Christmas Eve+ Christmas 2016

Date: December 26, 2016

Author: astottler

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever holiday you celebrate!

I kicked off Christmas Eve with a morning spin class, before returning home to have lunch with my family.

I had leftover lentil/bruschetta/feta over lettuce, GF sourdough, and a little sauerkraut.

For Christmas Eve, we decided to take a trip to the San Francisco Zoo to see reindeer and the polar bear. They have the oldest polar bear in captivity right now; she’s 35! That’s crazy; the normal lifespan for polar bears in captivity is 20-30.

She makes me miss Kali in St. Louis though!

It was also fun to see the decorations around the zoo.

Anteaters:

I never once saw the anteater at the St. Louis Zoo while working there.

Grizzly Bears:

All the animals had Christmas trees!

The tiger was beautiful and we got up super close to it:

River otters:

My parents and I split a Bobo’s Gingerbread Oat Bar, to get in the holiday spirit! These are delicious; I saw them and ordered them online since I couldn’t find them in stores, but I had to get a pretty big box of them, so we will be enjoying Gingerbread bars well into the new year!

As per our Christmas Eve tradition, my sister and her fiancé met us at Benihana, a Japanese steak house, for dinner.

I started with a salad, and half a sushi piece (they ended up messing up our order so I split it with my dad).

It’s always a great show!

I got fried rice, and picked some shrimp and veggies off my family’s plate!

Let’s be real: the fried rice is the best part.

After dinner, we relaxed on the couch with molasses cookies and Gilmore Girls.

I was so tired from the previous days, and was in bed at 10.

On Christmas morning, I slept in more than usual and woke up feeling like a new woman.

So, here’s a funny Christmas story. We don’t really leave cat toys out because Chloe will take them, but when I woke up, I saw one on the floor. A little bit later, it was gone. And when my mom got up, she told me that it sounded like my kitty Charlie was meowing at 4am with a toy, which didn’t make sense because he didn’t have any out. Well, it turned out that he got into his Christmas present at 4am and was carrying it around yowling! Silly cat. And of course, my dad found it in Chloe’s mouth shortly after she came out of her crate for the morning.

After solving the mystery, I quickly ate a granola bar and helped Chloe to her stocking. She was a big fan.

Chloe got a cool light up ball!

And this monkey, which quickly lost a leg.

I think I’m starting to get the whole snapchat filter on a cat thing down. I think it helps that Charlie has a patterned face (Yoyo was mostly just white).

The reason I only had a granola bar for breakfast was so we could go to the bay and do a little run/walk like we did last year. It was such a beautiful day; the thermometer said it was mid-40s, but it wasn’t windy and it was pretty sunny.

Chloe made a friend.

This trail is so pretty in the winter, and I could see all the way to San Francisco! Plus, I think my pace was about 30 seconds faster than last year, and that’s never a bad thing!

After our run/walk, we went to Starbucks for some holiday drinks. I had a cappuccino. Someone in front of us was incredibly nice and got a $100 Starbucks gift card to pay for the people behind in line, so we actually got our drinks thanks to that anonymous Christmas person!

After getting ready for the day, I had a mini lunch to tide me over before the main meal. Just the same leftovers as the previous day, plus some crackers.

I also broke into some candy from my stocking. Yum!

Before long, my sister and her fiance arrived to open presents. Check out this amazing painting my sister made for my mom!

I think my favorite present had to be the matching scarf set for Chloe and I!

My mom and I actually got each other the same beer of the month club, but we ended up mostly choosing different months, so there’s only 1 overlapping month! It’s too funny though that we had the same idea!

We had a little time left before we had to leave, so we popped in a Christmas special. This year was my favorite: The Year Without a Santa Claus.

Then, we loaded into the car to head to my Grandma’s house in Berkeley!

I broke out my sparkly pants for the occasion.

My Grandma outdid herself. Everything was beautifully set.

We enjoyed snacking on olives and pickles, and sipping champagne. Olives feel like Christmas to me! When we were little, my sister and I used to put them on all our fingers while we waited for dinner to finish cooking.

My Grandma is also a fantastic cook, and she roasted an amazing turkey and ham.

She also made manicotti in honor of my sister’s recent Italian travels.

My dad was on carving duty.

My plate:

I was unintentionally a little heavy handed with the salad, but it was delicious! It had grapes, dried cranberries, and champagne vinaigrette. We also had glazed brussels sprouts, green beans, black eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and of course turkey! I’m glad I realized how delicious turkey is with cranberry sauce. I enjoyed mine with cranberry sauce and cranberry orange relish.

Next, we opened up our holiday party poppers!

I really liked my joke:

How did Scrooge win the football game?

The ghost of Christmas passed.

After cleaning up a bit, we embarked on dessert. My mom and I split a delicious piece of pumpkin cream pie.

I didn’t have any, but there were beautiful cookies and a chocolate log cake.

I also had some chocolate vanilla swirl frozen yogurt with fresh berries!

It was a fabulous Christmas, surrounded my those I love most. I hope you, and your family and friends had a great holiday!

