January

Oh my goodness, so far I am not doing good with my New Year's resolution to write more of these posts!!!  This is only my 2nd one of 2019... NOT a great start!!  Haha.  I'll try to do better.  I am doing GREAT with my resolution of cooking more though!!  We've been eating at home a LOT more.  I'm doing pretty good (but not great) at my resolution to eat more vegetables, and I'm NOT doing well with my resolution to exercise more.  So... I've definitely got some work to do!! 

Our weather has been SO back and forth this month!  We've had single digits and snow, and we've had 60 degrees and rain.  Today we are getting snow, and I think tomorrow too... and I think Thursday is supposed to be crazy cold (like 0 degrees F or maybe negative??). 

We've gone into the city 3 times this month!  Crazy.  We were there for January 1 (Mummer's Parade) which I already posted about in the earlier post this month, and then we went into the city again on January 5th for dinner at a VERY fancy restaurant for Kevin's aunt's 60th birthday, and then we were in the city again on January 19th for a fundraiser at Monk's Cafe!  Monk's is an amaazing bar in the city that also has some really amazing food, and they were having a fundraiser to raise money for the Camp Fire Relief Fund!  They were donating 100% of all draft beer sales to the Camp Fire Relief Fund. It was totally making me emotional to see all the cash everyone was donating to the fundraiser.

Timmy, Kevin, and me at the Monk's Cafe fundraiser! 

These were the taps at the front bar, but they also had a lot more taps at the back bar!  They had a bunch of cool Sierra Nevada beers there for the event, and other beers like Pliny the Elder and Allagash were also part of the fundraiser! They also had 3 versions of the Resilience IPA from different breweries, and it was really cool to taste the difference between the 3 versions! 

City Hall!  I love this building so much. 

Boathouse Row!  They had all the lights green to support the Eagles.  

 Towards the beginning of January we also went to a brewery very close to our house called La Cabra, because they had Resilience IPA (this was before we even knew Monk's was going to have a fundraiser!), but it was already all gone!  So, we ended up just hanging out and having lunch and a beer or two. 

La Cabra!  It's a great little brewery.  

Guinness has been loving the winter weather we have been getting!  He looooves snow so much.  

 And nothing makes Guinness as tired as playing in the snow!!  He always passes out after running around in the snow.

That's pretty much our January!!  Lots of crazy weather, and lots of trips into the city.  Who's excited for the Super Bowl this weekend??  I REALLY don't want the Patriots to win.... I hate the Patriots, and I hate Tom Brady.  So, I will DEFINITELY be rooting for the Rams!  They've had a crazy amazing season, so it would be awesome to see them finish it off with a Super Bowl win.  Fingers crossed!  I still have to figure out what to make for our Super Bowl food!!  I have zero ideas right now... 

This weekend is also Guinness's birthday!!  Our sweet boy is going to be 6 years old.  Where does the time go?!  

I hope you all have a great rest of your week, and weekend!!  Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Adriana today!!!  

Hello 2019!

We're 6 days into 2019!  I'm hoping this is a year full of impeachments and indictments.  We shall see!! 

The end of 2018 was pretty great.  We went to Longwood Gardens on Saturday Dec 29, and it was sooo beautiful.  It was definitely crazy busy though, which was a little overwhelming at times!  We haven't gone to the Longwood Christmas lights in many years, so it has definitely gained popularity!! If we go again next year, we will for sure go on a weeknight so it's not as crowded.

We sat on a bench looking at this and talking while it got darker!  It was lovely and relaxing.

These trees were suspended above a pool!  

And now for some less impressive gardens... The cacti in our kitchen window have been blooming like crazy!  We have two Christmas cacti, and they bloomed almost exactly on Christmas!!  Crazy.  The larger one (in the orange pot) used to have light pink flowers, but somehow those were a beautiful light orange color with pink centers this year... I don't know how/why that happened, but I love it.  The smaller one (in the blue-ish pot) has bright pink flowers like it's always had.  

Look at those light orange flowers!!  With light pink centers... so pretty.

On New Year's Day we went into the city to meet up with Timmy (the guy who married us!), and Kevin and Timmy's friend from childhood Sarah and her boyfriend Rob.  Sarah and Rob have been traveling all over Asia for the last 18 months, and they just ended their trip and moved to Philly!   On New Year's Day Philly does the Mummer's Parade, which is always a great time. Sarah and Rob had never experienced it before, so they were loving it. 

 

I made a few New Year's resolutions this year (I always do), and one of them has to do with this blog!  I want to post more this year, because I really slacked last year!  I saw the counts, and I only did 25 posts last year!  And 37 the year prior.  So, I definitely want to do way more than 25 posts in 2019!  My other New Year's resolutions are to cook a lot more (we went out to eat wayyyy too often last year!!), and exercise more (I really slacked off at the end of the year), and eat more vegetables (this is a New Year's resolution almost every year!  I'm bad about eating enough vegetables).  The exercising more is not off to a good start, but I'm going to fix that very soon.  Cooking more is off to a pretty good start, and I decided the best way to do this is to plan out the menu for the week and buy groceries over the weekend.  Last year we were pretty much winging it every day, which led to a LOT of fast food and going out to eat.  So, I definitely did some cooking last week (yay!), and for this next week I have a bunch of meals planned and we shopped for everything today!  If anyone has any amazing recipes we should try (especially if vegetables are involved!!), feel free to email them to me!! :)  

It doesn't look great, but trust me it's amazing!  It's a soup with orzo pasta and chicken meatballs.  It's sooo delicious. 

I hope you all are having a great 2019 so far!!