HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYLEA!

So I have this sister and we have lots of fun together.

For a little bit we lived in the same town together.

And laughed a whole whole lot.

One day, we decided to go to Costco.

And we got two polish dogs and two diet cokes.

And proceeded to take pictures of ourselves making ourselves laugh laughing with straws in our mouths.

We're rediculous.

But I love her so much.

HAPPY 2-1!

**Sorry this post is a day late. I blame the loss of my Mac. If you didn't text/call/post on fbook Happy Birthday to her yesterday, I highly suggest you do so now. **

even computers have sick days.

But as of this evening, my computer will be in an Apple shop being tested and scrutinized to see what's wrong. The trackpad isn't working, not following my finger and randomly acting like I'm right-clicking on it.

LAME.

So the only computers we'll be using are the one's downstairs in the library room of the Barlow Center. We didn't bring our camera cords since we just plug the SD card into the Mac so the entry's will be picture-less, which are so less fun. 

the food blog

I just updated my food blog with a new recipe and changed its url and the layout too.

I've been on a food blog kick lately and I just can't get enough amazing recipes. Even with the limited counter space here in our studio, I think Ry will be pleasantly surprised with what we end up eating.

Also, have I told you all how much I am LOVING Trader Joe's?? I just did a price check with the Safeway down the street (I know, I had way too much free time on my hands today) and TJ's has better prices all the way around. My new philosophy is, if TJ's has it, it'll be cheaper. Mind you, they don't have a ton of variety and with many staples and canned products (like canned, diced tomatoes or cream of chicken) but what they do have is going to be priced better. Another qualm is that they don't have sales, so if Safeway has things on sale that I normally get at TJ's, they'll be cheaper, but if I just need to run out and get something really quick, TJ's is the best place to be.

Sorry about that little rant.

Also, sorry about shortening Trader Joe's to TJ's. I once knew this kid named TJ in 4th grade. He was big and had anger management problems. No good.

P.S. I love you

Last night I watched P.S. I love you for the first time. Ryan had a paper to write and I had rented it from the library so I put it in while Ry went off to the computer room/library of the Barlow Center to get some work done.

I cried about 80% of the movie.

I couldn't help it. Let's just say, I wear my heart on my sleeve. At least that makes me feel like it's ok to cry as much as I do.

My mom says I was a sensitive kid, and even though I'm growing up... I'm still a sensitive kid. I cry most of the time when others cry, like when people start to cry when they bear their testimonies in church.

I think that especially now that I'm married, or that I'm growing up, I cry when people die. Not just any death, but in seeing movies like Up and P.S. I love you, and even reading Tuesdays with Morrie. It's because there's love in the picture and there's so much love you can't even stand it.

So I cried a lot last night, and used about half of our tissues, and my eyes are still a little red even today. But as Ry always asks, "Is it a good cry or a bad cry?" it was definitely a good cry.

And the next time you're watching a tv show or a movie and you cry because people die and sad things happen and you think, "Geez, I shouldn't be crying, it's just a movie," you can think of me and know that if I was watching it, I'd be doing the exact same thing.

A view from the Library of Congress

I love DC.

Especially when you can see the Capitol and the Washington Monument in the distance.

And all the green trees and ancient architecture...

I could live here.

i know absolutely nothing about airplanes

Seriously, I don't.

But we went to an airshow on Saturday (yay for National Armed Forces Day!) and got to see the Blue Angels.

We also saw other cool planes fly and a ton on the ground-- helicopters, japanese bomber planes, tons and tons of planes.

All I could say was, "cool."

It was really pretty fun though, especially since Dave knows a lot of stuff about planes and got super excited over pretty much all of them. He knows stuff.

It was hot, but the wind helped with the heat. It also helped make my hair all ratty by the end of the day.

And after the Blue angels and after standing in line for an hour and a half to take a bus back to the metro, then taking the metro back home, we finally made it and had a pretty fun day out of it all. I've got a sunburn thanks to standing in that ridiculous line, but oh well.

Special thanks to Amanda and Dave for inviting us to come along with them and to Dave for entertaining us with his knowledge!