Blogmas Day 4: Best Moments

Date: December 4, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today in Blogmas we’re taking a break from recipes (more to come though) to talk about something a little bit different: being grateful and finding light in dark times. Everyone has been talking about how 2016 was a terrible year, that we’re just waiting to end. While a lot of terrible things did happen this year, life is too short to write off a whole year, or even a whole bunch as we wait for 2016 to end.

As 2016 draws to a close, I encourage everyone to take a moment and look back on the good times in 2016. What’s done is done, but we can shift our mindset. Don’t let the negatives wash out the positives for 2016. Life really is filtered by whatever attitude you take on. I challenge you to look back over the past year and find 10 of your “best moments.” 10 times that you were exhilaratingly happy, times that you were proud, times that you felt loved. Let go of the negativity and hold these 10 best moments close to you as we hop into 2017.

For inspiration, here are my best moments.

A fantastic night with a best friend resulted in a victory in which we won expensive wine.

I finally made it out to some Stanford baseball games. One of my big college regrets was not going to more games, so I made it happen in my final year.

Doing better than expected in the Crossfit Open. I didn’t rank super highly by any means, but I made some big breakthroughs in Crossfit and I think they started to come out in the Open. Plus, good workouts with good people? Always fun.

Going to Seattle for spring break with some of my best friends, and especially this night. I had dark beer for the first time and the beer I had was the best I’d ever had. Still on a beer kick since then!

Running the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in DC. This race was a dream for me to run, and I was so excited to get in through the lottery. I may have been slightly sick, had a broken foot, and run in sub-freezing 50 mph wind, but it was all totally worth it.

Going to a beach house with some good friends. It was so great to spend time together, get off campus, and unplug (no cell signal there).

Not letting the boot hold me back. I tried to have fun with it and do all the same fun activities with it. I put lights on it. It was my pal, my trusty sidekick. Always find the positive in negative situations.

This is one of the moments where I was just so overwhelming happy. I had a little graduation party during the last week of school, and everyone I care about came. It was incredible. There was a school tradition of walking around campus as a giant group on the last night of the year, ending in the fountain. I had never been since I would usually go home earlier than that, and everyone wanted to go. I had just gotten my boot off and could barely walk, and surely couldn’t make it all the way across campus on foot. My friends literally took turns carrying me across campus. So grateful for them.

Visiting Emily in Nashville when I was living in Tennessee. I had such an amazing time, and it was great to see a friendly face and catch up after some time living alone, plus getting some solid life advice.

My time in Knoxville was incredible. I think one of the best moments was leading an alpaca around, although I don’t have pictures of that for confidentiality reasons. It was one of those moments where I just thought, “this is so freaking cool.” When I came home, I felt like a completely different person thanks to all my experiences there. And it got me even more excited about my future career path.

Coming home from Knoxville and seeing old friends, and getting a good look at this view. I love my city.

Doing something I never thought I’d do: go to a country concert. After living in Tennessee for 5 weeks, I felt pretty qualified to attend a Florida Georgia Line concert in St. Louis. I went alone, but still had a blast. Made me miss TN!

The Giant’s wildcard win, which was incredible and allowed me the chance to take a trip to Chicago (my first time there!) to see my home team play in the playoffs. We can also toss in our Game 3 victory which was the biggest roller coaster of emotions and kept me up past 3 am.

Bottle feeding young goats at Grant’s Farm. Or even just being surrounded my goats. I love goats.

Running the Halloween Race in St. Louis. It was my grand return to racing post-stress fracture, and it’s always fun to do races in new cities.

Yindi (Tasmanian Devil) playing with a pumpkin. This made my morning, my week, and my year. This was the only thing that was going to cheer me up the day after the election.

Wine tasting in Missouri wine country with my fantastic coworkers. But seriously, my zoo buddies were incredible and I miss them dearly!

And finally, having the opportunity to spend hours a week with this fantastic creature. I miss Kali!

What is one of your best moments?

Last Day At The Zoo

Date: November 18, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hi friends. It’s Friday night and I’m cuddling with Scooby in my bed while listening to the crazy wind outside.

The weather here is crazy. Get this: yesterday: highs of about 80. No jacket weather. Hot. This morning: similar. About 70 degrees. The rain started and it was warm. One hour later, the temperature dropped 10 degrees. And has been dropping steadily since. Lows for tomorrow are in the 20s. What?? I don’t understand crazy St. Louis weather.

This morning goodbyes continued at Crossfit. The workout today was a great one though. We did 5 sets of 5 deadlifts at 65%, and I used 155 lbs. Then the WOD was a partner “double Jackie,” which equated to 2000m row, 100 thrusters (35#), 60 pull ups split between 2 people. The coach matched us up, and I was paired with another coach. So I knew it was legit. We switched every 250m for the row, every 10 for the thrusters, and every 5 for the pull ups. I knew the pull ups were definitely going to be the hardest for me. I can’t really do more than a set of 5 for lots of reps, and my only rest time between sets was while my partner did her 5. So there was very little rest. The last few sets were tough! I already feel things in my shoulders.

