St. Maarten

St. Maarten was a repeat trip for us as well. But oh, how pretty the island is. It has excellent beaches, good shopping, friendly people and an awesome restaurant. The photos aren't coming up exactly in the order I wanted but I'll start with telling you that we were given a recommendation to eat at Chesterfield's last year and we did so. And boy was it good! So, we went back for lunch this year and ordered the exact same things we had last year: Hurricane Shrimp and Conch Fritters. Mmmm.....good. We found a couple of beach chairs and an umbrella to rent so we just hung out on the beach for a couple of hours.....and I got fried on half of my body. Made for a painful rest of the trip.
The water is such a beautiful shade of blue here. The beach got pretty crowded after a while and we left.
You cannot imagine all of the shopping here. It is insane! They have killer deals on jewelry too....but I did not buy any.
And just imagine my breaking heart to see a stray kitten on our walk to the beach. It was so thin. There was a Humane Society store and woman who we told about the cat and she said she'd send someone over to see about it. I hope she followed up on that.
Next stop: The island of Tortola.

Carribbean Cruise 2010

We're back! The past month has just been a blur as work has consumed us almost completely. But we did get a break and went on a week long cruise. A MUCH needed break. It sort of served as a combination cruise for my CMEs, Mark's birthday and our anniversary. Our first stop was San Juan, Puerto Rico. Which, if you remember, was a stop on our last cruise. While it really is beautiful, there's not much to do there because it's just simply a city in paradise.

When we toured the fort on our last trip, we could see a beautiful above ground cemetery in the distance with a lighthouse overlooking it right by the ocean. We vowed on our next trip there to walk over and see it. So we scampered off the boat and went on an up hill walk to the summit of the city to find it.After a bit of walking, we found it!! There's the lighthouse and the super cool cemetery. Apparently it was quite a tourist stop for lots of people.

Snow Fun!

Recently we got snowed in for a weekend. Which really, was quite fun. It started coming down right when we got back from Blockbuster--you can't be snowed in without movies! We made a caramel pie together and stayed up later than our bedtime Friday night. There was a huge blanket of snow the next morning, followed by some sleet. Now, this made the hill in front of our house that much better to sled down. We have the best hill in this section of the neighborhood so kids were coming from many streets over to sled.
I made some chicken enchiladas and took them next door to my neighbor who had just had her baby and held the baby for a while before the neighbors across the street came over with their baby for dinner. After dinner, and when the neighbors put their baby to bed, they called us and we all went out in front of our houses and sledded down the hill while it was dark....ya know, and nobody could tell it was a group of thirty somethings playing in it all. Ahem. And just so you know, they had the baby monitor with them.
The next morning, Mark had all he could stand with being housebound, so we took off on icy roads to Home Depot where looked at everything. in. the. store. Twice. I don't care to go back there for a while. We went back to the neighbors' house for dinner where they had a great tortellini/sausage/pea dish that I unsuccessfully tried to duplicate for dinner tonight.
Recipe:
-Bertolli tortellini (Hmm....I have some frozen tortellini. Not Bertolli, but Mama Geno's. )
-Applewood Smoked Sausage, cut in slices (I have Kielbasa sausage instead)
-Fresh Grated Parmesan Cheese (I used Grated Parmesan cheese)
-Frozen Peas (Yes! I have this exactly!)

Mix together and serve. Except mine tasted nothing like theirs. Ingredient substitution does not turn out well.

So, here's some photos of some kids sledding down the hill in front of our house. Taken form the inside of our warm house.

And then we got up and went to work the next day. The End.

January Dinner Club: Bowling

Our January Dinner Club was not held at anyone's house. Instead we all took a break and met at a restaurant for dinner and then went bowling. I was not too excited about it, really. But it really did end up being a lot of fun. Well, except for the fact that out of our entire group I bowled the absolute WORST. If you know anything about bowling, you'll know that a 33 is rather bad to score. That was my score. I had gutter ball after gutter ball. Mark did really well though. It was a nice change to go out with everyone.

Edit: I did not notice that one of the men was picking his nose when I posted the photo. My husband just busted out laughing and figured I should make a note about this.

Dinner Club Christmas Party (Part II)

Another reason that I LOVE the kitchen in this house is that there's plenty of room. We had 14 people stand around and maneuver comfortably in the kitchen during the beginning/appetizer course while still being able to cook/finish up preparing the meal.

Sprinkles knew Dawn was a cat person and he jumped right up into her lap. She loved it and so did he! But then Theresa (at the very end of the table--she got chopped off so you can't see her in this picture) wanted to hold Sprinkles --without his permission--and he scratched her. He has never done that to anybody in the five years we've had him so I have no idea what got into him!

