My brother

For those of you who don't know my brother, Derek, here's a taste of his personality:

http://beforewegetstarted.blogspot.com/2010/05/beth-dies-spoiler-alert.html

I'm the baby sister he refers to in the background information. I'd relate the story myself, but he tells it so much better.

A Seven Course Meal

When we go to restaurants, David often says later, "I could make that." He thinks through the ingredients, and imitates the dish. Recently, he was asking about what would be the courses in a 6 or 7 course meal. We came up with some ideas. Then, for my birthday, David prepared a fancy 7 course meal, complete with all the sets of silverware, and . . .
. . . menus! Since this is Janene's personal restaurant, the menus are green (which is the same color as the kitchen towels, the bathroom towels, the bedspread, and about half of Janene's clothes).
We had cran-raspberry juice cocktail to drink.
Course 1: Mango SorbetCourse 2: Salad
Course 3: Bread with Italian Dipping Spices. This picture does not do justice to how good it tastes! We learned about this artisan bread and the dipping spices from David's sister. The spices are amazing. You add them to olive oil, and it's just like you're at an Italian restaurant!
Course 4: Mozzarella Sticks. This picture almost does justice to how good they taste. You might also refer to this picture.
Course 5: Rotini Robusto, a recipe inspired by Fazoli's Tortellini Robusto.
Check out that sausage and cheese, mmm!Course 6: Fruit Plate
Course 7: Baked Fudge Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream
The mess that David had to clean up.
Something that you can't tell from the pictures is that 6 of the courses were served on medium sized Corelle plates. We got a set of Corelle dishes when we got married, but the sets don't include the medium sized plates, which I love for lunch or salad. A month or so ago, I saw the plates on a good sale, and I bought them. I then handed them to David and told him that he could wrap them up for my birthday. Instead, he decided to inaugurate the plates into our kitchen.

This meal was so delicious! We were stuffed afterward. I have a wonderful husband to make my birthday so lovely.

Changing an Air Filter

Sometimes screws on a car's air filter are stiff.
But I guess I would rather have the screwdriver break than the air filter.

A Series of Thoughts . . .

. . . Not to be confused with a stream of consciousness, because I complete one thought before moving on to the next.

Things my mother told me
When I used to complain that I was cold, my mom had a few suggestions: put on a sweater, do 10 jumping jacks, run up and down the stairs 5 times, wash dishes. I never really took her advice. But now, there are times when I find myself excited to do dishes, because it will warm up my hands, or I'm excited to fold laundry, because it's warm. I guess my mom did have good advice, after all.

Why my husband is wonderful
Because he'll scrape the ice off my car windows when he knows I'm leaving a few minutes after him in the morning. And because he made me German Apple Pancake this morning. And because he's making me a delicious dinner tonight.

Volleyball
Last night, David and I went and played volleyball. I haven't had a good volleyball game since the summer of 2007, and it was a blast! We had some pretty evenly matched teams, and got in some good volleys. Other people got in some good spikes (I'm not including myself, because I never really got spiking down. Serving, yes, setting, yes, but not spiking).

I think my favorite game was the last one, probably because I had hit the ball enough times to get my skill back. In the girls vs guys game, I kept serving the ball a few feet in front of David, so that he had to scramble to get there and his team couldn't get a good spike out of it. :)

What's funny is that my arms aren't sore; it's my quads. That's what comes from being in the "ready" position for a bunch of games!

Sugar Cookie Cinnamon Rolls
On Monday, we had some friends over to make Valentine's sugar cookies. We decided to make some sugar cookie cinnamon rolls, because they looked really good. We rolled out the cookie dough, added the butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and rolled it all together. We placed the cinnamon rolls in the pan, but they kept sticking to our fingers, so the cinnamon rolls were a little deformed. Then they went in the oven, and they turned into a pretty marbled cinnamon cookie bar. Not quite what was intended. But they were delicious. So, the moral of the story is, anything Teandra makes, even if it turns out completely wrong, is delicious.

Christmas Trees

I bought our first Christmas tree at the grocery store. It cost $3, after Christmas. (It lights up, I just didn't take a picture with the lights.)
I bought our second Christmas tree used for $5. I love graduating students who are leaving the country and have to sell all their stuff for cheap. A 6.5 ft tree, pre-lit, for $5.
I had never put together a pre-lit tree before, so I was curious how it would be designed. I was envisioning all kinds of cool electrical connections between the pole and the branches, so that when you snap the branch in, it completes the circuit. Nope. The tree is in 3 parts, and all the branches are hinged to their portions of the pole. (Kind of like the very top portion of other artificial trees.) The lights are just regular strands of lights, strung around, but since the branches don't come off, the lights don't need to be removed. It was a very quick set-up.

I was surprised at how many decorations we actually have. Granted, there are none on the back side of the tree.
Here it is in all its radiant glory!I thought it looked pretty good! Until I went to my sister's and was reminded of how full Christmas trees usually are.
(There are ornaments in the lower portion, too. There was just a certain height where all the ornaments were mysteriously removed . . .)

Cheesesticks

This is just to demonstrate how amazing my husband is. He made this scrumptious cheesiness.

Bats

As David and I were getting ready to head out for Thanksgiving, David went out to our storage unit to grab a suitcase. The storage unit smelled. As David grabbed his suitcase, he found an ugly furry thing attached to the wall behind it. After some further exploration, he found another ugly furry thing attached to the opposite wall. Using a box lid, he was able to scrape the first bat off the wall and out onto the balcony floor. It looked like this:

You could see the heart beat as it was getting back up to temperature.

Then he went for the other bat. It hissed at him and spread its wings to a surprising 6 inches. He stopped and came in quickly. As we were trying to determine what to do with this 2nd bat, the 1st one's heart rate kept increasing, until it was able to flip itself over:

It then proceeded to crawl back into the storage unit, which was still open, and climb the wall up to where it had been before.

After reading up on how to get rid of bats, we decided that it wasn't a job for us, so we called management. It's great to rent.