Date Weekend!

Without really planning to Adam and I had an awesome weekend of dates last weekend!

On Friday I got a call from my old boss offering us matinee tickets to Hair the next day in San Diego and since we were free we gladly accepted! After a quick phone call to my mom for a babysitter we had it all worked out and Saturday at noon we took off to one of our favorite cities on the planet!

Our seats were pretty great {honestly, I think they were the best we have ever had!} and we had some very nice ladies behind us {who snuck in our first picture} take our picture just as the lights were dimming for the show to start! 

See how close we were! And right in the middle too! 

{Also, side note, right next to me was the WORST case of "Denim on Denim" I have EVER SEEN! However, he was sitting in the chair next to me, so I never got a picture to document, but just know, it was soooooo photo worthy!}

Back to the story....

Not having ever seen Hair before we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into... {awkward!} but it was a really good performance that had lots of audience involvement so that always mixes things up and makes it fun!

Then on our way home we stopped at In-n-Out and got a shake and fries, to have in the car, it was cute! :)

THEN... on Sunday, Adam and I went to see the matinee performance of the school play at the High School he works at. It was called Quilters, and seriously, it was fantastic!

I was really impressed by the fantastic performance and it made me so grateful for the things we have now {like cars and heaters and fire extinguishers}!  But at the same time the play made me think crazy things like "Maybe I should find a group of friends to do a "Dear Jane" quilt with me!" And who knows, maybe I will... {Shayne, what do you think?!}

Thank you Lori for a surprise, impromptu date on Saturday and to both our mom's for babysitting Mr. B!
{It's so nice to spend time just as "us" and come home to our happy, rested sweet little man!} 

the joy of an old camera card...

So, my mother-in-law came over the other day and said that she had found an old card for her camera and that there were some really old pictures on it that she thought I would like to see!

Holy Moly! Blast from the past!

3 days after returning home from Russia in 2006, Adam and I had plans to have dinner (our first date) but he told me his sister was in town for one day and wanted to know if I would mind having dinner with his family...

We still cook with that wok at least once a week! 

Those are brand new clothes I have on!
I had gained so much weight in Russia none of my clothes I left at home fit me so my mom took me shopping! 

And then on that same card was this...

Look at how little he was! 

Good (and totally random) trip down memory lane!  

4 Year Celebration

Thanks to Adam's mom, Adam's aunt and my mom we had child care and money to go out to dinner for our anniversary!

I picked the place, Stone Brewery World Bistro and Gradens in Escondido. We sort of missed it on our first pass, but after a quick U-turn and a walk down an enchanted pathway, we were there!

We had been wanting to try the place for a long time and it was so worth the wait!

We discovered the wonders of Kombucha (Adam order the ginger flavor, it was Amazing!) and I ordered a french press of tea along with the hummus of the day (cilantro and serrano - YUM!!)

For dinner Adam ordered the Buffalo steak (which was wonderful, but the real winner on the plate were the white cheddar mashed sweet potatoes, seriously, those things were unbelievable!)

And I ordered the Salmon over a butternut squash risotto cake - again, amazing, I seriously wanted to lick my citrus beurre blanc sause off my place!

And then for dessert we branched out a bit and were not disappointed! We ordered the Blueberry Blue Cheese Jalapeno Cheese Cake and our taste buds got the ride of their life! The cheese and the heat and the berry compote ... never had anything like it ever!

Thank for making this awesome night possible for us Mom, Mom and Aunt Kathy!

Disneyland

So, this kind of got lost in the shuffle of Valentine's Day and Bennett's birthday and dedication but this is nothing to just gloss over ...

Adam and I went to Disneyland ALL BY OURSELVES!!!!

Here's why. 

Some friends of mine from when I lived in Russia, 

(Cam and Sonja)

...who Adam and I drove to Washington for their wedding,

 ...and who currently live in Australia, were here in California for 3 days and 3 days only and we got to spend a whole day with them at Disneyland! So besides getting to have a fun "grown-ups only" day we also got to spend time with some fabulous friends we haven't seen in a really long time!

Oh but first, let me just tell you how rad God is! We have zero money these days, seriously, zero. But my cousin just so happens to have a job that enables him to sign people into the big D for Free!!! So, yeah, we got in for free, YAY!!!

Cam was doing some serious celebrating! 

The goal for the day was to go on rides that you can not go on while pregnant or with a small child! 

Funniest picture of the day!

 And basically we just acted like nuts all day! 

Did you know you could get custom Disney pieces for your Mr. Potato Head Doll? Fabulous!

We even got to have a fancy grown up dinner at Story Tellers and no one threw food on the floor or cried during dinner! I was in heaven!

Then we stayed to see World of Color

Don't get me wrong, we were EXHAUSTED the next day (we're getting old!) but it was still so nice to get away for a day and remember, "Hey, I still love you!" 

AND see old friends who we had a blast with!!! 

Valentine's 2011

A couple months ago Adam was going through some old music and found some songs he had written 5 or so years ago, one of them was for his wife.  So, he decided to record it for me and give it to me for Valentine's day. When I first heard the song I thought he had just recently written it because it seemed to fit us so well (and because I've always asked him to write me a song - for a second there I thought nagging actually worked!).  But then when I found out he had written it before we were even considering dating each other it just became all the more beautiful and special! THEN he got me a heart shaped pendent because I had told him that I always loved my grandma's and I wished I had one like hers. THEN he lined up a babysitter and took me out to one of my favorite restaurants, Airaya. 

