Thankful Thursday

Mmm. It's almost the weekend, and that means more time for cooking. Last weekend we experimented with paleo french toast. No, I'm not strictly paleo. But a lot of the recipes line up with the clean eating we try to maintain, so there you go.

We'd been jonesing for french toast, so I found this recipe to make the "bread", which was spongy and delicious, and the absolute perfect texture when browned in the pan with coconut oil for a few minutes. This is a picture right after it came out of the oven:

And this is after browning slightly, covering in homemade spiced strawberry sauce, and coconut milk. Yum!

The next morning I made healthy, fresh granola sans the oils and sugars, and it was so delicious! I just finished off eating the batch this morning with some soymilk at work, and it was oh so good. So needless to say, I'm excited about the weekend. Plus I have fun things to look forward to: a double date, mountain biking, lunch with a girlfriend...getting ready for our trip next Friday (EEEEEE!!!).

This week we went to our scuba class on Tuesday night after work. Nolan picked me up, we googled some random Chinese restaurant, which turned out to be fantastic, and then we stopped at 7-11 for ice cream bars. Oops. At least we burned off all those calories in the pool for 5+ hours, right?

Scuba was...awesome. It came so naturally, and we found that we were finished with each skill before everyone else in the class, so that bodes well. Being "weightless" and able to breathe normally underwater and play around without surfacing was so fun! Nolan and I were playing catch with a bowling ball for awhile on the bottom, and throwing it as hard as we could at each other. Probably the only circumstance in which we could do that. What I'm not sure about is the ear-clearing thing. I had ear-issues as a little kid, and have never been able to go beyond 7 feet even in a pool without a lot of pain. So I was nervous. With some help from our instructor, I was able to SLOWLY get down to 12 feet (how deep the pool was) and be totally comfortable. But it did take a few minutes, and Nolan was so patient as I waited for the air spaces to slowly equalize. I'm hoping if I just take it slow when we go deeper (60 feet, yikes!), it won't be a problem. But I'm still nervous about it. And so excited. Keep your fingers crossed.

With that:

1. I'm thankful for vacation coming up soon! We're already planning to rent a scooter, snorkel, scuba dive, explore ruins, hike through the jungle, and enjoy the Caribbean for 10 days. w00t.
2. I'm thankful for exciting things happening with people I love. Whether it's having babies, or getting married, or new job opportunities, I love when good things happen to good people. And I'm thankful to have so many of those in my life.
3. I'm thankful for grace. I know I'm a total doof and don't deserve anything from God, or even from those I love...but somehow I receive it anyway. Amazing.
4. I'm thankful for alone time. I'm totally a people-person, but you know sometimes it's nice just to have some time without a schedule or company to just...sit. Last weekend I had to spend a few hours working, but other than that I did things like...take a nap. And do an hour-long stretching "workout" with a cup of tea. It was glorious.
5. I'm thankful for you, who care enough to keep up with this piddly piece of my life. You each mean a lot to me!


What are you thankful for?

Thankful Thursday

I can't even believe that August is halfway over. I waited months and months to wear shorts and flip-flops and now I'm looking forward to pulling out my pumpkin recipes and chili and soups. The year is slipping by quickly, and I've already begun thinking of christmas! So many things to look forward to. This week, I'll try to focus on the present a bit:

1. I'm thankful for our upcoming vacation! Just two weeks from now, we'll be almost to Roatan, and ready to go deep under the sea! I'm excited...and a little bit nervous. But I'm so thankful we have time together to do fun things like this!
2. I'm thankful for good work at my job. I like having challenging tasks to keep my mind engaged.
3. I'm thankful for great weather! It's been really warm, but not unbearably hot. In fact, tonight I don't even have the A/C on (woohoo!), but I'm comfy enough to sit here with wet hair and not get a chill.
4. I'm thankful for Nolan. He's just my favourite person and I have so much fun with him. I can't even say how lucky I am.
5. I'm thankful for friends that keep me challenged. Whether it's working out together or just talking and encouraging each other, they're really special.

What are you thankful for?

comings and goings

Recently, we decided it was time to up our coffee game. We normally love our brewed coffee, and we'll sometimes make a poor man's latte (extra-strong coffee with hand-beaten hot milk). So I finally ordered us a real setup. We picked up the Italian espresso maker (for the stovetop!), and a milk frother to get our milk nice and foamy:

As you can see, the frother definitely works. I like my nice, thick layer of foam!

This weekend was pretty exciting. Birthday party on Friday night, then while Nolan slept off his nightshift, I got up and went mountain biking with my friend Erin at Arastradero Preserve, and it was amazing! I'm definitely in the market for my own mountain bike now.

