Our First Christmas

This Christmas is our first married Christmas!  Yay!  I have been looking for a good Christmas ornament to commemorate the occasion.  It is so hard to decide, there are a lot of cute ones out there!

Isn't this Hallmark one perfect???

Here are my favorites from etsy.com

Love!

 

Cute!

 

Classic!

 

 

Any opinions?  Is it okay to have 5 ornaments for your first Christmas? lol

 

 

 

 

 

Pascha!

Hey guys!  It has been a while!! (sorry!) 

Aaron and I are all moved into our new place, and about 95% unpacked at long last.  So I have been busy with the move and school and unpacking everything, I can't believe a whole month has gone by already!?  I also got cable AND learned how to use Pinterest (from my Mom of all people, lol) so both of those have been extreme time sucks.

For the Orthodox Christians in the group, yesterday was Pascha (pronounced Pah-ska)(Easter) or the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord.  So we had a feast!  It was sort of like our very first hosted holiday.  Normally we are at my Mom's or Aunt and Uncles, but no one in the family celebrates Orthodox Easter but us, so we jumped on the opportunity to entertain. 

We invited my Mom and my brother Jeff over to eat (at our little two seater table, lol)  At least 70% of this menu was inspired by Pinterest...

Cucumber Roll Ups (filled with feta)

Bacon egg and cheese deviled eggs. And Cadbury eggs, of course

Leg of Lamb

Aaron getting his carve on

Easter Basket Cake!

And we will be eating leftover from our feast all week long, lol.  It was basically a success - everything turned out well taste wise.  Time management could use some work, as I should have make a few things the night before but we were frantically unpacking the last bunch of boxes.  Plus we were at church all night for Pascha services.  It was mega fun breaking in a bunch of our new kitchen gadgets and things!  We are totally going to have a game night, or get together sometime soon so we can do this again!

On that note (and speaking of notes), our thank you notes came in, and it is my goal to get them 100% done by the end of the week.  I am pretty certain that everyone thinks we are ungrateful jerks at this point, but we were moving and everything has just been too crazy.

AND I got an email from our photographer that our pictures should be ready sometime this week!  Exciting!!! 

So I am going to start recapping everything very soon :)  

Our first married Valentine's Day

We had to celebrate on Sunday the 11th because Tuesdays are busy busy busy for the both of us.  As far as gifts go, I got candy and flowers and Napoleon Dynamite on bluray, because it is one of the best movies of all time, and a Chelsea Handler book that I didn't have, yay!  I got him a few books and some candy.  I didn't take pictures of any of this unfortunately, and the flowers are already brown and droopy.

Aaron took me out to dinner to Fogo de Chao.  It was his choice, I wanted to go to the fondue place.  Fogo de Chao was alright.  If you like meat, it is the place to go.  I wouldn't call it especially romantic, and it is pretty pricey.  But we enjoyed ourselves and left very very full, so that was good :) 

camera phone pic, eek!

This was a papaya cream dessert Aaron ordered.  It was pretty gross, but it looked pretty!

So that was Valentine's Day!  How was yours?

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas!  And if Christmas isn't your thing, I hope you at least enjoyed a day off work!

Mine was pretty swell.  We had my Mom's annual Christmas Eve get together with friends in Houston.  We changed it up and did fajitas instead of turkey, which was excellent!
Then we had Christmas morning here at home, and then headed to Austin for the day to see some family.  I somehow completely spaced on taking present opening pictures.  Whoops.  Here are some though :)

There is a tree somewhere behind our giant bodies.

Cousins!

The 'do something silly' shot, lol

Christmas is the best!

Baby, It's cold outside!

It has been literally freezing in Houston the past two days, I think winter has finally arrived!  We braved the frozen tundra to get us a Christmas tree early this week, which was fun.  There is not a more intoxicating aroma than a Christmas tree if you ask me!

My Mom and brother Jeff checking out the selection

And we went out for Gingerbread Lattes from Starbucks afterwards :)

Yes!

And today I had a lovely dinner date with my gals Lindsey and Leslie.  Came home, finished my last school project, so I am OFFICIALLY DONE!  (for the semester)  Such a wonderful feeling!  

Oh, and Aaron and I met with Fr. James, the new head priest at our church about wedding things - I will talk about that more in a post soon.  He gave us a super long test to take to see how good we will be at marriage, lol.  It is a take home test, so I need to finish that and bring it back for the results.

