So I noticed last time I blogged was last December, so here is what has happened since then.
- The company I was working for went out of business, therefore I spent a couple months helping close out an office. This was a new and very different experience. One thing that was frustrating was timing. We made the announcement to everyone at the beginning of December. Thankfully God has blessed us and we do not need my income to pay our bills, so I was more worried for all of my coworkers who lived paycheck to paycheck.
- In March I started working for another start-up, which I definitely had to think about before taking the job. I am the Office Manager and HR Generalist, but I do a bunch of different things. This company is more in the advertising realm, therefore I have learned more about that and continue to learn more. I work with a great team which is so key in any position. Last week I traveled for work to work on setting up our Bay Area office. It was a busy couple days trying to get the basics pulled together for them to start working in the office on Tuesday, but they were able to work out of the new office this week. While I was in the Bay Area I was able to go to dinner with Kim who I worked with while at 3Guppies. It was so much fun to go spend some time with her, she is such a blessing!
- This summer we decided to join a CSA farm (Community Supported Agriculture). We joined Root Connection which is only about 5 miles from our house. It is so much fun to go out there on Saturday and pick up our vegetable share. When we arrive we have no idea what we are getting that week. Normally we get about 6 different items. Last week we got yellow beans, green beans, carrots, beets, and lettuce. The variety has been great and to see different varieties is fun, a few weeks ago we got some gorgeous rainbow carrots which I had never seen before. Because of all the veggies we are getting every couple of weeks we have a night where all we eat are veggies. We did this last night, here was the menu:
- Green Beans with Mushrooms and bacon
- Yellow beans with just a touch of butter
- Caramelized Onions (went great with the green beans)
- Roasted Fennel (this was something I had never done before but it was tasty)
- Sauteed Carrots with just a tad of butter
- Garlic Bread, because I need some carbs with all those veggies :)
- A few weeks ago I decided that I would like to add a fruit share to our veggies share, so for about $20 per week we get a bag of organic fruit. It has been nice to get ripe fruit that you can eat right away. Tonight I made banana bread from some of the bananas we got last weekend. Since we have the fruit in the house we have been having fruit as our "dessert" in the evening. One evening I sliced up nectarines and tossed some blueberries with it and sprinkled it with just a pinch of sugar. It was a delicious snack and good for us :) The only thing we have a hard time with is getting a whole melon because we don't always remember to grab some and put it into a container for work, so it is hard to eat the whole thing in a week.
- I finally joined a gym back in July Costco was offering a two year membership for 24 hour fitness for $300, so I took advantage of it. My goal is to make it to the gym twice a week, but that doesn't always happen. I figure any time I get to the gym is better than not going at all though.
- Family Visits - Matt's parents came and visited near the end of June, then my parents came, left, came back, left, came back then went home. It was great to see the family and they enjoyed seeing the Seattle area. We fed them lots of good food and even took Matt's parents to one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Juanita.
- Since I mentioned restaurants I will talk about some of my other favorite restaurants we have been to this year. Herbfarm is an absolutely amazing experience. It is a 9 course meal with 5 wine pairings. For my birthday & celebrating my new job we went for the Steak in Seattle menu. It was amazing, but definitely not for the non-meat eater. Another wonderful restaurant in our area is actually in Seattle and has a gorgeous view of Lake Union and Gas Works Park from their dining room. This is Canlis which has made Northwest Cuisine what it is today. All three of these restaurants have won a James Beard award. We don't eat out too often, but when we do it tends to be very nice.
- In March we went to Leavenworth for a long weekend. Originally it was going to be a Valentine's thing then with the job search we pushed it back and finally I said we just need to book this. We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast called All Seasons River Inn. The breakfasts were amazing, the rooms were very nice and our hosts were wonderful. It ended up snowing the day we headed out there. This was surprising because the snow had already melted quite a bit, though we were thrilled. One thing we had wanted to do was go snow shoeing, which we got to do. It was a wonderful relaxing weekend.
- We have continued to be involved with the high school youth group at church, and plan to continue with that this coming year. This keeps us busy, but it is such a blessing.
Well, now that I have babbled on for quite some time I will stop for now. I hope you have enjoyed getting caught up with some of our adventures.
