Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall. Torque is how far you take the wall with you.

Written 8/22/2016

Big city lights are definitely beautiful at night, but I could never live in a big city.  I prefer the comforts of a small town...the family-owned shops that you'll find conveniently on "Main Street" without directions, the nonexistence of stop lights that allow you to see a blanket of stars at night in a wide open sky in silence, the "soul cleansing" country cruise you can take at any time of day, etc.  I could go on and on, but really, I love the Village of Mansfield.  I've lived in Mansfield for 2 years now, and I've enjoyed every bit of it!

This past weekend was the Villages' Homecoming Celebration, which is always stocked with events!  We enjoyed going to the tractor pulls that were hosted on Friday night.  I decided to curl my hair for once, and it turned out pretty good!  In fact, I'm still rocking the same curls on Monday as I type this (refreshed them with some dry shampoo though)!

My brother-in-law Gunner came over to our house, along with his friend.  And we walked down to the tractor pulls as they were just starting.  We chugged some beers by the time we got there...hydration, folks!

We met my sister-in-law there too!  It was SUPER humid out, and we couldn't find a good place to stand.  We ended up walking back to our house to grab some camping chairs.  We found a sweet little spot to watch the pulls right behind the announcer, so it all worked out!  

MINUS THE BUGS!  Oh GOD, I am COVERED in bites!

Saturday morning, we drove into town to get Starbucks and do some gun shopping. I couldn't handle all of that standing around, so I found some chairs in Field & Stream to rest.  When I was sitting there, I got a message from our wedding photographer that are pictures are done!  I will have to write another post on those, but they are just so beautiful!  I ended up chatting with an old man that sat next to me until Ben was ready to go!  When we got home, my body was craving some stretch time on the couch.  I took this picture, because it made me so happy to see my man and our poodle making me a snack as I rested my back. Such a good man!

We hung around the house until it was time to get ready for dinner.  My Uncle Joe was in town and we had reservations at the Bayern Stube...See!  i told you, we go there for every occasion!  :)  I love how he shakes his head at the end of the video below...he just looked too damn sexy not to film!

We had a great time at the German restaurant with my family, and I enjoyed a little too much beer!  Their Hefeweizen is my ultimate favorite there, so I ordered a pint, and another one after that!  :)  Which, I just realized I drank a quart of beer there...LOL.  They even had some of the vanilla bean cheesecake that we requested for our dinner party leftover, so I had some of that!  YUM!

What we SHOULD HAVE DONE was go home after dinner, but DRUNK STEVIE wanted more beer, so we stopped by the Sand Trap for what I promised SOMEWHAT SOBER BENthat we would only have 1 more beer.  We heard live music, so we wandered into the other room, only to find out that we were crashing someone's retirement party!  Oops...

We bought a CD off of the guy, and he actually ended up giving us a free one along with it!  

I'll have to update this post with his name, because I can't remember it! That proooobably has something to do with the amount of beer I drank that night...

I don't know how, but I wasn't hungover at all.  We spent most of the day being lazy and playing with Vader.  We ended up making steak fajitas for dinner.  We go to a butcher in Forrest, Illinois called Slagel Family Meatswhich we believe has the BEST tasting meat.  It's worth the 40 some minute drive it takes to get there!  

So, we threw some steak on the grill, and were planning on just eating steak with sweet potatoes, but I wasn't totally committed to the idea, so we ended up making fajitas instead!  

I have been FAJITA CRAZY lately, and I think I've had fajitas like 3 days a week! All I had was a small sliver of some onion, and one green pepper leftover, so I cut those up and added some fresh garlic to the pan.  I used a little bit of seasoning on them, and squeezed half of a lime on top.  

Ben pulled the meat off the grill ahead of time and cut it up into little chunks.  We added that to my pan to finish cooking and added more lime juice!  It was pretty good!  I feel like we are getting better and better at grilling and cooking together!  

And lucky for me, I have leftovers for lunch on Monday!