say hello to my little friend.
This, my friends, is the b-e-a-utiful Canon Powershot SD1200, a 10 megapixel digital camera – in fact, the new camera that I bought myself as a New Years present.
Let me explain.
This year, my far-too-generous mother gave mikey and I a much-too-generous Christmas gift in the form of two checks, one for me and one for him.
mikey promptly spent his Christmas money on DVDs.
I immediately decided to put my money into my savings account and spend it on new clothes in the spring, when I’m finally at my goal weight (see “resolution” below).
And then I started looking at cameras at Target and Best Buy.
And then I thought about what a great addition to this blog a camera would be; I could actually take my own pictures, instead of just stealing mikey’s all the time.
And then I looked at cameras online.
And found this one on sale at Amazon.
And that sealed the deal.
So, this camera was my Christmas/New Years present to myself from my mom. It came in the mail on Monday, and I’ve been itching to try it out all week so far. I’ve taken a few silly pictures around the apartment, and I can’t wait to start taking more pictures of the people and places in my life.
Such a good decision. No buyer’s remorse at all.
resolutions.
Oh, hello twenty-ten. Or is it oh-ten? Or just 2010?
Well, whatever we’re calling you, you got here mighty fast this year. I barely had time to say goodbye to ‘09 and make a few “New Years resolutions” before the ball dropped and you had arrived (with a grand entrance, I’m sure).
And so, my resolutions for 2010 are:
1. Read more books. Two per month at least. 25 by the end of the year.
2. No more soda. Not even diet. Yep, that’s 365 whole days without caffeinated, carbonated heaven.
3. Be more generous, especially with my time and possessions.
4. Lose 10 lbs and finally be the weight I set out to be two years ago.
5. Start (and finish) a journal. This blog doesn’t count. The beautiful notebook I got for Christmas does count.
6. Keep in touch with friends. I have several unanswered voicemails and emails to be attended to. I’m a terrible correspondent.
7. Take more pictures.
8. Finish a 10k race. Possibly a half-marathon next year, if my heart can take it (I should probably check with my cardiologist about that one).
I will probably keep editing this list as new ideas pop into my head. Which means I will have far too many resolutions to possibly keep, but that’s okay. It just means I’ll still have plenty of room for improvement in 2011.
2009 in review; or, wedding pictures!
2009 seemed to go by ridiculously fast. It was a whirlwind of engagements, weddings, babies, graduations (especially my lil brudder’s!), heartbreaks, vacations, sports, laughter, tears, movies and pictures.
But really, I don’t remember much about this year, except that I finally got to marry my best friend. So, here are a (very) few of my favorite pictures from August 28, 2009. Enjoy!
and of course, a picture of the cutest little boy in the whole wide world:
(all credit for pictures goes to Peter Anderson from Anderson Photography.)
home cookin’.
I love my mother’s chicken noodle soup. It’s my absolute favorite meal ever, and she almost always makes it whenever I visit Billerica. It was about 5 years ago that I asked her for the recipe, determined to learn how to make it for myself. Of course, I have never tried to make it; it always seemed like too much work and it was a little bit daunting. I mean, what if it isn’t as good?
But tonight, I attempted to replicate this delicious dinner for mikey and me. While he sat on the couch and played Assassins Creed II and said, “mmm chicken soup,” every once in a while, I boiled chicken and waited for it to cool and added all the right ingredients and boiled it again and viola: soup!
Here’s the recipe, straight from an email from my mother:
“Chicken thighs (skinned and boned is the easiest) I use about 3 pounds for the size pot I make so buy accordingly. Boil until cooked in enough water to cover the chicken. Remove chicken and let water and chicken cool. If you use chicken that has skin, let the water get cold so the fat and the broth separate. Skim the fat off.
Add canned chicken broth (again, I use the largest size they have so buy accordingly). frozen veggies and noodles (as much as you want depending on if you want soup hearty or sickly and don’t forget the noodles grow)
add pulled apart chicken and boil until noodles are done and veggies are the way you want them.”
She wrote again two days later and added chicken bullion cubes to the ingredients list, an absence which any experienced cook would have noticed immediately. I, of course, would have made a flavorless soup and then wondered what went wrong.
For tonight’s experiment, I made a few adjustments of my own:
- I used both breast and thigh meat, since that’s what I had in the freezer.
- I used whole wheat noodles instead of white (the recipe doesn’t specify, but Mom always uses white).
