Thankful Thursday

I'm not always late posting these...but the Thankful Thursday ones seem to be the ones affected when my posting is a little off. So here I am, on Friday again.

This weekend we're headed up to Placerville to see my family, celebrate my brother's engagement (!), and relax a bit in between Nolan's tests. He's been taking his licensing exams these past two days, and has another Board Exam next Wednesday, so he needs to relax for a couple days. Monday I fly out for a business trip to Vegas for 4 days, and then come back for the weekend, and fly out again on the next Monday for another trip to Scottsdale for just 3 days. Two weeks later, we fly to Scotland for vacation, woohoo! So I'm definitely making up for my lack of flying last year in the first quarter of this year. With that:

1. I'm thankful for fun trips coming up, even though it's a lot of packing and rushing around.
2. I'm thankful that I'm getting another sister-in-law this year! SO excited for Rory and Summer!
3. I'm thankful for a restful couple days at work. Still been busy, but I've been able to catch up on other items between my project and travelling.
4. I'm thankful for a really fun last weekend and week - I needed it!
5. I'm thankful for the chance to practice thankfulness (a little repetitive?), because honestly, this weekly tradition gets my mind where it should be - being grateful for the many, many blessings in my life. Everyone needs to reflect on those things, and often!
6. I'm thankful for the longer days and warmer weather that have started creeping in...it's about time!

Have you bought your Hunger Games' tickets yet?!

Belay on!

Saturday morning I met up with my friend Patti to walk The Dish near Stanford (that place I swore I'd never return to after The Tarantula Incident of 2011) and sip Peet's while we walked and talked. Definitely redeemed my last experience, and I may be willing to continue going there. No spiders this time, only these guys everywhere:
I'll take that trade any day!

ylehsa came down to visit for the weekend, and we kept her busy! Saturday night was Mardi Gras at the Ladd's, and Nolan and I's first Mardi Gras celebration! Unfortunately, there were no boobie tassles or other notable Mardi Gras traditions like that...but there were masks and beads and shrimp creole and other delectable things...like King Cake! More of that in a second. For now, I snapped a shot of Nolan refereeing a notable game of beer pong, in which Ash was crushing her opponents (most likely because her cups were filled with water, not booze). Isn't he cute!


I also got a picture of Eric and his plastic baby, which he found in his King Cake. Apparently, the baby is supposed to be Jesus in old Mardi Gras tradition (?) and it's baked inside this amazing circular cake that tastes like a cinnamon bagel with sprinkles on top. Whoever finds the baby in their piece, gets good luck for a year and has to bring next year's King Cake. Convenient, because Erin's cake was bomb, so I totally don't mind if they make next year's too.


It's been a little bit busy this week, but nothing major. Last night we met up with my dad in Burlingame for dinner at Straits (Ludacris!) and then frozen yogurt for dessert. I've had a gigantic cup of peanut-butter froyo loaded down with peanut butter chips, etc. three days running now. It's a terrible/wonderful thing.
We're also catsitting Harley again this week (Milo's girlfriend), so that's been a lot of fun. I tried to take pictures of them wreaking havoc together but the pictures are always blurry. See:


Tonight Nolan and I went rock-climbing and took our belay class to get belay certified. We have to go back another day to actually take the test (they want to make sure it sticks!), but we spent awhile after the class hoisting each other up the giant wall, and rappelling back down. I have to say I was pretty nervous about being able to hold Nolan's weight by myself while he was up the wall and practicing falling, but with the help of the anchor tied into the floor, I've gotten the hang of it. It's really fun to have an activity like that where not only do you get to do something fun with your partner, but also something challenging, where you have to both work hard and put a lot of trust in your partner. Needless to say, we bought me a multiple-use pass so that we can keep going back until I get my own Stanford ID.

Thankful Thursday

This week has been pretty great. Between Valentine's Day and Sake & Sushi with girlfriends, a fun game night + curry and cakeballs on Sunday, and a great date day with Nolan...I'm feeling pretty awesome and blessed. Not that I didn't already. My quiet time study this week was focusing on the topic of hope, per last week's sermon at The Highway. Lots of the questions were about hopelessness, and what areas we feel hopeless in our lives or sense hopelessness in others. I honestly didn't have an answer for either of those. I cannot think of a single area in which I not only have hope for the present and future, but my cup seems to be overflowing in all sectors. So there's a lot I could be thankful for, but it's one of those weeks where I feel like writing down everything that I'm thankful for would just take up too much space, and I can't limit myself to 5. I hope each and every one of you will be filled to the brim and share with me in this - and not take it for granted!

