Good Times Bowling, Part II

Here we are a couple weekends ago reliving the good ol' days of Palmer League bowling--I had to sit this one out because I dislocated my shoulder :(


Derek Bowling:


Amy & April:


I was really just along for the Strawberry Daiquiri afterwards ;-). After bowling we went to Los Agaves for some yummy drinks and mediocre Mexican food. Good Times.

Also, it was April's birthday that day. Happy Birthday April!

Good Times Bowling, Part 1

As previously blogged about, Brett & I played on a Palmer bowling league Thursday nights this winter. Here are some pictures (shamelessly swiped off of Amber's Facebook-Thanks Amber!).

Me and my favorite bowling ball (I tracked that baby down every week!)


Waiting on Nate to bowl... I look so patient don't I? :-P


C'mon Nate


Me & Red (Amber)


Me & the Huz:


The Pin Pals:


We're trying to get a shot of the back of our shirts here, but it looks more like we are just showing you our butts... Nate in particular.

Our New House ♥

As promised (I told you I'd get to it eventually) here are the much anticipated pictures of our new place.

The Front of the House:


The Backyard:


Our Kitchen:





Our Living Room:







Our Beachy Bathroom:


Brett's Office:



Our Bedroom:


The Sunroom (Still kind of a work in progress):

Brett & Amy's BBQ

Last Saturday we had some people over to our house for our first real get-together at our new place. Here we are playing some Ladder Golf & Cornhole:


Us (That's Clay's house behind us):


Amy & April:


Good Times Playing Apples to Apples:


April & I right before we just about crashed on the couch:


If you would like to see more pictures of BBQ fun you can go here.

7-Up Cake

One of my personal goals in life has been to make Martha Stewart herself want to bow down to my domestic diva-ness. I think that I may have come one step closer with this 7-up cake. The recipe was taken from one of my new favorite blog reads, Homemade By Jill.

Recipe:
3/4 lb. butter, softened
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tablespoons lemon extract
3/4 cup 7-up soda

Glaze:
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon milk.

1. Cream the butter and sugar.
2. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
3. Add flour and lemon extract
4. Fold in 7-Up
5. Pour in to well greased 12 cup bundt tube or pan
6. Bake at 325 degrees for 75 minutes
7. Mix lemon glaze ingredients together and drizzle on when the cake is completely cooled.

And Voila!

Mmmmm... Chili

Tonight Brett & I decided to have chili one last night before the weather gets warm and we will want to avoid hot and hearty food in all its forms. This is by far the best vegetarian chili recipe I have ever found, and I thought it was too good not to share. For those of you who are fans of meat, this also makes a great base that you could add meat into.

1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
2 tbsp. minced jalapeño pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 15 oz. can chili beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup canned corn
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp. dried basil leaves
1 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, bell pepper, jalapeño pepper and garlic. Cook and stir for 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Spoon vegetables into slow cooker. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Cover and cook on low 4 to 5 hours. Garnish with cheese and sour cream, if desired.

Here is the delicious end result:


NOTE: I got a little over excited (or maybe just distracted) and dumped the veggies right into the crock pot without cooking them in the skillet first. While it isn't preferred, I just wanted to let you know that if you do it this way the chili will still turn out just fine. :-)

Oh Yeah, Yard Work...

Whew! That was close... we almost forgot what yard work is!

Now that the weather is warming up, and the threat of snow has pretty much passed (*fingers crossed*) it was time to clean up the yard, especially since we are having a BBQ at our house next weekend. Here is my hubby raking up the leaves...he even has a smile on his face!

I dislocated my shoulder earlier this week, so I was not able to partake in the leaf-raking. As you can imagine, I'm really pretty broken up about it. :-P

Sorry babe!

P.S. BBQ @ our house on the 19th @ 4:00. If you are reading this and are within driving distance (or even if you're not) you should stop by!

Moose's Spot

It looks like our friend Moose has a new favorite place in the world. I think he is really enjoying the bounty of windows in our new house.