- And I added celery to the frozen vegetables, because we had some in the fridge that needed to be used.
The end result?
Look at that beautiful pot of soup. Yummy.
After the taste test, both mikey and I agreed: good, but not fabulous. As you can see from the “recipe” above, my wonderful mother never measures anything and doesn’t include quantities in her written instructions.
So, some changes for next time:
- More noodles. I put in the whole bag, and since the recipe mentioned that noodles “grow” I thought it would be enough. Wrong. Definitely need more.
- More bullion cubes. Not enough flavor this time. mikey added salt to his soup and liked it better. I added a few more to the leftover soup in the pot, so hopefully that will help.
- Add the noodles last, toward the end. This time, I just dumped them in with the veggies, and they had practically disintegrated by the end.
Overall, a successful venture in cooking, I’d say.
overjoyed.
In the Gospel of Matthew, there is a story about Magi from the east of Jerusalem who follow a star and find Jesus in the manger. It’s actually a rather gruesome story, when read in its entirety – there’s a virgin giving birth in a stable, a jealous king fearing for his throne, wise men on a long journey, dreams and angels, a flight to Egypt, and the slaughter of all the babies and young children in the nation.
In the midst of this story, there’s one line that sums up the spirit of Christmas: “When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.” When the Magi saw the star settle over the place where Jesus was, when they realized they had come to the end of their journey, when they were within sight of the King of Jews, they were overjoyed.
The ESV does more to capture the emotion of the wise men: “when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” Rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. All because of a star. Because of a baby. Because of a King.
And that’s the spirit of the season – rejoicing exceedingly over the birth of a Savior. Great joy for all who know and follow and trust and love Him. To be overjoyed because of the love of Christ, our Lord.
When was the last time we rejoiced exceedingly with great joy? Too long ago, I’m sure. And yet, that is the appropriate response to the Christmas story.
Let us rejoice, dear friends, for unto us a child is born. Alleluia.
snowed in
It started snowing Friday evening and continued to the (very) early hours of Sunday morning. It was the perfect weekend to sit inside in pajamas, watching Christmas movies and drinking hot chocolate and watching the snow fall all day.
Except, that’s not what we did. Not even close.
It was M and V’s wedding weekend in Rockville, and mikey was leading worship for the ceremony. So, we woke up early on Saturday, packed an overnight bag (in case we got snowed in), and set off in the beautiful snowstorm in Inay’s CRV (yes, mikey was brilliant and traded his little civic for his mom’s CRV. so smart).
For the record, people here don’t really know how to handle snow.
Look, it’s like the apocalypse – everyone walking in the middle of the street with bags of food. It would be even more like the end of the world if the Giant had been looted, but alas, that’s not really true.
It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get to Rockville, usually a 40 minute drive. Along the way, we stopped several times to help push people out of snow banks and up hills, and GW parkway was a complete mess, but we made it. During the drive, we got the call that the wedding was being postponed, as none of the roads had been plowed or treated.
And that’s how I ended up snowed in for 24 hours at our cousin’s place, with about 12 guys (including M, the groom). And, from the following itinerary*, it’s clear that I was snowed in with guys, and no other girls:
12:30 – arrive at A’s house, to find video games (the Civil War superhero game, forget the name) and a UFC fight on the 2 TVs downstairs.
12:45 – lunch of Pepsi (regular, not diet) and frozen pizza.
1:15 – more video games and UFC fights and eating
3:00 – poker game commences. the groom wins, even with being on the phone about half the time (mikey was a close second).
4:30 – Raving Rabbids on the Wii.
5:30 – mafia games begins. mafia wins, because we’re quiet and brilliant. or because everyone voted to kill off the groom in the first round since he was on his phone again, thus destroying the cop.
7:30 – naptime. (what? I was tired. J fell asleep, too.)
8:30 – dinner of cheeseburgers, fried eggs, rice, and some apparently Hawaiian concoction called “locomoco” or something like that.
11:30 – “the Hangover” begins. Someone fell asleep and snored a lot, but most people laughed.
1:00 – finally bedtime, on an air mattress with a sleeping bag.
*all times are approximate/made up, because I never actually checked the time for any of it.
And those are only the things I participated in; there were lots of jokes, comic-books conversations, and other guy-stuff that I didn’t join.
All in all, it was a fun weekend. And the wedding on Sunday (one day later than planned) was absolutely beautiful.
