A Fair Ol' Time {8/12}

Friday, August 12, 2011.

We woke to beautiful late summer weather. It was so nice to be able to walk outside, smile, take a deep breath, and want to stay outdoors. Our running schedule alerted us that we had 3 miles to run....so with a heavy heart, and a shocking spring in my step, we went for a run.

I knew I would need some extra motivation. It hasn't been pretty the last couple training runs. Scary and pathetic are the words I would use to appropriately describe them. Blugh. So..I grabbed a marker:

Guess What? I CAN AND I DID. I mapped out a nice 3 mile route that kept us in a loop around the house. There are some sneaky hills around here...stupid sneaky hills...but I ran them every time. It was great. Each time I wanted to poop out early, I looked down at my wrist, cranked my music louder, and carried on with my badself.

40 some-odd-minutes later, we were back at the apartment, we stretched, and made a game plan for leaving for Springfield. Our stomachs were growling, so we whipped up a Food with Rachel recipe that sent our taste-buds dancing! {make.this.recipe! Rachel is a food genius, follow her blog, love her, thank me later}

Around 11:00am, we were off to Springfield, Illinois. Granted, it was Matt's birthday weekend, but I had a few places I have been itching to eat at in Springfield. First on my list was to eat lunch at Holy Land Diner:

 Excellent choice! Greek-Lebanese food....which anything with falafel or hummus is my best friend. We were greeted by the cutest little lady when we walked in, she sat us down, asked if we had been in before, explained the buffet, and was nice enough to point out the items I shouldn't eat as a vegetarian/vegan. Bless her heart! I wanted to put her in my pocket and take her home.

After lunch, Matt took me to the Springfield Zoo. I had no idea they had a "Zoo" and what a treat. (please note the sarcasm) In all seriousness though, it was a cute little zoo. More on the scale of a petting zoo, but they had some cute animals. Most of them were napping....these guys were a few of the awake ones:

The zoo killed enough time that we could head on over to Matt's parents house to continue our journey to the Illinois State Fair! 

LET"S GO TO THE FAIR!

 Matt had Deep-Fried-Bacon-Wrapped-Chicken.

 I had amazing Fried Green Tomatoes.

 We walked around the fair for 3 hours...last thing I HAD to do before we left was feed these cute little goats. Oh man, I would love to have a goat. Not just any goats, one of these cute little ones!