Life

It has been awhile.  So here is a recap on what is happening in my life.

I am still working at BlueKai, and loving it.  I stayed very busy in December when we were working on due diligence for the round of funding we received.  We are very excited to continue to see growth throughout the rest of this year.

We are still working with the high school youth group at church and that keeps us busy.  There is Bible Study once a week, Fellowship nights twice a month and a communion Sunday service once a month.  We love all the kids and are excited to see what God is doing in their lives, but will definitely miss the seniors when they graduate and head off to college.  For the first time our youth group is going on a mission trip this summer.  We are going to the Yakima Indian Tribe in eastern Washington.

For Christmas we went home to California for a little over a week.  It was great to see our families and some of our friends.  It is always amazing how quickly the time goes when you are home.

My older brother, Joel, is getting married in June, so we will be down to San Diego for that.  We are excited to have Cindi join our family!

Food!!  We love food, both homemade and restaurants.

We have gone to a few fun restaurants within the last six months:
Poppy - Indian Inspired, owned and operated by the former chef at The Herbfarm (a fantastic restaurant)
Olivar - French and Spanish influence, a great place to order many different dishes and share them among the table
Matt's in the Market - a Pike Place Market tradition, fresh food from the market
FLO - a Japanese restaurant/sushi bar, off the main drag, but wonderful.  We did the Omakase, and it was amazing
Splash Cafe - this is a must when we are back home

These were all good and fun.

Some things I have made lately:

Fish Tacos
Chicken Pot Pie
Pork Saltimbocca - butterflied pork stuffed with prosciutto and sage, with a sauce that has mushrooms, wine, stock and parsley
Red Beans & Rice
Lemon Chiffon Cake (for one of our high schoolers 18th birthday)
Seared Swordfish
Smoked Salmon and Dill dip
Christmas Candy (toffee, peanut brittle, peppermint bark, fudge, pistachio craisin bark)
Stir-fry - nothing like what mom made us when growing up though - no bean sprouts and rice, instead noodles and lots of different veggies with a sauce made with Hoisin Sauce

We are also excited because we got reservations to French Laundry in March.  We are hoping to try at least one of the other restaurants by Thomas Keller while down there.

I have received a couple cookbooks in recent months and am excited about both of them:
The Complete Meat Cookbook - this talks about how to prepare different cuts of meat and also different recipes.  The Saltimbocca I made came out of this book
Baked - I haven't made anything out of this yet, but the recipes are making my mouth water
Grill It! - this has some yummy recipes in it and just sparks my creativity

Well, that is what is going on with us, maybe I will try to post more often ;-)

Life goes on

I know it has been forever since I have blogged. So I decided I would finally take a little bit of time and do so. I am thinking of changing up what I post. I used to mainly posts pics of what we had done, but at times that is overwhelming, so instead I will try to post short blurbs about what we have been up to or maybe a recipe that I have made that we enjoyed (thanks for the idea Becky!)

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.

December Snow

So instead of posting all of my photos from the snow we had today on my blog, I have placed them in a gallery on Matt's SmugMug account here.

This picture is one of my favorites from the day.

snowy branches

My greenhouse

3Guppies Mobile Blog

I work for a company that allows you to take pictures on your cell phone and send an MMS message to an e-mail address and your pictures on your blog are instantly updated. Check it out.

Weekend away

This was Matt's favorite picture from our weekend away.

Branch in the Water

What came in the box?

That would be a Tiffany Necklace

My husband is so sweet and bought me a necklace from Tiffany & Co. for my birthday. And that was on top of a wonderful dinner at Canlis, and a weekend getaway. I married an awesome guy!

Awesome boss

My boss is so sweet!

She believes flowers are a vital part of any girls birthday, so she ordered me flowers for my birthday. Of course she said they were from everyone, but everyone asked who they were from, so no one else was in on it.

A dozen yellow roses

A comical story from my birthday...

