The Fourth Saturday

The fourth Saturday of January fell on the 25th - which also happened to be mine and Jon's 10 year anniversary of dating!

Every year Jon and I celebrate this anniversary by re-creating our first date in some form, or we mix it up and still do "fast food and a movie" but we pick something besides Taco Bell, and we go see a movie currently in theaters. (8 years was Sherlock Holmes and In-n-Out, Last year was the Squeeze Inn and Les Miserables)

THIS YEAR I had great plans. I was going to rent out a private screening and have them play Cheaper By The Dozen (which Jon wouldn't realize until we were there) and I was going to arrange to have Taco Bell food waiting there for us, or brought in during the movie. No expense and effort would be too much for celebrating 10 years in an epic way!!

Except that it turns out arranging a private screening is REALLY REALLY expensive. And if you don't already have your movie in the right format, you have to add an AV package for it to work with the projectors, and THAT is also really expensive. We're talking thousands of dollars here.

So I let Jon in on my plan. We decided instead to do our traditional "dinner and movie" date, but step it up and make it fancy.

First, we went to McCormick & Schmick's for dinner - which we had never been to. Thanks to some gift cards from Christmas we were able to dine in fanciness! It is definitely in our list of top 10 favorite restaurants. Everything was fantastic. Jon and I shared an appetizer of sushi grade seared tuna and an avocado tartar, then after delicious salads and awesome sourdough bread, Jon had the seared sea scallops and I had the stuffed Atlantic salmon. OH MY. So delightful.

Afterward, we headed over to Miabella for gelato. They have a really good sorbet selection, so I always have some good choices too :) We decided to take our gelato on a stroll as we went around The Fountains and back to our car.

 Well for a Saturday night it was getting pretty packed (as expected) and apparently parking was in high demand, because some old man started following us in his car (presumably to get our spot which he assumed we were walking towards) but seriously he was right behind us at a creeper pace following us at 3mph - a young man and his 7 month pregnant wife! - to our car... I mentioned quietly to Jon that we should just keep walking and walking. So we passed our car and went WAY down to the other end of the parking lot, and then crossed over to the path on the other side and walked ALL the way back. This guy would not give up! And he never even asked if we were headed to a car, or if he could have our spot. He just creepily kept following for a good 5+ minutes, which felt like an hour! Finally I think he figured we were just enjoying our date and so he split off in search of another parking place. I was just amazed at his stubborn insistence of following us like a stalker when Jon and I were just trying to enjoy our dessert. We had a really good laugh about that one. And were thankful that we were in a nice area and did not get kidnapped or shot :)

Next, we were going to go see a movie - BUT there was nothing that looked very good in theaters that we haven't already seen :( We decided instead to back up to our 8 year wedding anniversary that we just celebrated in November, and used our gift card to Color Me Mine and paint some pottery!!

We had never been there before, and had NO plan on what to paint.

In case you have never been there either, I will do a brief summary.

Color Me Mine is a "paint-your-own-pottery" studio. They have the pieces there ready to go and you pick out whatever you want to paint. Once you buy your pottery, you pick out your paint colors. Then you get to work! The possibilities are endless and when your creation is done, they clean up your mess and glaze your pottery during the week for you to pick up a few days later.

Jon and I picked out a chubby cookie jar for our family since we have never had one.

The colors we picked were a soft lime green, sea mist, and teal, with black for accents and writing.

Jon painted most of the jar green. Then I painted the lid and the front oval.

Jon added some embellishment to the knob on the top:

I did the wording on the front, and Jon worked on the decorative vines: 

 

 

We had a lot of fun creating together and designing everything as we went!

 Me with our finished cookie jar! (painted, but not yet glazed)

ages 26 and 28 - 10 years after our first date

We were super happy with the finished product. The glaze made all the colors pop and it looks so cool!

 Right now we have a candy stash in there, but we're looking forward to having our own kitchen again someday and filling it with delicious cookies :)

It was a great way to celebrate 10 years of togetherness and have a keepsake to launch us into the next 10 years - and beyond!