What are you most thankful for this week?

Chasing Curry

Valentine's Day for us is generally something along the lines of finding a place nobody else is eating at and then going home and playing a game or watching a movie. After the drama that was dating through college, we eventually gave up on the traditional Valentine's Day celebrations (though I think I still have a little white bear that Nolan gave me sophomore year) and decided to make it an excuse to eat out and watch a movie and not be judged for just hanging out by ourselves. Last year we went to Gorilla BBQ in Pacifica, which was literally a trailer on the side of the highway, and then we watched a movie and got FroYo at home. This year we were even less exciting. Food trucks have gotten super popular in big cities in the last 5 years or so. Some of these places have the most amazing food - there is one just a block from my office that specializes in unique creme brulees. So there's one in the Bay Area that has several trucks - Curry Up Now. It's some kind of Indian-fusion food (tikka masala burritos, anyone?), and is supposed to be awesome. This was our plan last night: to track it down. The twitter feed said it was in Sunnyvale at 650 E El Camino Real until 8pm. So we got in the car, sat through massive traffic with angry, hungry bellies, and arrived...at a freeway onramp. At which there was definitely no number 650 and no curry truck. We must have driven all up and down Camino Real and there was no truck. Nobody answering the phone. So by 7pm (so late for dinner!), we're hangry and frustrated...mostly. Nolan kept trying to find it, saying, "it's kind of exciting! like a scavenger hunt!", and meanwhile I'm snatching the phone and crossing my arms and telling him that if we don't get some curry of ANY KIND in my belly ASAP, then I will cut somebody. So we pulled into a nearby lot, in which there was an Indian market next to a dingy Indian restaurant called "Peacock Indian Cuisine". As soon as we got inside, we realized it was a major win. Not only was it packed with Indian customers (don't judge - it really is a good sign!), but it smelled amazing and the buffet was a smokin' deal. We already have big plans to return. So:
Curry Up Now: 0
Peacock: 1

After dinner, we were SO full that we got into our jammies and immediately went to bed. Exciting? Maybe not. Satisfying and awesome to fall asleep with your Valentine in a delicious curry-coma? Definitely.

Last weekend I bought a new pair of gym shoes to keep at work. During the week I use 3 different pairs for working out, depending on where I am. I have my outdoor running shoes for home, my indoor cross-training shoes (so my carpet doesn't get dirty), and my gym shoes to use at the gym in San Francisco during the workweek. This means I use at least 2 pairs a day with my current routine, and so they get a fair amount of wear. A new pair may not seem like a big deal, but for me it was huge. The ones I had been using at the gym have holes through the heels, and are actually the same ones I bought freshman year of college. Doh. Apparently gym shoes have come a long way since freshman year of college,because I put these on, and I was like, "what! I'm not even wearing shoes! They're SO LIGHT!" And it was great. Especially since I got them for $20.

Plus, I love that the bright pink soles will be blinding whoever is behind me at all times.

Daily struggle: how to eat an egg at my desk without anyone knowing I'm eating an egg at my desk. It's practically committing a crime to eat a hard-boiled egg at your desk when you work in a cubicle environment. After staring at the shell and my desk surfaces and knowing that everyone would know what a loud "crack" means, I finally just squeezed the stupid thing and crushed the shell so I could peel it off silently. I had to eat it within a minute to minimize the stench, but I think it was a general success after I sealed up the shells in a bag and tossed them away.

Heaven is a Cake Ball

I was folding and putting away scrubs this weekend, and had to take a picture of this. Not because you haven't seen it before, but because it was one of those surreal moments where I realize we're not kids anymore, and we're not spending our days sleeping on the quad eating chicken tacos: No matter how many times I see that, it still weirds me out. And makes me proud. But still: weird.

Friday night, I went to a cake ball extravaganza with some girlfriends, and extravagant it was. I brought about 40 cakeballs, which was the smallest of the batches, and with 10 of us there...you can do the math to figure out how many we had to dip and decorate. So we had multiple stations set up:

And then laid plate after plate on various surfaces around the house:

I'm serious - SO MANY CAKEBALLS!

I was fortunately able to escape the night with only 20-30 cakeballs to bring home, which could have been much worse (100 cakeballs in my fridge? yikes). Not just because I made these particular ones myself, but because anything with peanut butter is genuinely my kryptonite, these little guys were my favourite. Cream cheese and peanut butter cakeballs covered in dark chocolate? Heaven!