From what I hear, there were three different people who thought about buying me cake for my birthday at work. Since I am the person who normally does that stuff, they wanted to make sure I got a cake! So Kate is the one who eventually ended up in charge of the cake, after they realized that 3 people were all going to buy cake. We had a conversation about cakes a few weeks ago, and I told her my favorite is lemon chiffon (especially if it comes from TanTop Bakery in Orcutt, CA). Kate decided she would not settle for getting me anything less than lemon chiffon. She called the first bakery the night before my birthday, and the told her they need a minimum of 48 hours notice, which she didn't have. So she continued her search and called the next one, who told her, "our baker has gone home for the day, but I will leave her a note to see if she can accommodate the request". When Kate checked in with them on my birthday they said "we didn't have the ingredients for lemon chiffon, so she make strawberry chiffon" . Therefore Kate continued her search because she wasn't sure if I liked Strawberry, therefore wanted to try to get Lemon. She calls another bakery and is told, we don't have plain lemon chiffon, but we have a coconut-lemon chiffon. This was close enough, so I had a coconut-lemon chiffon cake for my birthday along with cookies & cupcakes.

My coworkers are awesome! They made my birthday grand!

Happy Birthday to Me

guess what was in here

Today is my birthday, and I got this cute little blue box this morning. I finished showering and getting dressed to find I had this on top of my vanity where I do my makeup. So it is up to you to guess what came in this box ;-)

Pelicans from Christmas

When we went to California for Christmas the one thing I wanted to do while we were there was take a trip to the beach. So a couple days after Christmas we headed over to Pismo Beach so while we were there we took some photos and had lunch at Splash Cafe for some of the best clam chowder ever that is served in a decadent sourdough bowl.

But before we got lunch we did take photos, and here are some of a Pelican that was standing on the edge of one of the pier railings letting people get somewhat close considering how they normally fly away when people get near.

Up Close & Personal with the Pelican

As I said he stayed for quite some time, so I got a number of different shots, but he never flew away so I could get a shot of him flying

Content on the Pier

The Base of the Vase

So one of the things I like about my arrangement of flowers is the bottom of the base where I used an assortment or rocks & pebbles to hold the stems in place and give some bottom weight to the arrangement. Therefore I present you a picture of just the base.

Rocks and Stems

Decorating

Here is a picture of my first bit of decorating our new home. On Sunday afternoon while Matt & I waited for HalfPrice Books to figure out how to give us back almost nothing for 100 books we went into JoAnnes to look for silk flowers for me to make an arrangement out of and this is what we ended up with.

Decorating the House

One more Kyle photo

Kyle loves the Chronicles of Narnia, so when he saw the blanket with the characters he told Mom he wanted to buy it. Therefore he was surprised when it showed up on Christmas morning as one of his gifts. And I thought this was a very fitting photo of him, so here you go :-)

Kyle Peeking Above

Kyle as a fan

When my family came to visit this past summer we had the opportunity to enjoy a Mariner's Game, and Kyle dubbed the Mariner's his team. It happened that the game was against the Angel's which was the team my dad was rooting for, so they had a great time, and Kyle's team won the game!

So for Christmas we made sure to get him a Mariner's cap, and he wore it the rest of the week. At first tags and all, but by the time we left I think they had all been taken off

Mariner's Fan

Fudge Time

In my house we made candy at Christmas Time instead of cookies. One of my brothers favorites to make is Fudge...The alternative reason on why can be seen below. Many of the other candies we always make are Peanut Brittle and Toffee which you cannot eat when they are hot.

Kyle and Marshmallow Cream

Umm...can I get some of it?

Maybe the force of sucking will pull it off

Got a little bit, doesn't that taste good!

Haircut time...

...so yesterday I called the person who has cut my hair the last few times to hear on her message that says she is now with Holly James Salon. So I asked her about it when she called me back, and she ask "when was the last time I cut your hair?" to which I reply "a few months ago" and she goes on to tell me she has been working at this salon for 9 months now! Then I felt bad that it had been that long, but she said my hair was really healthy so guess it really wasn't a problem :-)

So you can go here to see the pictures my husband took of my new 'do.

Multi-Colored Hydrangeas

I love hydrangeas, especially the rich blue ones, but for some reason I really like this one and the way it had blues & greens and hints of pink.

BiPlane Rides Available Today...

We took my family to the Museum of Flight while they were here a few weeks ago. When we were wandering around outside there were signs for biplane rides, so while I was up in the "control tower" this one was taking off, and I thought it looked cool against the sky.

Russian Space Capsule

This was a Russian Space Capsule, and it blows me away that someone could spend more than a couple hours in this. I would go crazy if locked into something this small, especially knowing that I didn't have anywhere else to go.

Blue Angels~Old Logo

Here is a picture of an old Blue Angels logo. I thought it was neat to see since we saw the Blue Angels not long ago.