We forgot to have the babysitter take a picture of us together like I had wanted to do, but here we are at dinner. 

That Adam, he's a good man I tell ya, a good man!  

Oh and PS. Bennett handed out Veggie Tales Valentines
He was pretty precious while "writing" them

Common Day of Learning.

(Woo hoo! I hit 4 blogs last month, which accomplished my goal of one per week. We'll see how this month goes)
So the other day my wife and I went to APU's common day of learning, a day of speakers and seminars when all the classes are canceled and most of the students bail and go to the beach. A friend of mine referred to it fondly as the common day of leaving. Well one of my favorite writers was the key note speaker so I took a "development day" off work to go see him.

We left Bennett with Grammie and made our way to Azusa, eating cold pizza and drinking hot chai. For the first session we split up. I went to a (to me at least) interesting class on the theological and philosophical ramifications of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics taught by two physicists and a philosopher/theologian. (Click the link, I dare you :) We watched a pretty awesome movie with "Dr Quantum" in it that takes a slightly simpler approach to the concepts.

Sarah went to a class on Culinary Leadership that was taught by her old R.D when she was an R.A. at APU. I liked my class but hers sounded pretty cool too. They talked about food, and what passes as food for most people today, and gave tangible small steps to take towards food health and independence. Every garden starts with one plant, eat only meals you can recognize ingredients in, fast meat for one meal a week. I think this class lead to my wife's desire to start a food garden and her revelation that she would be okay living on a farm. There was an amazing Ted Talks (an amazing site if you have never been - ted.com) with Jamie Oliver (of the Naked Chef) on teaching people about food. If you don't follow any other links,  invest the 15 minutes to watch the video. Its amazingly convicting and change inspiring. At one point he goes to a school where kids cant even identify basic fruits and veggies. 




After that we went and saw Dallas Willard who talked about knowledge informing faith, and what it looks like for Christians when we give up knowledge to "just have faith"


It was hard to pay attention, not because he was boring, but rather it was, as Sarah put it, rather like reading one of his books. He speaks clearly and succinctly, and every word matters to his ultimate point. Its worth watching if you have 40 minutes or so. Its on iTunesU so if you click this link it will open up iTunes to download it.

Click here to download some D. Willard.

We then went and had lunch at The Hat. Split a pastrami and an order of fries.

Then we went to a panel on the differences and commonalities between the Catholic and Protestant views of the Sacraments. There was a Protestant English professor, a Catholic English professor, a Protestant theology professor, and a Catholic priest on hand for discussion. Pretty much every one agreed that though most Protestant churches acknowledges 2 (and some times three) sacraments and the Catholic church acknowledges seven, the Christian life is supposed to be a sacrament of constantly turning towards God. And two of them confessed to taking the Eucharist at a catholic church without being catholic (though one eventually became Catholic)

We skipped out on the last session to beat the traffic, but stopped at Kelly's for some iced chai before we left. We made it home in pretty good time. All in all a pretty nice day.

6 Months of Wedded Bliss

Yes, it's true, Adam and I have been married for 6 months now, so we decided to have a little celebration!

After church on Sunday we took off over the Ortega's and made our way to the Ramos House Cafe in San Juan Capistrano. The Ramos House has always been a special place for us, being "the place you take a girl if you want to impress her" (as said by Willy and Alison Bravenec) and Adam did take me there while we were dating - and he did impress me!

So, Ramos House for Sunday Brunch was fabulous! We both got the amazing Salmon plate of wonderfulness for our starter (SO GOOD!!!) and for our main dish Adam went for the breakfast side of Brunch while I went for the lunch side. Anyhow, it was fabulous!

After brunch we had some time to kill before being back that the church by 3:30 so we walked around down by the mission. We looked at a $2000 mirror with hand carved wooden frame and thought "Hmmm, why are we looking at this stuff?" So, we moved onto the giant antic story down the way and had so much fun looking at old tools, cameras, books, (one book called "The Fabulous Barbie and Her Boyfriend Ken" contained a chapter called "The Size 10 Dress" I didn't have time to read it all but I had a good laugh!) jewelry, aprons, tea cups, swords, crosses, armor and hats! Well, we did more than just look at old hats - we tried them on too!

After the antic store we did a little more walking around, found a cool kitchen store with tons of random stuff you would never really need in your kitchen; we also (again) morned the loss of Diedrich Coffee and did not purchase anything from the Starbucks that is now in it's place. As I said earlier, we had to be back at the church at 3:30 so by this time we were thinking we should head back - thus we did.

The reason we had to be at church at 3:30 was because we were helping Glen and Koni (known as "the Prior's" in the earlier blog) cook dinner for the young married group that started last night at the church. The turn out was less then we expected (Only Nicolle and Abe and Raul and Shayne showed up) but it was really, really great! We had dinner and just talked. It felt like community. The group will only meet on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month and the plan is to invite couples who have been married a long time and want to share wisdom with us young folks. But also, the group will always have a time set aside to pray for one another, which is about the only structure and planned activity to the whole group - yay! Last nights conversation was filled with stories of couples meeting and husbands coming to know the Lord, it was cool. Afterwords, Nicolle and Abe and Raul and Shayne came over for ice cream/soy dream (we sort of forgot about that in the "cooking dinner" part of the prep work) but Glen and Koni had to be home so they weren't able to come over. So, it was really fun, and we are glad that we went and hopefully we will be inviting some other people to come and join us the next time we meet.