Thursday, March 25, 2010

Pizza Pizza!

Amit is back home, trying to get back into his school routine. Luckily we've managed to ease him back into it. A few walks, some home-cooked food, and one afternoon off is about all it took. Today we walked to the beach, kicked a ball around with Seth, and then ran back home. We finished tonight off with a blizzard run! I am so, so glad that it is now officially spring. Dairy Queen season has finally come upon us!! Woo-hoo!! Even with all that fun, you would think Amit would be willing to get back in the groove. If only he would stop watching "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and focus on his computer screen I think he'd find it that much easier...

So back to the real reason for this post. I feel like bragging tonight. :-)  Last night, I made my first attempt at homemade pizza. It turned out way better than I had ever planned!
It was a great way to get Amit to eat tomatoes!

We spend our walks talking, 
but enjoy watching Top Gear while eating...
It is one of our favorite shows,
you have to check it out!
I am becoming quite the cook, well, more of a semi-homemade style cook. I love shortcuts. I must have done a good job with the pizza, because Amit just told me tonight that we should make the pizza more often. Woo-hoo!



Sunday, March 21, 2010

When the boy is away...

... the girl will play! 

Well, I don't know if play is really the right word. While Amit is spending his time at the ASDA National Conference in Baltimore, I'm at home in Quincy, finding ways to fill my time. Besides work, I've been trying to enjoy the beautiful weather. Since it feels like spring is finally here, I decided to start spring cleaning. Our closets are in desperate need of some Martha-like organization.

Besides that fun stuff, which aren't really blog worthy, I've done some other fun things.

Did you fill out your census form yet?
I did... After 8 months I still get excited when 
I have to fill out my part of a form under husband/wife!
The weather has been beautiful here, too.
Great running/walking weather!
Thursday night I babysat for our three favorite kids, all by myself! John and Tamsen went out for a much needed date night, and I settled in for a fun movie night with the kids. Aiden (5) and Abby (almost 3) were so good for me, even when Ben was getting impatient waiting for his bottle to warm up. It was so much fun, I knew I wanted to hang out with the older two again. So I did! (I kind of inserted myself into the Keyes family during the week, but playing with the kids is way more fun than cleaning a lonely apartment.)

So Friday we decided to do some baking. A funny thing happened when making our cookies, though. Aiden was cracking the eggs (and did a very good job), but cracked one more on the table than in the bowl. So we got distracted... and only added 3 eggs instead of the 6 we were supposed to. Oh well, they were still good. I can't wait to try it with all 6 eggs added!
Yummy Monster Cookies
Look at how warm it was!!
Don't worry, I took this picture at a stoplight.
On Saturday afternoon, a group of us headed to another classmate's for a Meet Baby Ben party. The star of the party was wearing the onesie I appliqued for him!! It was super cute (and stitched on by Tamsen). He's such a chunky baby. He's almost 3 months and wearing a 6-9 month onesie. I think its okay though, I love chubby babies!
Amit got back from Baltimore today. We went out for dinner at Lime Leaf in Weymouth. We had a gift certificate from Restaurant.com, love Thai food, and needed to have a date night. Perfect combination! It was fantastic!! It is so good to have him home!

Check out ASDA's blog, Mouthing Off, to see our favorite dental student! A free toothbrush would win anyone over, well, any dental student for sure.






Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Nate's B-day Weekend - Part 2

On Sunday, we treated ourselves to a morning of sleeping in and a waffle breakfast! (They are our favorite "special" breakfast, so of course we had to treat our guests to some.)

