February - April 2013

Not much has really happened over the last few months, which gave me an excuse to put off blogging. Here's a quick recap of February, March and April.

We went to Frederick, MD to check out the ice sculptures that were displayed throughout the downtown area. They were pretty cool. This was my favorite - it's a dragon, and that is the sculptor.

 I turned 33 on February 26th. Adam threw me a nice little party.

I started my culinary arts degree, and Adam went with me to the college bookstore to pick up my books and chef uniform/supplies. The campus was really pretty.

We got another dog for a day. He turned out not to be a good fit for our family, so we returned him.

Spring finally arrived, and the cherry blossoms came out. It is beautiful around here with the trees full of flowers and/or leaves.

And we've been busy doing missionary work. Adam has been sharing the gospel with people at work while I've been joining the sister missionaries on discussions. We brought a lady who is getting baptized on Saturday and the sisters to the Washington D.C. Temple visitor's center the other day.

Adam has been working hard at work. He just took his annual physical fitness test and did really well on it. Other that than, we've been keeping pretty busy house shopping. That's been both fun and frustrating, but we are looking forward to owning our own house hopefully soon.

December 2012

Get ready for a bunch of pictures. We had quite a bit going on in the second half of the month. Lily's 2nd birthday was on the 14th, but we didn't really do anything for that because, well, she's a dog. We did do a little photo shoot around our apartment complex.

That evening, we went to Adam's squadron Christmas party. I got to meet new people, and the food was good.

Then, just before Christmas, our friends, the Ramsay's came to visit us on their way to New York. We went to Washington D.C. with them (for our first time) and had a ton of fun.

They didn't stay long but came back on the way home. For Christmas Eve, I made tamales, as per my family tradition, and posole.

We had a relaxing Christmas at home with the dogs, including the Ramsays' dog, Nova, who we offered to dog sit while they were in New York. Lily, Lani, and especially Kuhio enjoyed having her around. And, yes, the dogs all got stockings and wrapped gifts, and we dressed them up in Christmas costumes.

Nova

This year, I decided I wanted to get an Elf on the Shelf and put him up around the apartment for Adam to find each morning. Adam thought Charlie was creepy, but I liked him.

We didn't get any snow for Christmas, but we did get a little the next day. It only lasted a couple hours, but it was enough to make Adam and the dogs happy.

Soon after Christmas was over, Adam started getting restless. He decided on the 28th he really wanted to go to New York for New Year's. Since it was so last minute, we had to take the dogs, and we just decided to sleep in the van rather than look for a hotel so close to New Year's. We found a nice spot on the side of the road at Central Park and stayed there until midnight on New Year's Day. The fact that we had dogs with us kind of hindered what we could do, but we still managed to have some fun.

We checked out the Jersey Shore on the way up. A good chunk of it was blocked off due to the damage from Hurricane Sandy, but we found a nice beach to stretch out at.

Before leaving New Jersey, we stopped off at the NJ 9/11 Memorial, where we were also able to kind of see the Statue of Liberty and see the New York skyline from across the river.

When we got to New York, we spent a lot of time in Central Park, which was really kind of cool.

The Belvedere Castle

 

 This is where we slept, across from the Natural History Museum.

We took the dogs on the subway one night, but they didn't seem to care too much for it, so that only happened once.

New Year's Eve morning, Adam took the subway to Times Square while I was sleeping. He got to be in the crowd of Good Morning, America, hung out with Elmo and Hello Kitty, and brought back a couple NYE souvenirs.

That night, we left the dogs for a little bit to check out Times Square together. That green light in the top right is the New Year's Eve ball getting ready to drop.

We ended up back in Central Park at midnight in time to traumatize the dogs with the fireworks (they were much closer than I had expected), then we drove home right after. It was a fun, memorable experience, but we will definitely be planning ahead if we ever do it again.

Thanksgiving 2012

Due to our collective dislike of most traditional Thanksgiving foods, Adam and I choose a different country each year and prepare a meal from that country. This year we chose Greek. It was fun making a few items I had never made before, but I would have liked to have researched the recipes more. We finally moved into our new place the day before Thanksgiving, so between having to rush to find stores that carried the ingredients and not having all my kitchen stuff available, it could have been better. Overall, I thought the food tasted pretty good and Adam loved it.

For the main course, I made chicken kebab and souvlaki gyros with tzatziki sauce. I'll have to add less dill to the tzatziki sauce next time, but the gyros were pretty delicious.

The sides were spanikopita (spinach and feta cheese pie), which was decent, considering the fact that I forgot to add the feta to the spinach until it was too late,

dolmas (seasoned rice wrapped in grape leaves and steamed) that were delicious, despite their appearance in the photo,

                                 and horiatiki salata (Greek tomato salad), which was pretty good.

Overall, Adam and I both agree that this Thanksgiving meal was a success, and I now have a couple new recipes that we both like.