June Delights

June has never been my favorite month, or one that I really gave a second thought to - but THIS June so far has been full of a lot of things I love!

It's already Summer here in Loomis and we've been enjoying friend's pools and barbecues to beat the heat. The strawberry stands are open, and we're on evening walks more often while the air is still warm. My favorite!

Kate has been moving and crawling more than ever. She even gets up on all fours instead of just army crawling! It is so much fun to watch :)

Jon and I FINALLY got to see the theatrical Les Miserables in Sacramento!

dolled up for the theatre

Jon's parents got us tickets for Christmas, so we've had the receipt posted on the fridge for months. We were excited last week when we realized it was finally here!

Seeing Les Mis on stage was wonderful. The music was breathtaking and the humor was so captivating. I love seeing a story unfold on stage. There is something so fun about a play that you just don't feel in a movie. Jon and I are huge fans of live music and entertainment always, so it was right up our alley. PLUS we looked amazing ;) That's our kind of date night!

Last week I read The Great Gatsby. I know what you're thinking - you just NOW read The Great Gatsby?? Well, it was one of the few books from high school that I just didn't care about at the time. I didn't really give it the chance it deserved. Jon has a really awesome old copy of it, so I pulled it off the shelf and read it in a week. It was totally not what I expected and was beautifully written. Some of my new favorite quotes are definitely in that book. I will admit that the movie encouraged me to finally buckle down and read it. I definitely hate seeing a movie/book adaptation before reading the original. Hopefully I'll go out with my friend Bay in a couple weeks to see Baz Luhrman's version. I've heard mixed reviews, so we'll see!

Most especially awesome in this month of June... Jon was offered a teaching job!!

He will be teaching composition 1 and 2 (basically first level writing courses) at an accredited tech college in Natomas (Sacramento). I am so happy for and proud of him! He's been so discouraged looking for work, but he has never given up. This is such a great starting point for him to finally gain college level teaching experience. I know he is going to learn a lot, and we're super grateful to his awesome friend, Tess and her recommendation!

So far, this June is turning out alright :)

You are who you pretend to be

A few weeks ago, the chubs woke up nice and early. Because of Jon's ability to hear the footsteps of a mouse, he woke up with the chubs, and couldn't fall back asleep. Instead, he browsed through Netflix, and found Unicorn City...

 

 

and so our lives were changed forever.

 

I told my friends at work about it (being that they love Unicorns) and thus, our bacon/movie/magical creature craft night was invented.

 

Lindsay went above and beyond, finding pictures of the most majestic unicorns she could to cover the soda bottles. She even made unicorn horns for them and added a mustache to one! After all... what is a majestic unicorn without a handlebar mustache?

 

 

All of our cups had unicorn name labels. Mine has 2 unicorns to represent myself and baby Kate :)

 

 

We colored, decorated picture frames,

 

 

and made shrinky dinks! (Which sort of failed)

Notice how the shrinky dink with the rainbow has a unicorn with fangs and a maiden crying tears of blood. Epic.

 

Per Savannah's request, we also tried to make Unicorn poop cookies!

 

Step 1: separate the sugar cookie dough into 6 parts and color each chunk with food coloring so that it resembles the colors of the rainbow.

 

Step 2: arrange the cookie dough in rainbow order inside a plastic baggie, and then squeeze it through the cut off corner so that it looks like... well... poop.

 

 

Although they looked good going IN the oven, they totally turned into flat cookie mush! I think it was partially because of the food coloring that they never really set up. So we just ate the warm sugar cookie mush straight off of the cookie sheet with forks :)

Me, Savannah, Shayla and Lindsay

We had so much fun that "Magical Creature" night is going to become a monthly event! Next time? BIGFOOT.

 

***

 

Speaking of things we like to pretend we can do...

 

on Saturday we were in Sacramento with Johnny and Ari when Johnny told us about this 6 pound noodle challenge. It's pretty much just what it sounds like. One must eat 6 pounds of noodles in 15 minutes. Johnny really thought he could do it.

