Gettin' Hitched!

My little sis is getting MARRIED! Holy cow! I'm so excited for her. Her boyfriend, now fiance, Caleb proposed at the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. this past weekend. A nice man offered to take their pic in front of the reflecting pool and then Caleb said, "We might as well make this an action shot," and got down on one knee and proposed. So great to have pictures of it. My sister has lots more on her blog, but you have to be invited to look at her blog because she thinks she's really cool (actually, she just doesn't want her students to find it.) Anyway, I stole this pic from her page to post here. She is coming home tomorrow for her spring break and I can't wait to see her! Welcome to the family, Caleb. A baby and an engagement in one year, my parent suuuuure must be excited :-)

Details

Last night was Mexican night. Yay! I love making fajitas, and tacos and salsa and rice and all that good stuff. It's so satisfying. Although, I really would have enjoyed a margarita. Oh well. Anyway, I found a new salsa verde recipe in Details magazine of all places. It was really good, and really spicy. But it was just what the smokey shredded beef tacos I make need. It was so good. I even went all out and made these delicious fudgy brownies in a skillet for dessert, which I ate right out of the oven with vanilla ice cream of course.

Making the salsa.

The finished product. Sooo yummy!

Broken Glass

So a few weekends ago Stephen and I were visiting the Herman clan in Kentucky. We reluctantly drove home on Sunday night arriving home at 11 p.m. to find that our kitchen cabinet with all of our bar stuff and wine glasses had fallen off the wall. Glass was everywhere. Every single beer mug, wine glass, pilsner glass, martini glass, decanter, etc. that was own was broken. While I would rather come home to this than a giant flood in our apartment, it was still very frustrating. The good news is all of this stuff can be replaced. The better news is we have awesome landlords who wrote us a check for everything that was broken and then some without even batting an eye. The best news is last weekend we went to Crate and Barrel for a little shopping spree.

After we had that big flood last winter and everything got fixed up we came home from a hockey game to find water on our kitchen floor. It was raining really hard and there was a weird thing happening on the roof and water was coming down the brick wall behind that cabinet. They fixed it, but after time the back of this cabinet got moldy and rotted away.

A big mess.

All cleaned up.

A Baby Girl

So Stephen and I had an ultrasound yesterday and found out we are having a baby girl! We are very excited, to say the least. The doc said everything looks perfect. She weighs 9 oz. so far. I get to go back in two weeks for another one because she would not cooperate for some parts of the exam, so hopefully she'll be in a better position and be a little bigger so they can get what they need. Here are some of the pics from the ultrasound.

Sky Blue Sky

A high of 48˚ today in Port Huron. Stephen and I went over to the Lake Huron to check out all the ice. I love our lakes. Totally worth living in Michigan to be able to enjoy them. There is also a huge ice bridge out there that you can't see in any of these pictures. The Coast Guard is concerned that with the warmer weather it's going to cause some big problems in the river. You can read about that here if you're interested.

Anyway, the ice out there is pretty cool. And the sky was so blue today! Love days like today.

You can see more pictures of the ice here.

What's in a Name?

Over New Year's weekend while Stephen and I were visiting my parents we decided to take a little trip downtown Detroit one afternoon. There is a used bookstore there that Stephen has always wanted to visit called John K. King Used & Rare Books. The place is truly amazing. Six floors of books stacked floor to ceiling. If you ever get a chance to visit I highly suggest you do. Then you should eat lunch at Mudgie's in Corktown. Delicious.

Anyway, while at the bookstore I came across this little gem published in 1967. It was $1.25 so I decided to buy it and then Stephen and I challenged ourselves to choose our unborn baby's name from it. It's only 32 pages long and 8 of those pages include making sure the name you choose has a cool nickname, a family tree and ads for Enfamil like the one shown below.

I've looked through this book a ton of times and nothing really jumps out at me. Stephen actually likes the name Cadwallader. While it does have a cool meaning there is not a chance in hell that I am naming my kid that. No matter what Stephen or John N. say.

The cool thing about used books is seeing what the previous owner was leaning towards. Apparently Lenore was one of their options, which happens to be my grandma's name.

Also, I think it's totally fun and appropriate that, according to this book, Tait means cheerful. Who has ever met a Tait that isn't? (On a side note, I really like this picture of the name Tait and am considering fine tuning it a bit and then blowing it up and framing it. What do you guys think?)

The point is that Stephen and I can't really agree on anything. We are open to suggestions! As long as it's cooler that Cadwallader...I don't want to see a single comment in the comment section arguing that Cadwallader is a cool name. If you do you'll be banished from this blog forever!

Happy Birthday Linsey!!

To my sweet, loving and graceful wife: Happy Birthday.

Linsey turns 28 years old today. It is her last birthday before she holds her new title for life: mom. (Can't wait for that, by the way: watching Linsey be a mom. She'll be pretty darn good, don't you think?)

Anyway... Happy birthday Linsey!

(And Patrick B., if you read this blog: Happy Birthday to you, also)