The Brocks

So, we thought we'd start video blogging now that we have a camera...but that isn't so much happening and honestly I don't feel like people like it as much. Or maybe it is just bc we haven't been posting consistently lately. Let me know if you have a preference.

Lately we've been playing a lot of Guitar Hero World Tour. I'm the drummer and Clint's the guitar hero. It's quite intense. The other night we had been playing for about an hour and I realized I had been sweating for awhile!! So I guess it's a little healthier of a habit then sitting on the couch watching tv, at least. AND I'm beginning to think I'm an actual drummer...so I might have to try to learn for real. Then I could say I play like...4 instruments (not to say I play any of them well enough to actually claim them, but it would sound cool at least). Right now Clint is practicing up on the drums. I think he is trying to make sure there is still nothing that I am better than him at in the video gaming world. Maybe THE coolest thing about it all is that we got to make our own rockers that look like us. Well, they are crazy rockstar versions of us, at least. We'd love to come have anyone play with us! It's a lot of fun and we crack up at each other a lot. Wow I talked a lot about Guitar Hero!!!

In other news, I got a free magazine subscription (Marie Claire - not my fav but it'll do for free!) from our coke rewards points! We've since stopped buying diet coke so I don't die early from some kind of aspartame poisoning, but my days of being a total diet cokaholic paid off. Pretty cool!

I'm not sure if I have told the blogging world about our breadmaker we got for Christmas from my parents, but we love it! We have made white bread, cinnamon swirl bread (twice! it's Clint's favorite favorite), and we just tried rosemary bread - like Macaroni Grill's - the best ever! It came out pretty close! It's so nice to be able to make something SO homemade without making too much of a mess. And it's SO yummy!

At work we launched the new website - tangle.com - after much hard work and anticipation. My profile is tangle.com/laurenbrock. Be my friend :)

I'm working lately on having a positive attitude in different situations. I've found that it actually does work if you just look at the positive and stay joyful, life is in general, better. I usually try this in the morning when I'm usually grouchy and really not wanting to be awake. Just smiling and knowing this day is one God planned for me makes me joyful and helps me realize all that I have to be thankful for. And that really helps me not be so grumbly. Just a random little idea I've been working through. :) Contentment.

Read the whole Twilight series in a couple weeks. Loved it. SO good. I'm a big fan. I need some more books to read. Also read The Shack. Anyone heard of it? I thought it was great...did I hear that it was controversial? Any thoughts? Any book recommendations?

We've been eating chili like manly men. We had a huge thing of ground beef that was on sale, had to defrost it all, made an insane amount of really good chili, and are trying to finish it in time. It's pretty funny. And yummy.

Valentine's Day is Saturday and I have Monday off!!! Wonderfulness! I can't wait. Our first one married. :) Happy Valentine's Day everyone! <3

I know this is crazy late... but I'm blogging... shut it.

So my 27th birthday came around and we had a dinner planned at Houstons on friday with one of my best friends, Jason. He had been saying he wanted to take us out for Laurens birthday for more than a month now, he was now going to take us BOTH to eat. So I get home on Friday thinking I'm about to go out to eat and Lauren says I have to open this one present. My family always wanted to open Christmas presents before Christmas morning but I wanted the anticipation, it like... makes the presents even better! So I didn't want to open it, but she insisted... so I did. It was some bicycle tires I've been wanting! They're lyke totally crazy awesome, no slipping, no loosing traction and falling down huge hills anymore.

Ssoooo I thought we were going to go biking in the morning, little did I know that it would be in ARKANSAS!! She made me open another present which was a bike rack so we could take the honda instead of the Xterra. It pretty much paid for itself in that one trip. Lauren already had ALL of the "gear" packed so we went to the bike store, gathered all of the necessary supplies and hit the road, 5 hours to the Highway 27 Fishing Village. We put up the tent at about 3am and slept until it started POURING. That was day 1.

It rained for hours and hours, we actually left the tent at about 2 the next day. We drove into town (pop. less than my graduating class) and got firewood (from good-ole-boy-justin, friend of the gas station lady), went to a crystal shop because Mt. Ida is known for their crystals, and scoped out the best trails to ride the next day. We found an awesome spot to take pictures and I climbed up on laurens car to take them (pics below). That night we made hamburgers over the fire and then s'mores and hot chocolate. That was day 2.

Day 3 we woke up, got the bikes all ready to go, cooked eggs and sausage on the fire, packed our lunches and headed out. We were advised to wear hunters orange because it was the first day of hunting season... so we did... for a little while. It was sooo much fun, nothing like here in texas. The section we rode had something like a 600ft elevation difference between the highest and lowest points, but by no means was it a straight line. We had lunch on a big log on the side of the trail and met a few people along the way. It was a tough decision between calling someone to pick us up or try to bike all the way back to the camp because the Cowboys kickoff was in a few hours! We biked back and made it in time, but we were soooreeee. We convinced them to let us into a cabin that wasn't rented at the time so we could shower and then headed to hot springs to watch the game. We ate there and then cooked s'mores that night.

the pics below were from the trail. huge mountain behind us and a river in front

By day 4 we were really really tired and looking forward to the comforts of the apt. We ate breakfast at the Mt. Ida Cafe because Lauren found that it was THE place to go. Their slogan was "best vittles in Arkansas"... we thought, hmm... vittles sounds kinda strange, what are vittles? So we looked them up... they're food... just, any food. We're from dallas. Then we packed up everything and came back home. Since we didn't have time to make a cake I got candles on zebra cakes!! It was yumm! The next day we went to her parents house to celebrate with a real cake :) it was the strawberry family recipe, amaz. It was a GREAT surprise and a wonderful birthday. There is no way she is topping it next year, I don't deserve her.