One of the desserts we had was a mince pie that Kate brought. I had never had mince pie so I just HAD to try it. I don't really like it. At all. But I ate it! Every last bite--because she was sitting at the table with me.

Then came the White Elephant Gift Swap. I had originally sent out an email stating that we would be playing "Dirty Santa" and it got misinterpreted by the majority of the group. They thought that by "dirty" I meant raunchy, distasteful, off color gifts. Thankfully someone mentioned that in passing at Thanksgiving. I was absolutely appaulled that they would even think I would mention something like that! So I sent out an email clarifying what we would be doing and changed it to a white elephant gift swap.

Mark and I didn't have any white elephants laying around the house---one of the perks from moving nine times in ten years is that you get to purge your junk often. So we had to go and buy two. I went to Ross because you can find some bizarre and funny stuff there. So, I bought this terrible awful gift that is really completely useless: a back scratcher that dispenses lotion. Ha! The second gift was what Mark picked out himself and wanted to win it: a garden gnome that looks just like the little Travelocity guy. And you all will NEVER believe this, but it was the most stolen and most wanted gift in the swap!! Can you believe it? And Mark did end up winning it! If you click on the picture below it should enlarge so that you can see the gnome better.

It was a really fun night and everyone had a very good time.

Dinner Club Christmas Party (Part I)

Mark and I hosted our dinner club's christmas party on Dec 19th. I've been trying to post this for some time now but have had trouble with Picasa. So, here it is. Picasa will only let me post 4 pictures to the blog at a time when I use them, so I'm breaking this up into two posts.

My parents sent me the BEST cookbook ever for my birthday and I made an appetizer from it.

I always hate when I go somewhere and have no idea what food is in the dish. So, my parents got me some really cool place card holders to use. I used the backs of Mark's old business cards to write the name of the food. So many people commented on how great this was!

Here's Mark doing some of the stove top cooking. I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful the new stove is. And the second oven in the bottom is pure heaven when I need to keep things warm or bake at a different temp.

This is another NP coworker of mine, Jean. No idea what we were discussing.

New Year's Eve

We didn't spend New Year's Eve at a party, but rather we out to eat and then went to a hockey game. Mark got the firm tickets so we had fantastic 10th row seats. It is the one sport that I think it's beneficial to sit really close to the ice to see what is going on. We've had seats at pro football games that we around the 10th row and 50 yd line that I wouldn't give you fifty cents for because we were so close that I could not tell what was going on!! I was quite worried about getting hit in the head with a puck. The game was a lot of fun to watch, but I will admit that it is a tad violent as fights broke out on the ice several times. And the referees just let them hit each other! The rest of the night was relatively uneventful as we got home and watched the ball drop and then went to bed. The end.

If you have a weak stomach, skip this post

Happy New Year! This morning Miss Marble can running through the back door with a bird. Of course, she ran through the kitchen, under the dining room table and into the study where she dropped it. I screamed for Mark and then she picked it back up and ran into the entry hall and dropped it at the bottom of the stairs where she began plucking the feathers off of it. Blech. And I scream again for Mark. What does he do? He grabs the camera and starts taking pictures.

Are you totally grossed out yet? The mess has been cleaned up now.

Scenes from Christmas

Mark's mom preparing our Christmas Eve dinner: Me getting a sentimental charm bracelet that was my mom's:

Holding little babies:

Family portrait:

Mark putting on his gift sweater from Dress Barn. (My grandmother got mixed up and apparently thought this was a man's sweater.)

The kitchen is almost done

All that we lack is a range hood being built above the stove and Mark is going to do that sometime after Christmas. Right now I am just enjoying the construction being done. I have to say, the kitchen is definitely my favorite part of the house. There's lots of room and plenty of windows to let in light (in the breakfast nook).

The custom island we ordered arrived and it's just wonderful!! Notice that it houses the microwave.

Cookie time!

I didn't get to bake anywhere near as many cookies as I did last year. And I LOVE to bake. So, I was kind of bummed about that. But it seems like work and social obligations have just sucked all of the time from this month so far.

Christmas decor

I decided last year to decorate with all real greenery, fruit, trees, wreaths, etc. Why? Well, I do love the look and smell of it all, no doubt. But the real reason: I don't have to pack ANY of it back up and put it in the attic. It all gets tossed to the curb when I'm done. That's the BEST part of it. I have never ever liked decorating for Christmas. I can't explain it, but I just hate it. I enjoy the decorations once they're up, but detest having to do the decorating. Am I alone?