Long time, finally an update!

Easter weekend 2008

 Ryan and I joined the rest of my family for a weekend at my parents' home to celebrate our Savior's resurrection. Here are a few pics from our weekend...

That's the whole gang, including Dan's fiance Caroline, after an afternoon at our local Challenge Country

Here's a shot before our afternoon began :)

I think my brother and his fiance are so cute! Below they are telling the family their engagement story...

Above was Easter Sunday after church.

Here I am with my sweet husband! He is so amazing. I had such a nice week with him last week during his Spring Break, and now I miss him like crazy since he's back in school.

Above we are with my mom's parents, who came down for the afternoon Sunday.

We enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone. As usual, I didn't take enough pictures of our time together, but maybe next time I'll do better. :)

Artichokes!

Last night we decided to do a fun cooking project. This week we have been hosting Ellen, who is doing her last week of internship in the area to become a licensed dietician. We've had fun visiting with her, and since she enjoys cooking along with us, we spontaneously decided to try some new recipes. The major recipe was stuffed artichokes. None of us have prepared whole artichokes before, but thought it looked like fun! After Ellen got home from her day of interning last night she and I headed to the store for our ingredients and started our cooking project about 8 PM.

In case none of you have cooked with whole artichokes, here is a whole one before anything had been done to it (with Ellen in the background).

Above Ellen begins the artichoke prep, snipping the sharp tips off the leaves.

There were several stages to preparing the artichokes for stuffing (I made the stuffing, a feta cheese and sun-dried tomato recipe). Below is a picture of artichokes at each stage of preparation:

The one closest is the one ready to be stuffed. All photography credits go to my dear husband Ryan, who graciously took lots of pictures, made macaroni and cheese as a side dish, and did not complain about eating his supper at 10 PM last night!

I think artichokes are very pretty.

Above is an artichoke stuffed and ready for the oven! Yum.

Here they are just before going into the oven [above]...and here they are coming out [below]!

(Ellen holding her work of art)

Above is our supper last night: Stuffed artichokes, oven cauliflower gratin, and macaroni and cheese!

Eating artichokes is a messy job: you have to break off one leaf at a time and scrape the meat off with your teeth. The pile on the plate above is what is left after eating a whole artichoke.

Really, eating an artichoke is a lot of work. I was tired by the time I finished!

(Thanks, Ryan, for this awesome shot. lol.)

We finished off the meal with homemade vanilla ice cream. It was a fun night of cooking and fellowship. :)

Spring Break!

This week is Ryan's Spring Break! We are both enjoying a week in which he has no classes. I have taken the week off work as well (the first week I've taken off since last June), and it has been wonderful to sleep in every day, cook and bake together, and have time to do many things that have been on our to do list for weeks (or months!) now. I have decided you all deserve a little update on our lives as well, since you haven't heard from me in many months!

In November my car died and we were blessed with God's provision of a 2003 silver Camry as a replacement! We have also enjoyed road biking since our purchase of these bikes in October (although with our schedules we don't have time to do this very often):

(mine is blue and Ryan's is silver)

We love cooking and baking together, and this week has been the first opportunity to do some fun projects in a while. I made an angel food cake and Ryan used the yolks remaining to make some vanilla bean ice cream--yumm!

The home we have been renting since December is beautiful and has made it easier for us to host people and have more space and privacy than living in an apartment allows. I love having a bigger kitchen too!

We've been terrible about taking pictures (hardly have taken any the past few months), so this week we've tried to make up for lost time. :)

This picture is us before church on Palm Sunday:

(I know, a little overexposed, but we'll work on our camera skills this summer)

Yesterday we had a date night with a sweet couple in our church that lives across the street. We ate at P.F. Changs (I love that place and Ryan had never been), then just browsed at the outdoor mall nearby at the Apple store and Williams-Sonoma. It was fun! Here we are before leaving (sorry, didn't take the camera with us--I need a bigger purse to hide it!):

As you can see, my hair is now shorter than it has been in many years! I love it and it is much easier to manage with my current work schedule. Ryan likes it a lot too (or maybe he just likes the fact it isn't in a ponytail most of the time now).

That's all for now--I'll try not to let so much time go by before posting again!

I was browsing through old pictures today and found this one of me skydiving in 2005, just before Ryan and I were officially a couple. My adventuresome cousin Ben convinced me to drive out to Charleston, SC, one weekend to skydive with him. It was a blast. I even have the whole thing on video, thanks to a videographer jumping with me. :)

These days, life is a different kind of adventure. It is the adventure of juggling work and home as Ryan is obtaining his engineering degree. It is the adventure of trying a new recipe and discovering that is freezes well and is great leftover for my work and his school lunches. It is the adventure of trying to make a budget and the bigger adventure of trying to stick to it. These adventures may seem pretty boring to some, but really, they are what life is made of. Life consists of having a dream, a goal, and plodding away to obtain it. That's what God is teaching me to do: not only be content in, but take joy in the everyday stuff life is made of. As I write Ryan takes a physics final. Then he will spend the remainder of the week studying for a calculus final. I will pray and work as he studies, then we will enjoy several weeks of him not having to think about school! Hurray. I'm looking forward to that day in about 3 years when he will be finished with school completely. Until then, we will enjoy this phase of life.

Here are some pictures of me heading out to work at 5:15 AM...

Here's the chicken gumbo I made last week thanks to a great recipe from my father in law:

My wonderful husband proposed to me two years ago yesterday! He had a beautiful bunch of gerbera daisies waiting for me when I got home from work along with a wonderful meal of mashed potatoes, roasted turkey, and cranberry-almond salad. Topped with homemade coffee ice cream!!

He was so thoughtful to do all of that in the midst of studying for finals this week.

Yesterday was a tough day at work. I cared for a 24 year old who was declared brain dead after a massive stroke. It was so sad to watch his family and young wife of 6 weeks dealing with the shock and grief of everything. How does one comfort in such situations....? I pray God will comfort them. What a terrible time to lose a loved one. A reminder of the brevity of life.