Because it was so warm, I was strangely craving a protein smoothie afterwards. It went along well with my plan of using everything up, so I went with it!

Frozen banana, cocoa powder, milk, Quest salted caramel protein. Plus some snap pea crisps on the side. I’m a little obsessed and have then any time of day.

This morning I had to say goodbye to this goober:

He was being especially playful this morning. He started by tossing his rawhide bone around the pool, and then came right up to the glass and interacted with this kids.

What a goof.

I love the sights and decorations around the zoo.

I especially love the gumdrops.

Today it was supposed to rain, and I almost made it without getting wet. I just hate wet feet. I brought 2 pairs of extra socks to change throughout the day. My feet got super wet coming back from these guys:

Here’s Saka and Makini looking like they felt just about how I did about the rain:

Lunch:

Quest chips for protein and a salad with pear, goat cheese, and Newman’s Lite Balsamic.

And before I knew it, I was at my last observation. I was FREEZING. The temperatures had dropped quite a bit, and with wet feet I stood no chance. I had dry socks, but those only get you so far with wet shoes…

After work, I went to Whole Foods for dinner+productivity. I majorly struck out with the hot bar. All the delicious looking things either had wheat or tree nuts, so I ended up with 3 forms of potato. Not the end of the world though. Anything you can douse in ketchup, right? I also had some mango kombucha.

After eating, I pulled out my laptop and got some work done on my Microbiology class. While doing that, I noticed an add on my table for 4 Hands Stout. I went to 4 Hands on the Brewery Tour and have been loving their Chocolate Milk Stout ever since. Well, the add was for some of their seasonal flavors, Gingerbread Stout and S’mores Stout. What?? As it turns out, this Whole Foods had quite a selection of beer on draft. Right??

So naturally, I had to give it a try. With that discovery, my night of studying got a whole lot more interesting.

I ordered a Gingerbread Stout.

It was delicious. To be honest, not really sure I got the Gingerbread flavor, but it was great stout. Maybe a little milder than the Chocolate Milk?

I spent an hour or so sipping that and doing homework before picking up a treat to take home and eat in front of Netflix, cozied up with a kitty.

Honestly, this is all I wanted for this night. A coworker invited me to a speakeasy downtown, which sounded like a ton of fun, but after freezing my butt off all afternoon and with rapidly dropping temperatures and crazy wind, I did not particularly want to venture outside again!

Wish me luck as I brave the cold tomorrow!

Just St. Louis Things

Date: September 12, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Monday!

My Wifi is super spotty right now so we’ll see when this post actually goes up.

The weather this weekend was absolutely perfect. We had crazy storms all Thursday and Friday. I went on possibly the soggiest run ever Friday morning. Luckily, the rain settled down for a bit by midmorning Friday, and I didn’t get to wet at work. It was nice enough to enjoy my Friday treat, a raspberry Dole whip!

This is Kali (pronounced Cully). He’s definitely the star of the zoo, and he’s the biggest ham.

I spent my Friday night in with cats and spaghetti squash mac n cheese.

Saturday morning I taught an early spin class, and then my roommate (who is leaving soon!) and I went to St. Charles, dog in tow. St. Charles is about 30 minutes north of St. Louis, and has a cute historic downtown.

We walked around a bit. It’s right by the river.

It was an interesting environment that day because there was some sort of bar crawl for charity going on, so downtown was pretty packed with crawlers in matching t-shirts. That’s a cool event though! We stopped for lunch at a place with an outdoor patio for the dog, and after walking around a bit more, we stopped into Kilwins for ice cream.

This was SO good. I haven’t had normal, non froyo/custard ice cream in forever. This was salted caramel. It had caramel swirls and pieces of chocolate covered, delicious salted caramel.

Sunday morning began with a run. I did a different route, and surprised myself by busting out a slightly faster pace. I’ll take it!

The big event of the day was going to a Cardinals game!

Busch stadium is beautiful.

Nothing like AT&T Park in SF, of course!

I had french fries and a beer for lunch. So healthy. I’m actually really happy that this was something I was able to do mentally and physically and be ok with. A year ago, the fat in the fries would have probably made me pretty sick. Progress, my friends!

I had to get Budweiser given my location. It’s really okay. Solid but seems so watery.

The game was super fast, just over 2 hours, which is crazy. It was very low scoring, and the Cards lost. Honestly, I had trouble deciding if I should root for or against them. I’m a die hard Giants fan, and we’re competing with the Cardinals for the Wild Card. But I have always liked the Cardinals (as a secondary team, of course).

I couldn’t bring myself to wear anything Cardinals. My loyalties lie elsewhere. But I did wear a Cardinal shirt! (Stanford Cardinal)

After the game, we walked over to Ballpark Village to the fudge shop to get chocolate covered marshmallows, which was something my roommate wanted to do one last time before she left.

I want to apologize for the abruptness of this post. My Wifi has been pretty spotty so getting this together was the biggest pain. Also, I want to apologize for the relative lack of pictures. I’ve been working on something for you guys, which will hopefully be up Tuesday night!

Where are your baseball loyalties?