We decided that a trip to another coast was in order. Rockport is one of our favorite places to visit in Mass, it was our first sight-seeing destination after the wedding. We knew that they would love both the scenery and all of the cool stores. Nate had driven through there with us before, but hadn't enjoyed the fun that we enjoy going into every little shop. Let's just say that Nate and Melanie did their best to stimulate our local economy. Oh yeah, and we also took a ton more pictures!
Motif No. 1
 I think Nate and Mel really enjoyed all the food we ate...
We posed for some pictures on Bearskin Neck.
Gotta love the ocean as a background!
After our snack break, we wandered around Rockport and visited the wonderful shops there. Highlights included buying food at Lula's Pantry, buying Mom earrings at a jeweler, and Nate finding an old book about learning to speak French (written completely in French). We stopped for a bit near a beach, so we could enjoy the scenery and take a few more shots of the four of us. 
Seriously, I love my tripod!
 Butt shot!
(It was meant to be us looking out over the water)
Then some nice ladies offered to take our picture,
they thought we looked so cute leaning over the railing.
(I think we did, too!)
Another reason that Amit likes it so much in Rockport, is this one house. It overlooks the water and has a beautiful porch. It's our dream house. Melanie took a picture of it for us!
After enjoying our afternoon in Rockport, we headed downtown, but this time to drive around the Harvard and Charles River area. We saw BU main campus, some of Harvard, and walked along the Charles River. All of this before heading to dinner back in Quincy.

Though it was a short visit, we had tons of fun and it was so nice to hang out with family! I think we convinced at least one of them that New England has way more to offer than Chicago. Slowly but surely we are going to convince them to move here! Maybe. One thing is for sure, we are becoming the vacation destination for everyone. That is a great thing, because we definitely have missed hanging out with them!

So Happy Birthday Nate, hope you (and Melanie) enjoyed spending some quality time with your favorite New Englanders!



Nate's Birthday Weekend - Part 1

We weren't in town for Nate's actual birthday, but he and our cousin Melanie came to visit Boston for his birthday weekend. We were super excited that they were coming and planned lots of fun trips. Thankfully, the weather cooperated with us. What better way to enjoy New England than by hanging out on the coast?

On Saturday morning, we headed to Newport, Rhode Island. None of us had ever been there, so we knew we were in for a fun trip.
We parked by the beach and headed on the Cliffwalk.
It was a beautiful day...
Us girls, 
trying to look pretty in the wind
Of course I had to take tons of pictures...
 Amit wanted some pictures of the waves...
After enjoying the first part of the Cliffwalk, we headed to lunch at a little pub that Amit found online. The food was so good! We drove around a little, checking out the sites, and then headed downtown to do some shopping. We hit the jackpot in this little antique store, but we couldn't justify spending hundreds on some really cool antique boat parts. It did give Amit some inspiration though, he now wants to decorate our future den with boat stuff.

We couldn't leave without seeing The Breakers, one of the most famous Newport mansions. We didn't go inside, but just enjoyed the outdoors while we walked around.
We have a lot of ocean shots...
Maybe we're meant to live by it one day?
We headed back to Boston, but there wasn't time for much rest. We headed downtown to walk through Quincy Market and the North End. We stopped at several pastry shops and Nate and Mel finished all of their pastries before we even left to find somewhere to eat dinner. We took one group shop that night... Unfortunately, both Nate and Amit had their eyes closed!


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Nate the Great

Happy Birthday Nathan!
I can't believe that my little brother turned 20 today. For some reason, him being twenty seems so much older than nineteen. Weird. I figure his birthday is a great excuse for me to blog about how much I love having a little (I guess now a big?) brother.

Super excited to have a baby brother!!
It looks like he loved me, too!!
He's probably not going to like this one, 
but he can blame Dad for giving me the photo! 
Check out this cutie!!
I think this was a sign of the charisma to come...
He isn't just charismatic, he's funny!
 
Somehow, suddenly, all of these years went by... He wasn't the cute, cuddly little guy that loved playing with his big sister. He was independent, didn't want any hugs from me, and was no longer running back and forth in front of the TV while mimicking the sporting event he was watching. Thank goodness that phase didn't last too long, because even though he was older, he actually wanted to hang out with me!! (It looks like it might have been because Amit was around... but I think I'll hold out hope that it was just because he loved his big sis.)

