Lovely Anniversary Weekend

Our 11 year anniversary is coming up, but Pete's going to be away on business for our actually anniversary so we decided to celebrate it a week early. My dad offered to watch the kids for the whole weekend! I'm glad the kids went and stayed there one night a few weeks ago so we could kind of have a trial run with George. Since he did so well, I wasn't very worried about leaving him this time.

The plan was to go snowboarding, but it snowed a lot on Wednesday so Pete ended up going with friends Thursday night and Friday morning. On top of that, we knew that everyone would head up there Saturday so it would be really crowded. I don't really like it when it's crowded, it makes me too nervous that someones going to hit me or I'm going to hit someone! So, we decided to go to the climbing gym on Saturday instead. That way, I could still get my long run in too!

I dropped the kids off friday afternoon with my dad. It boggles my mind that there could be anywhere colder than Park City! It was so windy and cold there! I was happy to get back to Salt Lake where it was 17 degrees warmer.

That night, we went to the temple, and had really nice time there. Then we went to dinner at The Copper Onion which is my new favorite restarurant! Thier menu changes depending on what's in season which I love!

When we got there, they told us it would be a 45 minute wait, but that was fine since it's not like we were hurrying back for the baby-sitter or anything.

This is a terrible picture taken with my phone while we waited.

While we waited, they brought us appitizers. We had the Braized Pork Belly with Preserved Cherries. Oh. My. Gosh. Words can not describe how deliciously amazing this was! It made my mouth so happy, and I almost wanted to cry it was so good. Seriously. I would highly recommend it! So good.

They seated us at the chef's table which is basically a bar where you can watch them cook. We really loved watching them prepair all this delicious food! Pete ordered some oysters as another appitizer. I had a couple, but did not love them so I let him eat the whole thing. I just have never been a big oyster fan.

I ordered the Pork Chop which came with this crispy cornbread kind of thing, ancho chilis and an egg on top. It was so good! I also got a side of brussel sprouts which were all cut up and in a bowl like a cabbage salad which I thought was an interesting way to cook them. I didn't love them, unfortuantly, but they were ok.

Since it was our anniversary dinner, we had to order desert! I got this lemon corn cake with rasperries. It was so delicate and buttery and just pefect! Pete had the chocolate cardamom pudding which was really chocolatey and exotic tasting with the cardamom. Yum. Such good food!

We were so happy afterwards, but hated to leave! The Copper Onion is right next to a movie theater so we just went to The Artist. It was so fun to just do whatever we wanted and not have to hurry home to the kids. It was a good movie and a perfect end to such a perfect evening!

Saturday morning, I went and got our Bountiful Basket. I got a ton of fruit and veggies for $60, but I don't think I'll so it again since you have to go pick it up at 7:15am, and I found out about The Utah Co-op that you can go pick up Thursday, Friday or Saturday. Plus they have grass fed meat from a local farm that you can buy while you're there. I'm excited to try that out next week!

When I got back from doing that, I decided to do the dishes after eating my usual pre-run banana peanut butter oatmeal. Then I headed out on my run. I ran pretty much the same route as last week up to the mouth of City Creek, only I added in another hill. It was a really nice run. I tried to go really easy so I ended up doing 8.24 miles in the same time 1:30 it took me to do 8.4 last week. I need to keep my long runs in the aerobic range where I can build up my mitocondria. I don't totally understand how it works, but Pete gave me a really good analagy:

If we compare our bodies to cars, fat and sugar are the fuel. Sugar burns really quickly and we can't store very much, but we basically have endless amount of fat which we burn slowly so this is what we want to use when we do endurance events. We burn fat when we're in the aerobic zones, and sugar when our heart rate gets higher and we go into the anaerobic zones. What I need to do is get to where I can go faster while keeping my heartrate in an aerobic zone so I can burn fat and keep that pace up. But our bodies can only burn so much fat at a time.

My body has a 4 cylinder engine. We want the abily to use as much fuel as possible. Remember, we're not talking about prius' here, we're trying to build a race car engine that can convert a lot of fuel to a lot of energy aka speed. How do I upgrade to a 12 cylinder engine? By building a lot mitocondria. Mitocondria are what help us turn fuel into energy so I need more of them. How do I build up mitocondria? From what I understand, I just need to run a lot.

After my run, we hurried and went out to brunch at The Park Cafe which we love to go to for breakfast. We had to wait half an hour, but I felt like I needed something after my run so we bought 3 peanut butter cookies and shared them while we walked about a mile around the park. We got back just in time to be seated! I ended up choosing the healthy option, and getting an omelete. It was really good, and I didn't have to feel sick or bad about it later.

My Half Ironman training plan starts tomorrow! It goes off of heart rate and time instead of pace and distance so I really need to start training by heart rate, but all three of my heart rate straps are dead, along with my heart rate monitor watch so I'm not able to use them yet. We went to REI to see if they could replace the batteries, but they just told me to send them in to Polar. Arg! I will send them in to Polar tomorrow and hopefully it doesn't take too long to get them back!

Later we decided to go to IKEA to get the kids some nightlights. Of course, we ended up spending way too much time there, and planning out all the things we want to eventually buy! It was fun, though.

When we got done there, it was dinnertime so we went to another one of my favorite resaturants: Simply Thai. I got the red curry which is really good there! We got desert again since, after all, it was our anniversary dinner! :) I got the coconut ice cream. Yum.

We ended up just wanting to go home and relax after that so we didn't go climbing. I'm kind of sad we didn't go, but at the same time it was a really good day and we both enjoyed just spending it together.

We enjoyed church today without any kids to wrangle, and are just relaxing now that we're home. We'll be heading out soon to go get them, though. I miss my baby! My dad says he's just been a delight and has hardly cried at all the whole weekend. What a good boy!