After that, Nolan and I went to our favourite Indian buffet in Sunnyvale, and tried out geocaching for the first time! We found two geocaches, but are definitely going to try some trickier ones next time. We felt a little bit like James Bond or something, pulling out hidden cylinders in bricks and finding hidden messages. Fun!

What the app looks like while using it. The blue dot is us, the green is the geocache.

Our first geocache! It was literally a cylinder hidden in a brick that we had to find.



Our second find - it was tiny! Hidden stuck under a bench.

  

On Sunday, we randomly drove up to the ranch to visit with my parents and get in some whitewater rafting, tasty food, fun, roasting marshmallows over the new firepit and stargazing during the last bit of the meteor shower. The super-relaxing night was somewhat broken up by the boys trying to figure out a complicated math problem. It started with my dad asking Nolan random questions and ended with a question that stumped them both - something about what latitude you'd have to fly at while going 500mph to keep the sunset on your horizon. I don't know. The stargazing immediately ended and they both rushed inside to scribble formulas on paper and finally deciding to just drape a piece of yarn over a globe and find their answer. That was my cue for bedtime.

Last week I found a delicious recipe and had to share the pictures because it was that good! I'd been craving my mom's tomato tart, but didn't have the recipe and wanted to make a clean-eating version (more or less). So I started with a delicious almond meal crust, using sea salt, coconut oil, italian herbs, etc.

Before baking the crust.

Then I added a super thin layer of plain, nonfat greek yogurt. I covered it with fresh minced garlic, and sprinkled mozzarella cheese over that. Then I put freshly-sliced tomatoes on top of that, covered with fresh basil leaves (yum!), and another sprinkle of sea salt.

  

It was so delicious! I'm totally making it again this week.

 We tested out our snorkels when we were up there in the pool, and practiced using our masks and equalizing our ears, etc. Our scuba class is next week, and I'm already feeling nervous! So much to remember! So little time to do my coursework! But it will be so worth it - our vacation is just a week and a half later! EEE!!!

Thankful Thursday

Last weekend I went up to my parents' home to visit with them and my brother, and to meet my bro's girlfriend, Rachael. We went berry-picking, we went kayaking at Stumpy Meadows, had a fun BBQ with friends, and packed the weekend full of activities! Here's a pic I took of them when we went down to Coloma by the river.

Nate and Rachael

I've been a little absent from the blog world lately, as I've been keeping busy, and it's been great. I have a lot to be thankful for:

1. I'm thankful for productivity at work. I love being busy, and it was slow there for awhile. It feels good to be stressed out again, hah!

2. I'm thankful for our fun vacation coming up in less than a month! We're headed to Roatan, Honduras, and Guatemala for scuba diving, exploring, and relaxing! EEEEEEEEE

3. I'm thankful for a loving family, and how open and honest we can be with each other. So few relationships in this world can match that of family.

4. I'm thankful for relaxing times this week. It's been nice to get stuff done for vacation, around the house, and seeing friends and being able to decompress. I'm still lacking in sleep, but that's my own fault for exercising so early in the mornings. 

5. I'm thankful for Nolan's schedule right now, even though he gets home at my bedtime. It means he gets up when I'm done with my workout, and we have a bit of morning together before we have to leave for work. It's been nice.

What are you thankful for?

odds and ends

Before we left for Oregon, I happened to burn myself on the oven while taking a zucchini lasagna (yum!) out, and since it was pretty bad, Nolan whipped out his fancy numbing lotion and clear sealing bandage and fixed me up. After 10 minutes it felt much better, and when I woke up I couldn't feel it at all! There are perks to having a doctor in the house :) 

Okay, and now for a few pictures from Oregon, though I'm really only posting a couple because they're all on facebook and there are just too many. This one is one of my favourites...cuddling with my nephew. He's so sweet and smells delicious and soft. I just want to pinch his little cheeks! Maybe I will...when he's older.

We also went for a walk through Stout Grove with Nolan's parents, who got married there! It's such a beautiful place, with the ancient redwoods towering over you what feels like miles in the sky. Gorgeous.

This Saturday was our 5th wedding anniversary, and we had kind of an adventurous day. We woke up and ate a tasty breakfast and had lattes together, then decided we'd go to Great America since we didn't have tickets to Les Miserables like we'd been hoping. So we printed the tickets and parking pass, drove down there, and sat in the parking lot outside the gates, because Nolan wanted to make sure some guy he'd contacted about Les Mis tickets had a chance to call him back. Sure enough, the phone rings, he says the 8pm tickets are ours to pick up at 1:30 (it was 11am at the time), and to meet him at the theaters. So we killed some time by eating lunch at a MiniGolf place and playing arcade games.