Check out the sweet, 2 second video of the Blue Angels. Pretty much I think I would die if my husband flew those planes.

blue buck pancakes and very large sunhats

We went to the Eastern Market on Saturday and enjoyed some delicious breakfast at the Market Lunch spot. Amanda and I had the famous blueberry buckwheat pancakes (known as blue bucks), Ryan had "the brick" which was an egg, cheese, bacon and potato sandwich, and Dave had their French toast. We all really liked our breakfasts and I am almost positive that I'll be back before the summer is over.

Afterwards we strolled though the farmer's market and sampled some AMAZING produce. I just watched the food documentary Food, Inc. and it really pushed me to buy local and fresh. I'll post more about that later, I promise.

We also went to the flea market and Amanda and I found some terrific sunhats. We were on our way to an airshow (more about that tomorrow) so they would have been perfect, but the boys just laughed at us. In all seriousness though, I really want one.

Really.

Those hats were made for us.

making a run for it.

DC rain is CRAZY.

Walking home from the metro on Friday the four of us decided that we were in the mood for ice cream (soy ice cream from Trader Joe's, mind you) so we decided to stop by TJ's before going home.

Then all of a sudden it rained, but it wasn't a normal rain.

It was like someone just decided to tip a bucket of water over and then quickly stop.

We almost decided to just go home, but since the rain stopped and we really ice cream we decided to keep on going.

Right as we were crossing the street it started pouring, and these were not normal-sized drops.

They were huge!!!!!

Giant-sized.

Mondo.

Gigantic.

But after quickly dodging into the store and drying off, we came out to clear skies and all was well.

And the Soy Dreamy ice cream was soooo good. Cherry Chocolate Chip. Try it. I dare you.

summer in the city

dear weekend,

oh how excited i am to see you! please don't rain on us.

we're excited to go out exploring this weekend and i'm planning on using our oven for the first time since we've been out here! wish me luck!

east coast grocery shopping

At home in Provo we had food storage. Then we had to pack it up and give everything in our fridge or open containers away before putting it in storage for the summer. So all we came here with was some peanut butter.

We bought bread and jelly, oatmeal and cereal for breakfast

We bought bread and turkey and cheese and mustard with pretzels and goldfish and Clif bars for lunches and snacks

We bought pasta, red sauce and pesto for dinner.

Turns out we have a lot of variety for breakfast and lunch and not so much for dinner. It also turn out that here on the east coast, I'd much rather buy in bulk than take the time (that I use now for finding sites to see and events to go to) to hunt for the sales like I did in provo.

Enter: Costco.

Oh how I love Costco. They have the largest container of pretzels I've ever seen, and they're amazingly salted, so I'm in heaven. We also added to our diet by buying spinach and frozen chicken breasts. BUT after buying Clif bars two weeks ago, we went to Costco last night and they were out! They said they discontinued them. Hopefully it'll be like those Hershey's chocolate covered pretzels and they'll bring them back, but let me tell you, when they didn't have the Clif bars, I think Ry's heart broke just a little bit. :(

Well, so the place isn't the greatest, but I'd much rather buy stuff there than pay an enormous amount at the regular grocery store. 2.99 for milk and 4.99 for Cheerios. It's outrageous!

The good thing is that we have a Trader Joe's nearby. I've never really shopped there before so I don't always know what to get, but they've got great prices on a lot of high-quality ingredients so I'll be experimenting with a few recipes in the next few months and hopefully everything will work out!

If anyone's got ideas on meals that are easy to prepare with minimal ingredients that are good for you (aka not just grilled cheese) please send me the recipe or the link. I've got a few cookbooks here but I'd love to know you're go-to recipes.

anniversary weekend: seafood

The seafood at Jimmy Cantler's (in Annapolis, MD) was AMAZING. And even after an hour-long wait, I was excited to eat and get some tasty local crab inside my stomach.

We ended up getting a crab caprese salad appetizer (crab meat, huge tomatoes, chunks of mozzarella, and basil leaves over romaine lettuce) with balsamic vinegar drizzled on top. Then for our meal we got a sampler of seafood that included mussels, oysters, old bay seasoned shrimp and crabs that we had to pound open ourselves to get all the meat out.

SO messy. SO good.