 

He started off with some stretches (see the action shot on the left)

 

But the noodles were intimidating...

 



 

Johnny held the chubs so that we could really see how large this noodle bowl was comparitively... it really just looked comical.

 

He was allowed to let the food cool down a little. And with the first bite, the time started!

 

Ari, being the good fiance that she is, kept the time and when Johnny felt like he was getting overwhelmed, she was there to shove his face back down into the noodle bowl.

 

Johnny strategically maneuvered the noodles into smaller bowls as he went for optimal air flow and cooling. Meanwhile, the Katherine took her afternoon nap on the bench in between me and Jon. What an awesome baby :) She can sleep anywhere!

 

Ari was really getting a kick out of Johnny's noodling. I seriously have never seen him so focused.

 

AND TIME IS UP!

 

Ari tried her best to console Johnny, but let's face it... that bowl is still AT LEAST half full.

 

It was a good effort.

 

We finished off the night at Rick's Dessert Diner

 

We took our desserts to go and headed home to watch... (you guessed it)

 

UNICORN CITY!

 

 

Double dates will never be the same.

Choose Your Own Adventure

So this Valentine's day (our 9th together) was the best ever! I really don't think it can be topped.

It started off with Margo making a candy poster for Jon. It was by the door when he left for work in the morning, because he gets up at 5 :)

It says: To my daddy, reasons I love you: You are a NERDFIGHTER and make me SNICKER when you tickle me. I love to snuggle BETWIXT you and mommy at NIGHT. (even when you ROLOVER on top of me.) If I could give you one thing, it would be the STARS. If I ever lost you, my heart would break into a million PIECES. Happy Valentine's day! Loves, Margo.

She has become quite the pup with words.

"oui, oui"

When I woke up at 7, I was surprised to see THIS!

Jon wrote on the glass table: "Happy Valentine's Day -sorry, I don't do cards..."

And in the middle was a heart with that awesome tiny box!

I didn't want to open it without him there, so I waited all day (and wondered about it while I was at work) and opened it that afternoon when we were both home together.

I look concerned here below, but I was really surprised and wowed! I had no idea what it could have been. I was totally impressed when I opened up the box!

It's a ring! White gold, amethyst (because purple is my fav color) and little diamonds on the side:

I love it! I was excited because it's different from any of the jewelry I own. I also like that Jon picked it out on his own and that it is a teardrop shaped stone, which I don't have any of. I also liked that he got me some jewelry in my fav color, because I don't have anything awesome and purple like that. I also liked that it was small and simple - perfect for Valentine's day. Fantastic job, honey!! 

BEFORE that though - when Jon got home - there was a scavenger hunt waiting for him. It took him to the car, all around the apartment, into the fridge and finally underneath the couch where THIS was waiting for him:

I made him a "Choose your own Adventure" book!

Each section was sealed so that he couldn't look ahead. The biggest rules were that he couldn't take anything back once he had made a choice.

I had planned out quite a few scenarios for the night. The first was dinner. As he picked the choices, based on vague clues, there would be more and more options as the night split on...

So for dinner - do you wear fancy pants, or go casual?

I had designed the book so that the pages were folded in. He only could see the clue on the outside, and then once he picked his choice (in this case, he chose fancy pants) he actually had to cut the fold to see what he chose. Inside was revealed that we would be going OUT to dinner!

We changed into our "fancy pants" (in my case, a new cute black dress from my bestie, Breanna) and headed to Bistro 33!

The other choice (go casual) was making dinner together at home. From there, we had 2 options for dessert out. (A new place far from the restaurant, or dessert there at the restaurant) If we had stayed home there were 2 options for dessert in (hot fudge banana split sundaes - his favorite - or baking lava cakes together). I always let him look at what the other choices would have been after he made his decision. Luckily every way he picked was a good option, so it wouldn't have turned out badly - but it was still fun to see his reactions!

