Weekend away

Last weekend Justin, Willy and I traveled south to Twin Lakes with our friends Mark, Sarah, and their 2 dogs, Molly and Hank. We all stayed in a cabin on lower Twin Lakes. It was a beautiful area, great cabin, and a weekend of good food and friends.

Blessed Betrothal

Here are some pictures of the Fr. Francis blessing our engagement at Our Lady of Wisdom in Las Vegas, NV. This occurred a while back, maybe even back in March, I can't remember.

Classy upgrades

Through the gracious gifts of family and friends at our Butler bridal shower (and some extra money) Justin and I have upgraded the master bedroom furniture & window coverings. Ever since college I've had just a hodge-podge of random furniture, but now I'm starting to feel like a real grown-up! :o)

All American Classic

For the most part, I consider myself a fairly competent baker of yummy things. I enjoy it. I am generally speaking better at baking than at cooking, although I'm working on that. But the one item I've never had the guts to try and make is a completely homemade pie. I've done pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but that's just mixing a bunch of pumpkiny goop into a purchased crust...hardly baking, I know. This is my year, as my Mom says, and we have a bunch of apples coming off the tree in the backyard, so now's the time. I got the "never fail pie crust" recipe from Mom and I peeled 500 (or so it seemed) mini apples and I dug out my rolling pin from the drawer. When the flour settled, this is what came out of the oven.

And of course, with pie baking comes one of the fond yummy memories of my childhood, "strips"!!!! (the leftover crust that is cut from the edges of the pie pan with cinnamon & sugar) Here's Justin enjoying his first strip.

Las Vegas Announcement

We're number one!

Cancun, here we come!

Justin got his passport in the mail, so we officially go on our honeymoon!

New cooking frontiers

Having this farm veggie basket every other week has gently forced me to be more creative in my cooking and to use ingredients I either have never tried, or would never buy on my own. For example, eggplant. First of all, I had never seen a raw eggplant before, although I had heard they were purple.

I attempted an Indian cuisine using the eggplant. It looked like a big pan of mush when it was ready to eat and I went WAY overboard on the spices (it was really spicy), but nonetheless, it was pretty good! I still have a texture issue with the eggplant, so chewing quickly and swallowing was the way to go. Good taste, bad texture.

And I was quite surprised when I cut open the small watermelon. It's yellow! But very tasty!

Ground-water type folk

Still catching up on my blog posts. The week of August 4th I was in Denver for the 2008 U.S. Geological Survey National Ground Water Workshop. Yes, in the USGS we spell ground water as 2 words, although I sat in on one of our future outlook talks and we may be going back to 1 word. hahaha. So it was only USGS people from around the country that work in ground water. It was really kinda cool because there were scientific presentations for 2 days, so I got to see what kind of stuff others are doing around the country. And there was 3.5 days of half-day workshop classes. It was also fun because now that I've been to a few conferences and training courses, I know a number of people from different water science centers across the country and this was an awesome time get to hang out with those folks again. Here's a few pictures from an evapotranspiration (ET) field trip I took that Monday evening. We went to see a 60 ft ET tower. Impressive. Sorry I couldn't get the town pics to line up correctly. Bummer.

Shower on the hill

Before I left for Denver my friend Sarah threw me a local bridal shower at her home...which is up on the western hills of Carson City. She had everything just perfect and we sat out on the deck on a Saturday afternoon with a beautiful view of Carson City and had an awesome lunch. I don't have a lot of pictures, but I have a few.

After lunch Sarah had scrapbooking supplies and had each woman decorate a card and wrote a piece of marriage advice on it. As a gift I got a scrapbook to put them all in! How creative?!? The center picture is of the 3 beautiful mothers to be. Sarah, my host is on the right.

I got some really nice gifts that spanned many categories.

Backyard swinging

Some friends of ours stopped by last week to drop off a housewarming gift. How nice?!? After installation, the consensus is that we can enjoy the backyard even more!

Weekend moto trips

As I said previously, Justin has done some dirt biking lately. He's been able to leave straight from home and ride up to an awesome view of Tahoe.

Justin and Sean take in the views.

The memorial is for a plane crash that happened, I believe some time in the 1980's or early 1990's. 85 people died.

Out of Town, again

Sorry!!!! I was out of town again last week, so no new posts. I have a few to catch up on now, so keep checking back. For now, I'll leave you with the 2 dirt-biking boys from Harriett Dr.

Deck project

After much consultation and deliberation, Justin & I began the large project of prepping and staining/sealing the deck last weekend.

First Justin power-washed it...

...then he sanded it...(notice the large zucchini I'm showing off that we grew in the garden!)

...and finally we both Sikkened it! The deck should now be smooth, treated, more Willy-proof and water repellent!