. Daniel got a grilled ham and cheese melt.

I found a truck that had all of the amazing things. All of them. I was so excited! Turns out that they were “remodeling” and not open for business (don’t let the sign fool you). Womp, womp. Check out the sweet monkey wrap on the sign though … peanut butter, apples, bananas, cinnamon and honey on a wrap. Does that not sound amazing? I might try to make that one on my own at some point.

I wasn’t too upset because we decided that we could just stop at Another Broken Egg on our way out of town. I love that place. We got there and it was closed too. So, so sad. At this point I was getting majorly hangry (the state of hunger where anger majorly sets in and takes over), so I settled with an oatmeal cup to go from the coffee shop next door to Another Broken Egg.

I’ll have to admit that the oatmeal was very good. Maybe I was just really hungry, but either way, I was pleasantly surprised. I might even incorporate these little, to-go oatmeal cups into the regular breakfast rotation. I’m all about convenience.

We made it home and finished up the last of our Christmas shopping. Boom! Now we just have to wrap the presents. Hopefully I won’t dislocate my shoulder wrapping the gifts this year. Yes, that definitely happened one year. Don’t ask …

Alright guys, I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and has a very Merry Christmas!

What are your Christmas plans?