Alice's Bucket List

Has anyone heard of this remarkable girl? She is 15 and fighting a terminal cancer. She has posted her personal "bucket list" online with hopes to check some items off before she becomes too ill (http://alicepyne.blogspot.com/). One thing on her list, is that everyone become a Bone Marrow Donor.

Go to: http://www.marrow.org/ and register to join. It is fairly quick. It took me 8 minutes, and I took a phone call in the middle of it. I had thought MANY times about becoming a donor and feel that there is no reason I shouldn't be willing to give to someone who needs it.

Royals, Peter Fever, and...

Friday night, my parents came in to town and took us to the Royals game. Unfortunately, our boys in blue could not pull it out for a win. Go figure. We had fun anyway!

Saturday, I convinced my Mom to come with me to the Just For Her Expo at the OP Convention Center. I am that person who wins tickets on the radio. Awesome.

The expo was actually really cool. A lot of neat health information and lots of opportunities to win free Botox and massages (I was rooting for the latter for myself). Bonus for the expo? Yep, seeing Dr. Cullen in person! Super super awesome!

Last but not least, if you made it this far anyway, we are expecting! This is the official announcement, Josh and I are pregnant and due November 23rd.


I am not sure how the "pictures" thing work so bear with me.
I think you take it on the 23rd of each month (since I'm due on the 23rd). We shall see.

Anyway, this is my 3 month picture. I think I just look fat but Josh convinced me that I should take and post the picture anyway..."that you will wish you had the pictures someday". So, here it is. Pooch and all. Enjoy.

Memorial Day Weekend

This Memorial Day weekend was a blast! Like every year (unless we make it to State in Baseball), we take a trip down to Lake Kanopolis to spend the weekend with my family. Friday night and Saturday morning were kind of chilly, but after that, the weather was awesome!

We even took the boat out!

Josh was foolish, I mean brave enough to get in the water and kick off the wakeboard season. The water was FREEZING! Literally, I could barely keep my feet in the water.

And because we ran out of things to do... we buzzed Josh's head. Yep, all of his hair is gone.

Well, almost...

Okay, now.

(Please avoid looking into my crazy eyes - I get a little punch drunk when I am allowed to shave someone's head!)

Our extended family was out there too, which always adds to the enjoyment of Lake K. This weekend, our cousins made huge hotdogs and offered one to our youngest lake goer, Ledger. He LOVES Hot Dogs. You can often hear him say, "more hot dog?" when asking for a bite.

And because, why not eat a foot long 1/2 pound hot dog with your 2 year old son?

We also got to take the paddle boat out (obviously this was Saturday morning since we are still bundled up) and even forced little Ledger to join us. He was pretty unsure of riding on there with Oma and I, but he loves being out on the water so it was okay. He settled down so much that for a few minutes, I think he actually fell asleep! :)

My mom...the comedian and the Cool Whip fanatic. Gross. But funny!

Hope you all had an awesome Memorial Day weekend. I know we did!

Chang Chang Chang, Chang of Fools

Okay... Quick - your favorite thing at PF Changs? If you didn't say Lettuce Wraps, you lied. Thursday I decided to try my amazing cooking skills to try my hand at making my own lettuce wraps.

It was delicious. But goodness, if I had 2 hours to prepare a dinner, we'd be eating gourmet much more often.

Since I was making a "new" dish, I had to make a back-up dish. My back-up dish was grilled squash and zucchini with potstickers and steamed rice. Unfortunately, since our lettuce wraps turned out pretty good, we had WAY too much food.

The only thing really missing from my lettuce wrap was the delcious spicy sauce that they give you at the table at PF Chang's. My soy sauce just wasn't enough. Good, but not good enough.

He isn't drugged. I promise. He had had a very long day and was humoring me by taking a photo of him eating dinner. He's a great model when he wants to be.