Other wedding things that are going down this weekend:

*My Mom and I are going to Harwin (Houston's ethnic shopping district) for some discount fabric for table cloths

*Hopefully finding some last items for my Bridesmaids gifts

*Visiting a whole-sale flower shop we might order the wedding flowers from

*Checking into a rehearsal dinner locale

*Seeing about a hair lady my neighbor recommended

Oye, there is still so much to do!

Why Aaron and I are good for each other

We were made from the same nerd mold...

Aaron and I have a deep and serious love for all things Christmas and we are planning on attending a Home Alone pizza party at our local Alamo Draft House - because few things get you in the spirit of Christmas like Home Alone.

Keep the change, you filthy animal.

So all week we have been totally excited for Saturday.  We are pinching pennies to get this wedding paid for, and are sooo busy with everything that we hardly get time together to just have some fun.  Here is an excerpt of our discussion of the pizza party/budget.

Pssh, Romance is gross.

so much screaming.

Holidays!

Hey guys!  It has been a while, I know...

I, along with my Mom, have been working for weeks and hours getting our hand made invitations out so I have had little time for much else!  They have been mailed out, so in a day or two I will do a post on them once they have been received by the guests.  (Didn't want to ruin the surprise!)

Finally addressed and ready to go!

I have been having an awesome holiday however :)

I'll rewind back to the weekend before last, my Mom and I and a few neighbors had a humongous garage sale (sorry I forgot to take any photos) but we didn't pretty fantastically, so that will make a nice addition to the wedding budget - in a positive direction.  So yay for that!

Thanksgiving was pretty great too.  It was a small group, My Mom, brother, Aaron and Ruth and Sam (my step-grandparents).  We had a delicious feast, and Aaron made the most delicious turkey!

My little brother with a comically small whisk

Cutting up the bird!

Ruth and Sam are ready to eat!

We ate until we could eat no more.  Then Aaron and I went and saw the new Muppet movie, and it was great!  I recommend it if you have ever loved the muppets, or like laughing and feel nice movies :)

Friday we decided to sleep rather than wait in lines for super crazy deals, but around 9AM we headed to Macy's because we had some really good coupons.  The mall was pretty tame, so that was nice.  I always say I would gladly pay double to shop in an empty store rather than try to shop and bumping into people all over the place.  

And today (Saturday) it was rainy and I lounged around the house all day and did nothing.  It has been glorious!  

This coming week I have finals at school, so I will be getting those out of the way, then winter break starts!  Which means hyper-wedding mode starts in full force until the big day.  I so cannot believe I will be a married lady in a little over two months!? Wild!! :)

Memorial Day Weekend Roadtrip

Alright guys, we made it back safe and sound and I have so much to write about!  For those not in the know, Aaron and I drove from Houston to Las Vegas last week so I could meet his Mom and step-dad, celebrate his 30th birthday, and to co-host a bridal shower for our friend Angela, and to have a lot of fun - which all of those things happened!

The trip went a little something like this:
Wednesday:  Houston, TX to Amarillo, TX
Thursday: Amarillo, TX to Las Vegas, NV
Sunday Evening: Las Vegas, NV to Gallup, NM
Monday: Gallup, NM to Houston, TX

So unfortunately, we spent about half of the time of the trip in the car, but airline prices were just outrageous for the holiday weekend!  Here are a handful of photos from the journey.

scenery

Getting our kicks on Route 66

Aaron and the Amarillo Horse

Indian Stuff

Arizona Forrest

Oh no, a wild fire!



The drive there was mostly uneventful.  We got to Amarillo and had intentions of going to the 72 oz. steak place.  We didn't want to try for the glory, but we were hoping someone would be going for it while we were there.  Sadly, upon check-in at the hotel, the check-in lady was going on about how awful the food was, so we decided against it.  Thursday's drive was kind of cool because I had never driven through New Mexico or Arizona so I enjoyed the scenery.  There is a place in Arizona called Bearizona, which I assume was a super cool bear park, but we didn't have time to stop.  The drive home was crazy, we ended up leaving Nevada an hour behind schedule, so we got to Gallup suuuuper late.  Then we got up the next day and drove all stinking day long!  We took a tiny pit stop in Dallas and saw Katrina, and dropped off some things I had of hers, then we were off to Houston.  We rolled in about 1:30AM.  I don't want to roadtrip again for a little while.  Overall, the drive was pretty good, and as many people have noted:  if Aaron and I can survive (our second!) long roadtrip together, then marriage should be a breeze! :)

Time to get Orthodoxed

I misspelled on my calendar, my bad.