Saturday morning, while we were digesting our magnificent pancakes-a-la-Nolan and just chatting on the couch, we decided to give these babies a try. My mom got us some ear candles, and I'd heard good things about them. Nolan flatly refused to stick a burning candle into his ear ("no way-how would I explain myself to my colleagues in the ER when I came in with severe burns"), so instead I offered to go first, while he helped. His job was to trim the ash every inch, and to make sure I didn't light myself on fire (hence the towel and awkward pose):

Overall? The warm smoke felt really nice, but I have to say that with it in just one ear, I got a little sea-sick :)

Also while we were chatting (post-ear candle, I believe), we finally decided on where to go for our vacation at the end of March! It was one of those things where we literally said, "We could go to the Grand Canyon? We've never been there...or Canada? But I don't know what we'd do there. Or a cruise?" And then we kind of arrived at, "....or we could go to Scotland and the UK." And that's where we landed. So we'll be going to Scotland (!!!), with hopefully a couple day trips to England and Ireland, for about 10 days. And it's coming up fast in just 6 weeks, YIKES! Needless to say, we immediately bought tickets to avoid skyrocketing rates. So we're official! YES.

Yesterday was so lovely. Nolan had it off, so we woke up late (7:30), ate breakfast and went to church. Then we came home and ate lunch and skyped with our friends in Scotland, and then went on a nice long bike ride through Menlo Park to Stanford, and around the campus. Such a sweet time, and reminded me of just how incredibly blessed and insanely lucky I am to have this man as my partner :) As we were biking around, we saw that our nutty neighbour (the one who had an 8-foot flying spider suspended over his front gate for Halloween, among other things) decorated for Valentine's Day, too. Or for the Grammy's last night? Both? You decide:


Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, so I most likely won't be posting since I have a hot date after work ;) So here's a little love!

Thankful Thursday

Guys, I've spent all week wrapping up this project at work and coming home and cooking unique meals and falling into bed. I'm tired. At least there's been good food. I've been on a cooking kick lately, making some awesome new dinner and dessert each night for the two of us to enjoy, and while we've been loving it, I'm wondering if my energy for it will run out soon. Or my budget.

Last night I made 40 cake balls using a from-scratch yellow cake recipe I found, and some cream-cheese peanut butter filling. Mixed the two together (after I ate about a quarter of the yellow cake right out of the oven - oops) and now have the tasty bites in my fridge, waiting to be dipped tomorrow at a cake ball party I'm going to. All flavours, all sorts of decorations, friends, and food? Best Friday ever is in store for me. But for now, I need a quiet night. So on with it:

1. I'm thankful that this week marks the close of phase 1 of my big project at work. I'm ready for 2 weeks of normal work again! I can't say enough about this,
2. I'm thankful for motivation. I have been super motivated in almost area of my life lately, and sticking to my guns (this includes my New Year's Commitments...still going strong!) when I feel like indulging. Prime example was this morning (and every morning, for that matter) when my feet hit the floor at 4:55am and I stood there and thought to myself, "this...this is not sustainable." And yet 5 minutes later I'm starting my workout and feeling happy about it. Hey, if I'm going to really make my time with Nolan a priority over working out and cooking and stuff (this is something I realized I needed to improve on about 2 weeks ago), I have to be willing to do things like get up at the buttcrack of dawn to start sweating.
3. I'm thankful for sweet moments with Nolan. He woke himself up to say goodbye to me this morning, even though he could have slept until 1pm. Made my day.
4. I'm thankful for good times with extended family. Had a few of those recently, and it's been really fun to catch up with my Oma and aunt and cousin!
5. I'm thankful for good books that keep me engaged on my train ride home. Only problem here is TOO many good books! Currently reading The Tiger's Wife and loving it...but I'll be honest - it was REALLY hard to tear myself away from Game of Thrones (book 2) to start The Tiger's Wife. I'm VERY against reading two books at once (how can you truly enjoy one if you're thinking about the other?!), and the only reason I did it this time is because our book club meets again next week and we're supposed to have finished it. Oops.

What are you thankful for?

Lazy day(s)

Today was Nolan's day off, and never did someone so deserve a day off. The only sign I've gotten thus far (besides the fact that he was fast asleep when I left for work) that he's really enjoying it is this picture that he emailed me a couple hours ago:

My boys!