But I sure am glad to be home.
christmas surprise
mikey enjoys Christmas more than I do. mikey has more fun with Christmas-Spirit-ish things than I do. He likes the tree and the decorations and music and corny-ness that comes along with the holidays. I’m not a huge fan. I enjoy buying gifts for people and seeing them happy, and I love talking about the birth of Christ and the joy of those who understood it, but that’s about it.
When we bought our Christmas tree, we decided not to spend money on additional decorations. The tree would be enough for this year, our first Christmas together.
See, there’s our empty, undecorated living room, and our lonely little Christmas tree.
And then I started thinking more about it.
And seeing pictures of other people’s decorations.
And reading articles about Christmas decorating tips.
And I decided to surprise my husband and decorate our apartment for Christmas.
I schemed and planned and enlisted the help of a couple of my middle school girls, who said yes but pretended to be too cool to get excited about it (gotta love middle school girls).
Yesterday afternoon, while mikey was coaching at a wrestling tournament, we went to Target and TJ Maxx to buy decorations. Both stores were crazy packed and the Christmas stuff was very picked-over already. But we got a few cute things, and rushed back to decorate.
There’s Christmas lights hanging over the window. (Target only had blue lights, and they looked terrible! A second trip to CVS was required to find these particular lights.)
A caroling penguin. I mentioned to the girls that mikey loves penguins, and they immediately started picking up everything penguin-related. This one was pretty cute.
Stockings. (Based on the last caption, can you guess which one was for mikey?)
Gold and red candles. As also seen in previous pictures. It’s amazing how a few candles can completely change a table.
And a “Season’s Greetings” cookie tray, complete with Gobstopper candy canes and white chocolate macademia nut cookies (mikey’s favorite). But we won’t talk about how I ate almost all these cookies, not him.
To all of this, I added the Classical Christmas station from Pandora. It wasn’t much – our apartment is far too small and there are too few empty surfaces for a lot of decorations. But it made our little home seem much cozier and more… festive? And mikey was surprised and pleased, and that was the goal. Mission accomplished.
And here’s what happens when you let free-standing, uncontained candles burn for too long. Oops.
looking on the bright side.
This past week, I’ve been intentionally focusing on the positive things going on in my life. As an experiment, each day on facebook I update my status with things I love, to remind myself how much I enjoy being alive.
As a rule, I generally focus on the negative, no matter what the situation or circumstance. For some crazy reason, it’s just how I was wired. Sometimes, if I let myself wallow in the negative for too long, it’ll turn me into a whiny, selfish, angry person to be around. No fun at all.
And so, in an effort to stay rational and enjoy my life, I’m focusing on the good things. Lord knows there’s plenty to complain about right now, but there’s also plenty to be thankful for and appreciate. And that’s what I’m doing: being thankful and appreciating.
catching up
I haven’t written a real entry in a long time. It’s not because things haven’t been happening – November was quite the eventful month – I just haven’t felt very eloquent or insightful lately. And that’s not a very good reason not to write. So, to catch you up on our November:
November 6th-7th – Rochester, NY
mikey and I went to Rochester the first weekend in November. There we saw a fantastic production of Dracula by Push Physical Theater, explored, tried all sorts of new food at the Public Market, and generally fell in love with the city.
November 20-22: ALIVE conference
I spent this weekend in Ocean City, Maryland, with some of the craziest middle school students and leaders in the entire world. The numbers:
- 3 days
- 2 nights away from my husband
- 9 students
- 5 adults
- 2 vehicles (1 van named moby and 1 car named griffin)
- 3.5 hours there (and then back)
- 4 main sessions
- 5 members of the worship band
- 2 small groups
- 2 main speakers
- 1 discipline issue (only 1!!)
- 3 decisions to follow Christ for the first time
- 2 decisions to follow Christ again
- $1000 spent on junk food by the kids (approximate… or exaggerated.)
November 24-28: Thanksgiving
And for Thanksgiving weekend, mikey and I drove up to Boston to spend it with my side of the family.
Highlights include (but are not limited to): turkey dinner on Thursday, playing whist with my parents, playing rockband with my siblings, black friday shopping (and doing it ALL wrong), “I hate that pie because it smells funny,” Apples to Apples, “How I Met Your Mother” season 2, Star Trek, and the puggle at the pet store (too bad our apt. doesn’t allow pets).
December 2nd – Target
Yes, November was an eventful month. And then last night, we got our first Christmas tree! Pictures are on facebook, but as you can see, we’re pretty excited, even if it’s only a 3′ fake tree from Target.