Tonight at 7pm, I start catechism.  I am kind of stoked.  I mean, I am excited to learn about the Orthodox faith, so maybe I don't feel like such an outsider when I go to church with A.  This whole converting thing is what makes all of this seem for real to me.  But anyway.  The Orthodox faith is partially similar to Catholicism - which is what my family is - and the other part of it is totally foreign, and ...looking for a nice word to say weird...I don't know.  I mean, I know Catholicism is weird to people who don't know how it goes - so I am trying to keep an open mind and let myself get used to it.  As it goes, I am particularly frazzled because of Lent.  In the Catholic church, when Lent comes around you just pick something you want to give up, and try really hard not to have it for the 40 days ( The forty days represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesus spent in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by Satan.)  ((And yes, I know it is sad, but I had to look that up in wikipedia.))  But yeah, I try at first, but I am lucky if I last a week.  So in short, it is nothing that I took all that seriously.  Lent was just a time to chow down on Cadbury Eggs until Easter.



<3



Lent in Orthodoxy is bigtime.  They fast for 40 days (actually it is 49 this year, but who's counting?) So that means A and I are sort of vegans.  No Meat, Fish, Dairy, Oil.  (Some days you can have oil)  We can eat shellfish though, so that is something.  Actually, I love shrimp a lot, and once I said to my bestie Kat that I wish I could eat shrimp everyday.  She said that I was an adult and I could if I wanted to, to which I replied yeah, but it would get expensive and I might get mercury poisoning over time, so it isn't feasible.  But looks like my dreams are somewhat coming true.  lol.  But yeah, this time in the Church is very serious and like spiritually cleansing I think.  So I guess during this time, Fr. S thought it is the perfect time to convert myself and a few other interested parties into Orthodoxy. 

The weird thing happened yesterday, which when I think more about it, is kind of nice I suppose, but man.  I was given zero warning about what the Forgiveness Sunday vespers was all about.  We had the church service, and then we had to line up and ask forgiveness of everyone in the church.  Individually.  And kiss them on the cheek.  A threw this at me as a 'by the way...' as we were lining up.  Had I mentally perpared a bit, I think things would have gone better, but I was like in panic mode supreme.  I don't have social anxiety to the point where I need a therapist or anything - but I am not a big fan of getting in personal space of those I don't know.  And I definitely am not a happy camper when I am put in a situation of impending uncomfortableness.  A made a fair point that noone really likes kissing strangers and stuff, but the meaning behind it is nice, so we should focus on that.  So I was a trooper, and I asked/gave forgiveness to 60 or so different strangers while my face was hot and my palms were sweating profusely.  A assured me that Forgiveness Sunday is as weird as it gets, but I don't know if I can trust him now, lol.  A is going to come with me tonight for the first class so it will be a little less scary.  

The Forgiveness Sunday is the kickoff of the Great Lent fast, and I usually will go veg with A during this time to show solidarity.  But I imagine Fr. S will think it is a good idea to participate.  I mean, this is going to be my life now, so may as well get it going.  I went through a vegetarian/vegan stage in college, so I totally am not worried about not sticking with it.  But yeah, besides the church incident yesterday, I am mostly excited about the process and looking forward to all I will be learning during catechism and also during this Lenten season.  Only 48 more days until Cadbury Eggs! ;)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lent

Orthodox Lent has its own Wikioedia page if you are interested in reading more! 







Valentine's Day!

A posted this on my facebook wall :)

Valentine's Day was great!  A and I were keeping it low key because we have a wedding to pay for, so we stayed in - A made dinner, and we watched Intervention (like we do every Monday).  Only this time, there were presents and candy, yay :)

AND flowers!!! <3

I gave A some candy and a book called Groomology, so he can be the best Groom he can be, and a book on how to make vintage cocktails since he has seen into that subject a lot as of late.  You can check them out on Amazon via the side bar on your right.

I got candy, and a book about Orthodox Christianity, and the new Decemberists CD!  Good job A!!

The King Is Dead

A made a delicious steak recipe which involved nearly burning my kitchen down.  The video is above.  This is my very first youtube video ever, so I wasn't aware that I can't film sideways on my phone and rotate it later, so you will have to turn your head to get the full effect.  My apologies.

Steak auPoivre recipe

Yum!!!