It's That Time of Year Again

One thing that I love about this time of year is all of the wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables that come into season. I didn't realize how fortunate Southern Californians are when it comes to having fresh yummy produce year round. We're not so lucky here in Iowa, so this weekend Brett and I took advantage of all of the great fresh produce at our local supermarket. Now I am just counting down the days until our local farmer's market starts up!

30 Days- No Repeats

I think that Rachael Ray has a book or a show or something with that title, and that was my goal this morning. Lately, Brett & I feel like we eat the same five meals all the time. Bound and determined to come up with 30 days of meal ideas without repeating a thing, I sat down this morning with a pad of paper and a stack of cookbooks.

An hour and a half later I had 12.

If anyone has any delicious, easy, and meat-free meal ideas please share!

Rollerblading Adventure

Today I went rollerblading for the first time in a looooooong time. I thought that it could be a really fun way to stay in shape this summer, especially with our proximity to the bike path here in Davenport.

Well, it was MUCH HARDER than I remember it being as a kid. The good thing about it is that it forced me to use muscle groups that I forgot I had. However, my rollerblading adventure was not completely without incident. I am not sure if it is my right rollerblade or my right leg that is retarded (quite frankly, it could be either) but for one reason or another I COULD NOT keep my right rollerblade up. Every time I tried to skate it would fall over to the right side. I'm sure I was quite the spectacle to passers-by.

When Brett gets home from Chicago tomorrow (by the way, Brett's in Chicago) I am going to have him help me to asses the situation. One thing that you may not know about me is that I can be pretty shameless when it comes to returning things to the store. Not quite as shameless as those people who wear shoes for a year and then return them to Nordstrom, but if I think something is defective, I'm not keeping it. If Brett thinks (as I do) that it is a retarded rollerblade and not user error, those babies are going right back to Target.

Brett & Amy Update

Wow. I haven't blogged in forever. I sort of reached that point where I hadn't blogged in so long that the amount that I needed to fill you in on was so overwhelming that it was almost easier just not to blog...but then more things accumulate to blog about, and the problem doesn't go away. So I will write one post to fill you in, and then resume normal blogging.

Brett & I went to San Diego for about 9 days. We had a lot of fun, saw a lot of sunshine, family, and old friends, but we are happy to be home again.

For a while it didn't seem like we were going to make it home. We arrived at the airport for our 4:50 flight to Denver (from San Diego) at about 2:30. When we got there we learned that not only was there bad weather causing flight delays into and out of Denver, but the plane we were supposed to be on was having mechanical issues as well. So, the flight was postponed until 7:10 which meant that we would miss any connecting flights to Moline on Sunday, and due to all of the weather issues they couldn't even guarantee us a seat on any flights on Monday... So needless to say going to Denver was not an option.

Because the Quad Cities has such a small airport, we can only fly into it from San Diego via Denver or Chicago. Chicago was having weather issues as well, but theirs was just high wind. Lucky for us, a flight to Chicago from San Diego that was supposed to take off at 1:50 got postponed until 6:30, so we were able to catch that one. We wouldn't arrive to Chicago until after midnight, but we had been guaranteed seats on the first flight to Moline the following morning.

This is the part where I need to remind you that we are supposed to be moving the following morning, so we absolutely HAD TO be home by Monday.

After landing in Chicago, Brett & I made ourselves comfortable for the long night we would have to spend at the airport. At one point during the night Brett got up and happened to check the departure board. When he did he discovered that our flight to Moline had been altogether canceled!!!!! The next flight to Moline wasn't until 2:30 pm, and of course they couldn't guarantee us a seat on the flight until we could talk to the booking agent at 5:00am (this all happened at 2:30 am).

At this point we decided we could no longer rely on the airlines to get us home, so we rented a car and by 4:00 am we were in a rental car on our way home.

The next day we moved into the fabulous new house we rented. We are really enjoying having more space and lots of peace and quiet. Lots of things are still in boxes right now, we are hoping to be able to get things a little bit more organized this weekend.