We ended up going to Pinkberry for dessert. (We had never been there and I got a fruit cup since I can't have yogurt) we also went to see The Muppets at the $3 theater (the other choices were a rented movie, or mini golf, or bowling) and then ended the night with s'mores at home! (the other choice was stargazing) Thanks to both my dad and Jon's dad for helping provide the firewood, kindling and camping forks!

mmmmmmmm......

I had also written Jon a cheesy rhyming poem which I gave to him at dessert :) and for his final present at the end of the night I gave him a book.

We had such a fun time and it was the best when Jon said at dessert "you know you can't ever top this, right??" Oh yes, I know that I really outdid myself this year. But it was needed!

Everything worked out so much better than I really even expected it to. Looking back, it was the most fun date / Valentine's day yet! I can't wait to see what we try to come up with next year :)



6 Years of Being Rad

Friday (November 18) was mine and Jon's 6 year wedding anniversary!

Our plans for our anniversary changed many times over the past year. At first we wanted to go on a road trip down California's Coastal Hwy 1 starting up in Oregon and coming all the way down to below San Francisco. Then when I changed jobs and we realized we didn't have time or money to do that we thought about going to Tahoe for a day or two. Realizing that this would also cause us to want to buy a lot of things, we decided to stay home and go to a really fancy dinner instead :)

Enter: The Melting Pot. I had only been to this restaurant once before when we had desserts for my bachelorette party. So this was the first time that Jon and I had a REAL fondue dinner. It was basically 4 courses of awesome.

Spinach Artichoke cheese fondue with chips, breads, veggies and granny smith apples:

Jon had never tried apples and cheese before! So this was a great adventure for him. He loved it :) How did I survive a cheese fondue appetizer course, you ask? Lots and lots of lactaid pills. I risked it, and luckily everything turned out just fine :)

The second course was a salad. And let me just tell you... one thing some of you may or may not know about me: I. LOVE. wedge. salads. Like, I really really love them. I think they may be one of my most favorite foods in the world. I know it sounds silly, because it's really just a salad that you put together yourself. But for some reason I drool over them every time. I have never ever had a bad wedge salad, and if there is ever the option for one on the menu, I always go with the wedge!

The Main Event:

Contrary to my previous, uneducated belief... all fondue is NOT cheese or chocolate. In fact, the main course is all raw meats that you cook via fondue at your table. The base is usually a broth of some sort and then spices and seasonings are added, creating a boiling tub of fantasticness to cook your meal in. Our course included sirloin steak, teriyaki steak, shrimp, sushi grade tuna, and chicken along with sides of veggies and potatoes. The amazing dipping sauces that you see above included a gorgonzola sauce, chive sauce, plum sauce, teriyaki sauce, spicy cocktail sauce (which was an interesting experience of simulated fire inhalation for me...) and some other sauce that I don't remember because it wasn't my favorite so I mostly avoided it haha.

This dinner ended up being in my top 5 of most favorite dinners of all time. It was so much fun and absolutely delicious! Every part of it was amazing, and it was even more fun to spend a real date night with Jon having good conversation and talking about the past year.

 

We ended with a dark chocolate flaming turtle dessert fondue (complete with pound cake, rice crispy treats, strawberries, bananas, brownies, cheesecake, oreo covered marshmallows, etc to dip with) and then went to a comedy show in Sac at Comedy Sportz! We've been a couple times since one of Jon's friends plays at the venue. It's pretty fun and it's all ages, so the improv is clean and family friendly.

 

Of course, Jon let Johnny (the ref for the night) know that it was our anniversary and told him that anything he could do to embarass me would be appreciated. Of course I was called on stage for one of the skits (having NO previous idea that this would be happening) and performed a gibberish opera with one of the teams. Jon wasn't able to find my camera fast enough to record it, but the venue did take a picture of me in costume with the players, so that should be posted on their FB page soon for any of you who would like to check it out.

 

Thank you, Jon, for making this anniversary an awesome one! I can't believe it's been 6 years already. Only infinity to go :)