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!!

Christmas!!

Oh my goodness, how is Christmas over already?!  This month has seriously flown by. 

Earlier this month I flew to CA for a few days to surprise my brother for his 40th birthday!!  It was SUCH a quick trip, especially since I still had to work because I'm completely out of PTO for this year!  But my boss was nice enough to let me switch around some work-from-home days, and she was totally ok with me heading to CA to be there to surprise my dear brother.  I got in very late Wednesday night (I left after work), and then I had to work on Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday we had a surprise party for Brad!!  And then I left very early Sunday morning.  It was a whirlwind trip!!  Trips to CA always go by way too quickly, but this one was wayyyyyy faster than any other trip!! 

The night of the 22nd (Saturday) we hosted a party at our house, so that whole day we were cleaning and prepping for that.  We were exhausted by the time the party started!!  It was a really fun time though, and it was really great to have people over to our house for Christmas!!  We've never done that before!! 

Sunday (the 23rd) during the day I did a bunch of Christmas baking (3 kinds of cookies, plus fudge), and Kevin met up with his friend from high school that lives in L.A. now, and he was just home for the first time this year!  Sunday night Kevin and I got to hang out at home together, so we watched It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street (the old one, NOT the new one... I can't stand the new one, but the old one is one of my favorite Christmas movies!!).  Kevin and I had not seen It's a Wonderful Life in sooo many years, and we both really loved it this time around.  It was SO great!!  I feel like I never appreciated it when I was younger... Maybe it's one of those that you have to be a bit older to fully appreciate. We also made some pasta and homemade alfredo, and had a lovely evening of relaxing in front of the fire while watching movies :)  It was perfect! I'm so happy we got some time for us. 

Christmas Eve Kevin and I both had to work all day, but after work we drove over to Kevin's parents house and spent the evening there hanging out with Kevin's family.  Christmas morning we were able to just hang out at home and have a nice relaxing morning.  We made cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

We have watched a LOT of Christmas movies!! Here's our list:  Scrooged, Bad Santa, The Grinch (Jim Carrey version), The Grinch (old cartoon version), Santa Clause is Coming to Town, The Year Without a Santa Clause, Rudolph, Frosty, Elf, National Lampoons Christmas, Muppet Christmas Carol, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Die Hard (it counts!!), Love Actually, Prep and Landing (thanks Lizzy and Claighton!!), The Man Who Invented Christmas (it was pretty good!), Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, The Holiday, Home Alone 1 and 2, and Charlie Brown Christmas. That's 23 movies!! 

I was terrible about taking pictures, so I'm sorry this post is picture-free!  This weekend we're going to Longwood Gardens to see the lights, so I'll take pictures of that!!  And I'll do the Bucket List update too :)  Love you guys!!!

Christmas is Coming!

You guys!  I'm getting so excited for Christmas!  I can't believe it's only a few weeks away!  I feel like October, November, and the first bit of December have all gone by SO quickly! 

Our house is looking VERY Christmasy, and I'm loving it.  We went and got our Christmas tree on December 1st, and we decorated it that evening!  We also put our lights up on the house that day because we actually had pretty good weather.  Here are some pictures of our tree and our inside decorations!  I'll take some exterior pictures soon. 

Here's our Christmas glasses and a few little plates and bowls!

Here are all of our Christmas mugs!  So many good ones.  There's a Homer Simpson one for McGee right in front there, and we both love the Bumble one of course, and I love that adorable Mickey and Minnie one on the left!  

Some gifts made by the amazing Lindsey! 

Here are a few of our pillows!

Our fireplace!  This makes me so happy!

Some decorations on a side table, including an adorable picture of my nieces when they were little! 

Our tree!!  I think this is our best tree yet!!  I love it so much, and it makes me so happy. 

I've worked on making a few Christmas presents this year!  I'll try to show some pictures of some others later, but here's one I made for my Uncle Jim!  He loves A Christmas Story. 

I also made a Bucket List for Christmas! I have SO many movies I want to watch this year, but I will just tell you them as I watch them because it does not fit nicely on the list!  So far we have watched Bad Santa, Scrooged, Elf, and the Jim Carrey version of The Grinch!  So, 4 out of 24! :)  We are going to have a fun month!!  Here's my Bucket List: 

Love you all, and I hope you're having an amazing December so far!!