And even after being stuffed, I had enough energy to leave you with a laugh.

weekend at valley forge and philadelphia

Last weekend we went to Valley Forge on Friday and Philadelphia on Saturday with the Barlow Center group. It was a quick and jam-packed full weekend, but since we're only on the east coast for the summer (and who knows where we'll be a year from this fall) every weekend is pretty jam-packed.Valley Forge was beautiful and our tour-guide was a lot of fun. He was from the south and had an awesome southern accent. We also got to play some sand volleyball and knockout and around the world ping pong while we were there and got to mingle with the singles more. Since we don't attend the same ward and hang out with them a ton during the weekend it was nice to get to know them better so that hopefully we'll get to know them better as the summer continues.

Philly was fun too and we saw Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and a cool presentation at the National Constitution Center. Ryan also got a great Philly Cheesesteak at a place called Jim's Steaks (I'm not a huge fan of red meat so don't judge, but I had a Clif bar for lunch) and then we went to the LOVE statue and hung out by the fountain since it was quite warm and our feet were quite exhausted.

But after a long two days of standing and walking we gorged ourselves on huge pizzas and then watched National Treasure on our way home. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty fun to think "I see that" or "I saw that" as he goes through DC and Philadelphia throughout the movie.

[[ryan, me, amanda, dave]]

I love you mom.

My mom is the greatest. She's amazing. She's gorgeous. She's funny. She's compassionate. She's a mean cook.

She loves me.

One day I hope that I can be as great of a mom as her.

One year anniversary

It's crazy to believe that Ryan and I have been married one whole year! It doesn't seem like a high number compared to how long my parents have been married or people in their 70s and 80s, but still, it's a lot!

We went to the temple.

We went to an Italian deli to get Chinotto, Baci chocolates and pizza.

We went to Annapolis and saw the ocean.

Best of all, I got to hang out all day with my best friend in the whole wide world and the man I love more than any person or any thing in the whole wide world.

I love him.

p.s. We also ate at a fabulous seafood place, which I'll blog about tomorrow.

This one's for you, Ken

My father-in-law is a great guy. In fact, when I got married my sisters decided to call him their "Kenneth-in-law" because they wanted him to be their in-law too.

He recently made a comment on our blog about how we should be wearing hats when we go outside. Let me just tell you, he is a hat-wearer. We thought we'd honor him not only by wearing hats in these pictures, but also because we took them in Annapolis, home of the Naval Academy (he was a JAG lawyer for a time, so we thought of him while we were there).

Here's to you!

He's not really excited about being a sailor, he's just smelling the fudge they store is selling...

A stately profile pose, wouldn't you agree?

We love you Ken, and LOOK: We're wearing hats!

Too bad we're inside...

A night out.

This weekend was our first official weekend in the capitol. On Friday night Ryan and I hit the town with our favorite married couple in DC, Dave and Amanda (keep it on the dl, k?). We went to Georgetown Cupcake first, and I graciously dropped the box of cupcakes as I was getting them out of the bag I decided that they should put the bag in, even though we were just going to eat them two seconds later.

Got that?

Either way, the cupcakes were smushed and now my dreams of photographing a beautiful Georgetown Cupcake cupcake were...smushed. Or it just means that we'll have to go back. Which I'm totally down for.

They were great and the seasonal cupcake was called "Cherry Blossom" I think (Amanda, you can correct me on this one) and it was the best, hands down. It was Amanda's pick and man, she picked a good one. We also got my friend Camie's fav: Chocolate Lava. MMMM. Thanks to Abby for giving me the low-down on what to get and some inside knowledge about the cupcakes. She's my personal DC go-to girl seeing as she's already lived here before, and I love it. So knowledgeable.

After cupcakes we took the metro to the Mall and Ryan was like a kid in a candy store. He was so adorable and cute since he's never been in DC before, it made me so excited.

We went to the Washington Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and t

he Korean War and WWII Memorials as well. It started to get a little dark and it was after-hours so we couldn't go on any tours, so we'll definitely be back.

By the end of the night all four pairs of our feet were exhausted, but it was fun to go exploring and be surrounded by tourist and act like tourists, but also pretend like locals because

hellooo: we live here.

first weekend in DC

We had a BLAST this weekend. And let me tell you, I got excited about everything. I've tried to upload a video Ry took of my, but since that isn't working, here's a few of us soaking all of the sun up and spending about the whole day outside. This weekend was warm and beautiful and we had such an amazing weekend.

<3