Recipe:

PF Chang Style Lettuce Wraps

16 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves (I used regular lettuce)
1 pound lean ground beef (I substituted chicken)
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves fresh garlic, minched
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons minced pickled ginger (I used "fresh" canned ginger)
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (very strong-do not use too much)
Asian chile pepper sauce (I used Sriracha, about a teaspoon or so)
1 (8 oz) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
2 teaspoons Asian (dark) sesame oil

Directions
1. Rinse whole lettuce leaves and pat dry, being careful not to tear them (yeah right). Set aside.
2. In a medium skillet over high heat, brown the ground beef (or chicken) in 1 teaspoon of oil, stirring often and reduce heat to medium. Set aside.
3. Cook the onion in the same pain as the meat, stirring frequently. Add garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, ginger, vinegar, and chile pepper sauce to the onions. Stir in chopped water chestnuts, green onions, and sesame oil and continue cooking until the onions just begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.
4. Add meat to mixture and turn heat to low. Stir and mix all together for about a minute.
5. Fill lettuce about 1/3rd full and spoon mixture in. Wrap up like a taco and Enjoy! Add soy sauce if desired.

(keyingredient app on my iPad)

Home Improvement

So Saturday morning, Josh wakes me up at 7:30 am and has decided that we need to re-do our front yard landscaping. Woo hoo. After a little convincing, I agreed...at least to price it out. What people don't understand is that when Josh and I go "price it out", we usually just buy. We are impatient that way.

Anyway, our house has front stairs up to the front door that the underside of the cement is exposed from the ground settling away from it. It looks tacky. Really tacky. But... not as tacky as the half dead spirea plant under our main windows. I can never tell which is actually spirea and which is just plain weeds.

BEFORE:

Our plan was to build a type of retaining wall around the stairs and the area under the main window, obviously removing the spirea. Day one was stinking exhausting and I thought seriously about calling someone professional to come finish it. I didn't do much, I wish I could say that I worked harder than Josh, but there just wasn't enough actual "to-do" for two sets of hands. Pretty much I critiqued the "level" of the stones, chose the pattern of where they would go, and transported stones from our stack on the driveway over to wherever Josh was working. Day two was better, I think. We had a significant amoung completed before the sun went down on Saturday and only needed to finish the last turn on Sunday. We had to make a last minute trip to Home Depot because we were about 20 stones short of completion. Anyway, phase one is complete of our front yard home improvement!

AFTER:

Annoying

I am so sorry I was delayed on showing pictures of our awesome trip to Belize. However, it should be noted that the BRIDE has yet to post any pictures on her blog either. I win. On another really annoying note, I hate how each time I try to post a blog, it inserts these enormous spaces between my paragraphs. I just spent 30 minutes posting, editing and fixing the spaces, posting, editing and fixing the spaces, yelling, cussing, nearly crying, posting and saying "screw it, no one really cares if my lame posts have spaces, right?". Right. Anyone know why Blogger hates me?

Un-Belize-Able

We recently (two weeks, sorry, I'm behind) returned from our long weekend abroad to witness my oldest friend getting married! It was awesome! Our flight left on Thursday at 6 am and we arrived in Ambergris Caye, Belize just before noon. The weather was incredible and remained a toasty 85-90 degrees the entire trip.

Friday we got up early and we took a Scuba diving trip. I am not a diver, nor do I think I ever will be. Too many unknowns down there. Nevertheless, the rest of the dove right in. Josh was taking his open water dive test while we were there so he and Alex spent the excursion doing "tasks" to complete the test. Apparently the water on Friday was extremely rough and it was a tough dive, but they all came up smiles anyway.

Friday night we went on a Sunset Cruise which was very relaxing. Anytime you get to spend time out on the water is a good time in my book!

Saturday the boys went back out Scuba diving and the girls spent the day getting ready. We did a little relaxing on the beach and at the end of the pier before getting our hair done. The photographer is amazing and captured every possible moment the entire week, especially the day of the wedding. Angie looked absolutely stunning and the reception on the beach was a blast!

Sunday was a day of relaxing and hanging out. We played several games of Bag-O or Cornhole, depends on where you're from, shopped in the city, swam in the pool, layed out, and enjoyed lots of cool drinks.

Monday, unfortunately was the end of our trip. How depressing? But the rest got to stay and enjoyed a trip to the mainland to climb Mayan ruins and take a speed boat down the rivers. It was an unbelievable trip. Oh wait, I mean, an un-Belize-able trip! (yes, that is the "slogan" of the country)!