Last weekend we went up to see Brooke & Joe for Brooke's baby shower. We had a really fun time. We also managed to squeeze in a much-needed trip to IKEA on our drive home. We must have been quite the sight to people though, because we had such a long drive ahead of us it was truly a speedy IKEA run....more like an IKEA sprint (haha)...we were pretty much plowing through all of the casual IKEA-browsers, but hey- we were on a mission! :-)

We really don't have too much new and exciting coming up, but we are enjoying that right now. The weather here is finally warming up, so hopefully that will lead to some better blogging opportunities.

Adventures in Iowa: Currently Posting in San Diego

Hello faithful blog readers. It's been a while since my last post. Brett and I are currently in San Diego visiting family. It is a beautiful 80 degrees here today and we are not missing the snow and the cold one little bit. I really haven't had the opportunity to take many pictures of our adventures in San Diego, but there will be plenty of pictures in a few days including some of our fantastic new house, so come back soon!

~Amy :-)

Moving Madness

Oh boy. That's pretty much what our apartment looked like when we moved in, only now we are doing the opposite. Brett and I were laughing at ourselves the other day over the fact that we can't ever seem to do things simply. Two years ago we were getting married, moving, living on our own for the first time, going to an unknown place with no jobs and to an apartment that we had leased sight-unseen. Sometimes when I hear people complaining about how hard it is to plan a wedding I secretly think to myself, "Try planning it in 6 months and moving at the same time!"

Well, here we are in 2008 and once again moving under crazy circumstances. We had planned our upcoming trip to San Diego back in October... little did we know that we would be moving at the same time! Our lease actually begins while we are out of town. We will land at 12:30am the day we return from our trip and be moving that same morning! So now we are packing not only for a trip to San Diego, but for our move as well. All of this insanity is actually a good learning experience. It reminds us that we can't always micro-manage every part of our lives, and to just roll with it when life's craziness comes your way.

So we just pack like crazy, laugh and say to ourselves "One day we will move like normal people."

Today my fortune cookie said: You will do well in you. Personal Affairs.

Grammar and punctuation have not been edited. Either way, let's hope it's right. :-)

It Was Bound to Happen Eventually

Brett has a little bit of a reputation when it comes to accidentally spoiling gift surprises. It all began when he was a little kid, carrying a gift for his Grandma into the house, proudly handing it to her while announcing "It's a wallet!" Now it is a family joke to say "it's a wallet" before someone opens a gift, but that's not the point of this story. The first time that Brett inadvertently revealed a gift to me was around Christmas time. He wanted to tell me about something funny that happened while he was at Target, and he began the story by saying "When I was at Target today getting your game..." He had gotten me the classic edition of Clue for Christmas, and now I knew it.

Well, yesterday was my day to blow the surprise. Our 2nd anniversary is Monday, and we had agreed not to really exchange gifts this year, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to just get him a little something. I was few minutes early picking Brett up from his class this weekend, so I quickly went in to the Palmer bookstore to pick up a business card holder that I knew he has had his eye on. I managed to beat him back to the car and thought I was in the clear.

While I was in the bookstore I noticed that they had these cool spine keychains back in stock that they had been sold out of for some time. When Brett got into the car and we started talking I blurted out "OH! They have those cool spine keychains in the bookstore again!" But I managed not to blow my cover by quickly adding "....yeah, I noticed that a few days ago." Phew! That was close. It is very important that Brett not know that I went in to the bookstore because I have no reason to be in there and he will know that I am up to something.

I also noticed while I was in there that they had pink sweatpants back in stock, the very pink sweatpants that my friend April was looking for a while back. After I got back to the car I excitedly sent her a text message just to say 'hey, they have those pink sweatpants you wanted.' Naturally, a conversation ensues, and we text back and forth for a while while I was waiting for Brett to get out of class.

While in the car I got another text message from April. Since April is pretty much the only person that I text on a regular basis, out of curiosity Brett said "What did April say?" And like an idiot I say "Oh, not much. I just texted her to let her know that they had pink sweatpants in the bookstore." He looks at me and says "Oh, you went into the bookstore?!?!" And the look on his face says 'you are totally busted.' And the look on my face says 'yes, I AM totally busted."

That, my friends, is the story of how I finally blabbed a surprise to my husband. It was bound to happen eventually. :-)