I didn't take a picture of my chili last night, so I thought I'd snap one of my lunch today anyway. This was the best darn turkey chili I've had in awhile. To be fair, Nolan said it was "the best tortilla soup" he's had in awhile. So although we differ on what it turned out to be/was supposed to be, at least we both agree that it was awesome.

Also featured there: my gluten-free, sugar-free cornbread, which is SO TASTY. In fact, I was so pleased with my perfected recipe, that I submitted it on Allrecipes.com. Click here for the link!

Yesterday was a lazy Sunday in which I opted to go for a loooooong walk and listen to a sermon and stop at Starbucks instead of sitting in church. In which I cleaned my house, but only until I felt like making a new playlist instead. In which I watched Milo watching the sheep in the paddock outside our bedroom window. Can you see them? They're those dots by the barn in the back.

Thankfulness

Well it's not Thursday, but that doesn't mean I can't be thankful, right? Plus, Nolan and I were noshing tonight on some tasty new treats that NEED to be shared! I used my lunch break to
stop at the store and pick up some ingredients that sounded good today, and then I found some recipes that were just calling my name. My new favourite recipe blog, Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free, has some incredibly tasty treats, including one of the ones I made today (the other was a referral from the same blog).

The first treat was Honey Oat Lace Cookies. Made gluten-free, with natural sugars (honey) and the all-important orange zest, I tasted the first batch of these and immediately made a second. Mine were a little bit more like drop-cookies than lace cookies, but since I wasn't curving mine anyway, I think it was for the best. The same slightly chewy consistency of lace cookies was intact! See:

I'm telling you, that orange zest with the slight caramel taste is heavenly. As a sidenote: I used splenda because Safeway was out of palm sugar. And I don't really like the taste of the flour mix she uses, so I improvised with 1/8c almond meal, 1/8c corn meal, and 2tbsp brown rice flour. Tasty!

The next treat I tried was Almond Bark with Dried Cranberries. The key to this one is the sea salt sprinkled on top. The whole thing took about 3 minutes to make. So good with the tart cranberries and the dark chocolate!

As you can imagine, I had to ration out a very small amount of each treat tonight so we didn't get out of control with the deliciousness, which is something I'm trying to really hold myself to right now. I started a new "medication" of sorts this month, and not only has it majorly messed with my hormones, but the side effects: whew. First I was queasy all the time. Then I was tired. Now my appetite is raging (read: I eat all the time when I'm totally not even hungry, boo!) AND I've put on about 5 pounds, which for me is totally noticeable. I feel sluggish and heavy and hungry all the time. And yet: my doctor said "Oh yeah, that's normal and it should last about a month". What?! So bear with me, guys, if I whine a little: at least there is some really good cooking coming out of all this! Nolan wanted me to put the down comforter on our bed this week, and so I've been sweating my brains out at night because it's way too warm. But I have to admit that I wake up in sweat each morning and hope that I've at least sweated off some of this ridiculous water weight.

Anyway. A couple weeks ago I tried my first pottery painting class with some girlfriends. Since I've long been needing a spoon rest in my kitchen, I thought I'd make one! Here's how it turned out:

Overall I'm satisfied with it, though I seriously kind of hate the squiggly line. What possessed me to paint that? Oh well, at least it was fun and practical!

This week, I've been reflecting on how much I have to be thankful for. It's been tough these last 2 months now, and I'm finally coming up for air, it feels like. I guess I wasn't ready for what January would be like on top of December. So:

1. I'm so thankful that Nolan is done with trauma and back on a normal rotation. You guys. It was so miserable while he was on trauma. The small time I did get with him was like watching a zombie. The day he went back to the Emergency Dept. felt like the day I got my husband back, and boy was it awesome. It's so good to have sweet time together again.

2. I'm thankful that my project at work has an end in sight. It feels endless and mind-numbingly tedious, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that makes me feel like I can start breathing again.

3. I'm thankful for a little extra sleep these past few days. I like getting up early in the mornings, but it's been nice to sleep past 5am for a couple days in a row and wake up feeling a little more rested.

4. I'm thankful that my sister-in-law and my little niece/nephew are healthy! Some nausea, dehydration and a diagnosis of HG had us worried, but all seems to be well now!

5. I'm thankful for a little more time recently to do fun things like experiment with cooking and baking! I've made some AMAZING dinners and desserts this week (if I can be just a little cocky), and it's been so much fun to try new things!

What are you thankful for?