He is such a nice guy...
he always was there to cheer me on!
 
I blinked and all of a sudden he was a high schooler.
Here we are at Turnabout.
Me the senior, him the freshman. Yikes!
Have I mentioned his amazing athleticism???
He's an awesome runner. I'm not biased either,
the trophies say it all.
He celebrated his team winning 3rd at State.
He was an integral part of that, both physically and as a team leader!

I'll save you the pain of seeing running photo after running photo... It is his life. We also can have fun hanging out somewhere other than a cross-country meet.

He always keeps our family vacations fun...
and puts up with my picture-taking obsession.
Only Nate would run, shirtless, 
on 5 feet of snow while at Mt. Rainier.

He really loves his doggy, too.
Nate is the only person that Max would actually 
be willing to share the couch with.
He's not only good at running...
He can manage to run through water and jump over hurdles, too!
Watching him run the steeplechase is so fun!!
He kicked butt this fall at Nationals, too!!
I told you he's amazing!

I love my little bro,
even when he tries to ruin a perfectly good photo!
So this totally turned into a birthday brag blog, but I think that's okay. He totally deserves it! He still has many more years of adventure and accomplishments ahead of him. I can't wait to see what he does by his next birthday! 

Happy Birthday Nathan!
Hope you're excited for your birthday celebration weekend!
We Love You!!!






Monday, March 1, 2010

Let's go skiing!

Boston has been a rainy, dismal place the last several days. New Hampshire had snow, so we decided to go up north and do some cross-country skiing. Seth tagged along, too. The boys start school tomorrow, so Friday was their last official day off.

It rained basically the whole time we were driving in New Hampshire. We were a little nervous that there wouldn't be any snow to ski on. The rain turned to sleet as we got closer to our destination and when we turned into the parking lot, it was snowing! So we headed off on the Wilderness Trail to get in some good cardio...
Since it has been so warm out, the waterfalls were flowing!
We could hear the river rushing alongside the trail, too.
Taking a water break...
 I think this might be the first shot of me actually skiing...
I'm usually the one behind the camera.
After being on the main trail for a while, we headed to the Franconia Falls. We weren't sure what we'd find, but we were up for an adventure!
On our way to the falls, we had to cross a stream...
Seth tried to catch Amit when he was stuck, 
but I was kinda in his way... 
 Amit made it safely over the stream and we skied on.
The falls weren't as big as we hoped,
but it was cool to see the water flowing underneath the ice.
We had to pose for some pictures...
 We decided to go further up the falls, 
but we had to leave our skis and do a bit of hiking.
Then we made a sad finding...
We were at the end of the trail!
(Notice Seth continued past the sign)
 It was a good thing he kept walking,
he found a nice place to have our snack.
While we were sitting there, snacking, Seth came up with this crazy idea to make a snow angel. On the snow-covered ice. The same ice that had been occasionally popping and had rushing water underneath it. Told you the idea was crazy. So as he stepped down onto the ice, it popped, and with this priceless look of panic, he scrambled back up the rocks. It was hilarious! I think Amit laughed for 5 minutes straight after it happened.
We couldn't stay there forever though,
we had to head back to the car.
The fog around the mountains had started to clear,
so we could actually see what was in the distance.

Being the "amateur photog" that I guess I consider myself to be (it's probably a stretch to say that), I have to take a billion pictures. I couldn't leave without taking some nice shots of the scenery. The path we had been on was in a tunnel of trees, so I couldn't really take too many pictures.
We love the mountains.
I think the ice covered river made the landscape
that much more interesting.
 
It was a very fun ski trip, its fun to go with the boys because they love to explore. Oh yeah, and most of all because the two of them are always up for a refreshing apres-ski meal at Burger King. It might not be the healthiest place to go, but boy does it hit the spot!