Quick Thanksgiving Recap!

Wow, November seriously flew by SO fast!!  That was crazy!!  Kevin and I went to CA for a week to have Thanksgiving with my family, and OH MY GOSH we had such a great time!  We went to Sacramento twice to try to see some friends and family, and the rest of the time we hung out in Oakdale and had a really great time!  I love being at the ranch - It's so peaceful and relaxing!  And Thanksgiving dinner was AMAZING of course - Wow can my mom cook!!  It was delicious.  I loooved getting to spend some quality time with my family, and my nieces are growing up way too quickly!! It was so fun getting to hang with them. 

Here's my parents' sweet dog Maggie!  

I never posted about our Thanksgiving decorations!  Here's a bunch of pictures: 

 I'm sorry it took me so long to post about Thanksgiving!  Crazy.  I'll do a December post soon!!

Our Halloween! And don't forget to vote tomorrow!

Hey guys!  I can't believe we're already about a week into November!  Crazy!  And on that note, don't forget to vote tomorrow!!  It's such an important election, so please please please vote.

Our Halloween was pretty good. It started out GREAT, and I was having so much fun hanging out outside with McGee and our neighbor Ed, and giving candy to trick-or-treaters.  We bought full-sized candy bars to hand out for the first time ever, because Amazon had an amazing deal, so we were like "Let's go for it!".  So, the kids were loving it, we were getting a good amount of trick-or-treaters, and it was super fun! But... 

Then McGee went in our house to use the bathroom at around 7:30pm... and this van of kids pulled up (so they weren't even walking around the neighborhood... they were just driving around).  One 17-year-old-ish kid got out, along with 4 other kids that ranged all the way down to about a 5-year-old kid.  So, 5 kids, aged 5 to 17.  Well, they came over to me and I was like "Hey guys!  Happy Halloween!  Go ahead and pick one!".  Well, these kids started grabbing handfuls of the full-sized candy bars.  And I was like, "No wait!  Just grab one, you guys!", and they were all still going back for more candy.  They basically told me "No, we're going to take more than one", and I had to pull my bucket away as they were still reaching for it and grabbing more.  I told them again that they were just supposed to take one and they again told me no, and I was so frustrated that I actually went into one of the kid's buckets and grabbed some of the candy bars (he had literally taken 8 of our full-sized candy bars), and I grabbed like 6 of them back.  But while I was doing that the oldest kid was reaching back in for more.  They finally felt like they'd taken enough and left me to go across the street to Ed.  So, it was truly awful.  They took almost all of our candy, and I felt totally violated and pushed-around and sad.  We ended up having to borrow some candy from our neighbor Ed so that we had candy to give to the rest of the trick-or-treaters for the night.

Our front window! 

Our front door! 

Our pumpkins in the daylight!  It was about 5:30 when we went out there and started getting trick-or-treaters! 

Our set-up!  We also added some bat-shaped lights to our table once it started to get darker, but I forgot to take a picture of those! 

Here's the sweatshirt I wore!  I had to cover it with a jacket later in the evening when it got really cold. 

Our pumpkins once it got dark!  Mine is on the left, and McGee's is on the right. 

I've taken a bunch of pictures of our neighborhood lately because it has been pretty glorious to look at!  So, get ready for an overload of trees/leaves pictures:

This is just up the hill from our house, looking down the next street!

Further down that same street... 

And further down that street again! (it's a very long street)

Just around the block from us. 

Our house and our yard!  You can see our pumpkins on our front porch! 

Around the corner from us!  And this isn't a filter or anything... Those are the ACTUAL colors of the leaves! (they almost look like flowers, but they're leaves!)  

So tomorrow is election day and I feel excited to vote but very nervous/anxious about the results.  I am planning on doing some cooking when I get home from voting (I get to leave work at 2pm tomorrow thanks to a crazy project I was working on last week!  I get to leave 2 hours early one day as a reward, so I'm choosing tomorrow so I can hopefully avoid long lines).  I'm going to make a version of shepherd's pie for dinner because it'll make me focus on something besides election results for a while :)  It'll help calm me, hopefully!!  I love you all, and I hope you had a great Halloween!  Don't forget to vote tomorrow!!