 

After arcade games, we picked up the tickets (Hallelujah!), went home and changed, and headed up to SF to visit our old neighbourhood, meet a friend at our favourite old boba place, stop for a few bits of dim sum along the way, and walk to Santung for our favourite dry-fried chicken! It was amazing. AND we found out that the dessert place next door is owned by the same owners, and actually serves everything on Santung's menu (they share a kitchen, so it's easy). So instead of waiting outside in line for an hour, we had immediate seats and were immediately served our food in the little place next door. That's a secret we're going to preserve!

After dinner (and okay, some Tuttimelon), we drove the scenic route through the park by where we got engaged, and then went downtown for Les Mis. I'm not even going to attempt to describe how incredible it was, because there are no words. If you're in the Bay Area, go see it. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day celebrating 5 amazing years of marriage with my soulmate. We've certainly learned a lot these 5 years, and I can't wait to have the rest of our lives together! Who knew it would be so easy to fall deeper and deeper in love with the same man each day after years together? Biggest surprise: I still find his messiness endearing (don't tell him, though!). I can't help feeling like God's spoiled me by giving me Nolan.

Some nights, you just have to have dessert for dinner, you know? Last night I polished off the delicious lemon coconut tart I made (thanks for another great, healthy dessert option, Anna!) and watched the Tudors as I hemmed another pair of Nolan's pants. It was the best dinner ever.

Just because this is adorable, here's a video I took of Nolan doing his special move, "The Gazelle" with our nephew. Works like a charm - we tried it on another baby a few days ago with similar results!

Friday, but I'm thankful all the same

It's been a busy week, with driving to/from Oregon to visit family, getting back to work, and running errands to get our house in order (it was a disaster). So it is no surprise to me, at least, that I've been MIA this week from here. I also had grand plans to post a bunch of pictures, but I still haven't wrangled them all together yet - not that there are tons anyway. This will happen soon.

For now, until I have a bit more time and can get those pictures on here, I'm just going to say that I'm so very thankful that I have such a wonderful family, both blood and in-laws. It's a rare thing to have such close relationships with both sides, and I don't take it for granted.

It's Friday afternoon, it's gorgeous and hot outside, and the weekend is here - tomorrow is our 5 year wedding anniversary, and I'm so excited to celebrate with my amazing husband!

Thankful Thursday

It's Thursday already again, and even though the minutes of each day this week have been draaaaggging by (they always do before vacation, don't they?), the days themselves have passed quickly. Which is kind of  a shame, because it means the days on vacation will pass quickly too. Sigh.

Ash has been here since Tuesday evening, and she's been commuting into the city with me by day and visiting art galleries, sitting in on classes at the Academy of Art, and meeting up with professors. Sounds like fun, eh? Last night we ate at Karakade with Nolan, Erin, and Susan, and calorie-splurged at froyo afterwards - I would eat Thai food EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE. Seriously. Also, you can tell that Nolan and I don't eat sugary stuff often, because when we got our froyo, everyone else filled their cups maybe half-full and put a few pieces of fruit on top...Nolan and I filled ours all the way up and put chocolatey goodness and nuts and peanut butter chips and stuff on ours. Hey, if you're going to splurge every once in awhile: go big or go home, y'all.

But now I'm tired thinking of all that food, so let's move onto healthier things:

1. I'm thankful for vacation coming up! And I mean this mini-one that starts this weekend, but also our fantastic one in September. Woohoo!
2. I'm thankful for information. I feel like I'm one of those ignorant people who just kind of cruises along believing something until someone tells me otherwise. It drives Nolan crazy. Google really is my best friend in these cases, and I learn something every day. For example: all my life I thought I couldn't equalize my ears (and therefore probably never scuba). We were reading up on scuba tips a few days ago (that's a hint about our fun vacation!), and I found out that there are other, better ways to do it. I tested it out, and voila! Cue an eyeroll from Nolan.
3. I'm thankful for flexibility at my job. For example: though I can't wear jeans to work, I don't have to wear a suit. I also can walk into the office in flip-flops (as long as I change into heels once I'm at my desk!), which significantly improves the quality of my commute. I remembered this yesterday when I wore 4-inch heels to work from home :( I also love that I don't have to be in at or stay until a certain time. And that I can work from home sometimes. The list goes on and on.
4. I'm thankful for how fun Nolan is. I could never, ever be married to or remotely happy with someone who didn't like to play and just be silly sometimes a lot.
5. I'm thankful for our weather. It seems to be really crappy almost everywhere else in the country right now, and where we live, is just perfect. Hot, but not miserably. Nice and cool in the mornings and evenings. I also appreciate wearing flip-flops year-round. It's the little things, you know?

What are you thankful for?