Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from Park City, UT.  Ryan and I are here with his parents for our annual ski trip.  It was such beautiful weather this morning, and we feel like we have the mountain to ourselves.  Hope you had someone to share this cheesy but sweet holiday with.

And to make you smile, I added this adorable video of my Grandparents who were sweethearts for close to 70 years and danced with each other for all of them. I love them dearly.  Happy Valentine's!

Dinner Party

Menu: Pork tenderloin with parsley scallion sauce, mashed potatoes, asparagus, salad.  

Desert: Homemade vanilla cake with strawberries and fresh whipped cream.

Guests: Oliver and Emily.
Him: artist.
Her: nurse anesthetist.
Patrick: Emily's brother, new roommate.
Coolest couple from the Peter's Canyon Ward 

 "My dinner party kicked a**" - Leslie Knope

Throwdown

Doesn't this get you pumped?

Weekend Update with Cait

 We bought a lemon tree for our front porch

 We named her "Liz"

 We also bought my adorable pink "polka dot plant."

 We made cinnamon bread in our fancy new bread maker, it turned out like Frakenstein and too scary to photo, but tasted delicious

 A treasure I found for Ryan at Rocket Fizz

 

I made about 7 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for my fam

 

And we dog sat Annie for the day, she just kicked it on our couch all day.

Breakfast.
Gardening.
Bread making.

Park day.

Souplantation.

Stake conference.
San Diego.

Superbowl.

Food.

The End.

New Project

I went to visit my Mom a few weeks ago, and she's decided to getting rid of all of her kids junk that we've left behind.  She cleaned out a closet and found my blanket I began crocheting about 6 years ago...wow, long time.  So I had a few spools of yarn to continue it, but it's been so long that I can't get any extras.  My Mom had noticed that I kept my stitches really tight, so she suggested that I undo what I had started and start over, ugh.  Not so bad I guess since I hardly even remember doing any of it.  So here I am unwinding all of my yarn in to a massive ball of yarn.  I"ll show you my progress and my finished product as I go along.

Today's Date

My awesome friend Emily and I hit up Silver Lake and Burbank today for some arts and crafts stores.  While we were going in and out of shops we headed to Porto's for lunch.  Sooooo delicious.  

 We ordered their famous cheese Danish, a chicken empanada (only 99 cents, how can you pass that up?)...

...and this little beauty, a Cuban "Medianoche" sandwich.  Awesome, awesome day.

Red Hot

Mila Kunis looked absolutely gorgeous at the SAG awards. Love love love that dress. I want it

Das is good

We ate ours too fast to take a picture, so this is a picture from the internet to give you an idea

I look extremely Asian in this picture, but that's ok, just embracing my adopted roots

and this is me flying away with some balloons we picked up for a church activity. just thought I'd throw it in there

Ryan and I had a breakfast date at Jagerhaus, a 27 year old German restaurant. We were supposed to go here for Ryan's birthday breakfast, but we ended up not going. Ryan's a huge fan of German pancakes. If you haven't had a German pancake, they're like an eggy crepe-ish pancake in the center and then out toward the edges it's like a souffle. We split the pancake and some eggs, potatoes, and bacon, and tried some of their homemade plum jam. Delicious.

Maternity Clothes

I just went shopping with my mother-in-law the other day at Fashion Island. One of the best places to shop in Orange County, mostly because of the location, but it has some great stores. We hit some of my usual shopping spots: Forever 21, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and some cute boutique stores they have. I couldn't find anything I was remotely interested in buying. I keep seeing the same styles over and over, the loose striped/floral/geometric shirt that hangs off the shoulder or billows out, making you like twice your size. I have a few of these shirts, and I enjoy the freedom and comfort they give, but I don't want to have a closet full of maternity clothes. I enjoy having a structured and fitted blouse/jacket/t-shirt that shows my actual size. Does anyone else share this same sentiment? Or am I missing out on this great trend?

My running group is better than your running group

The wonderful women I miss!

Our Saturday gang.

I love love love the women that I get to run with 4-5 times a week. They're all mom's and dedicated wives to their husbands. They all are amazing women, and everyday we run I just get to listen to their hectic but happy lives. We run with a group of about 5-8 women (depending on who is ready to get up for their 5:30 AM runs), and I've been running with them since August. It's the best way to stay happy and healthy, running and gabbing with your friends every morning.

About two months ago I went on an early morning run, and started to get some knee pain and was only able to finish about 3 miles. I thought, ok I'll just put some ice on it and take a few days off. Two days later we went on a long Saturday run (my favorite kind). We ran along the trails by our homes and my knee felt pretty good, by mile 7 I was in bad shape. I was trying to hold it together, and not make my friends worry, but my knee was killing me. We ran another mile, and they decided they wanted to make another loop and add on a few more miles. I thought: "no way am I going to add on to this pain," so I walked/ran back to our cars. My knee was not good. I kept ice on it, took some anti-inflammatorys and stayed off of it. Fortunately, I work at a physical therapist clinic and they were able to check me out.

DX: Patella femoral pain syndrome, chondromalacia of the patella, and IT band syndrome.

Yikes, not good news to a committed runner. So basically I have run only one time since that diagnosis. I've stayed off of my knee by riding the stationary bike, stretched, iced, and now I've started swimming. It's rough missing out on your friends lives. I know phones were invented to communicate with people, but I miss those early morning runs where we talk about everything under the sun. We've even names our running group "TMI." You can imagine how personal things get with married women. It's hard to get the texts to come running, and your body not let you do it. Anyways, I'm trying hard to get back, and getting treated 3 times a week by my therapists in hopes of returning.

Now on to the reason why I wrote this post. Recently, one of my good friends from my group posted on her blog about her experience with becoming an addicted runner. She went from being obese and inactive to a 50 lb. weight loss and certified "runner." Her story is amazing, and so inspirational. If you're having a hard time getting motivated to start working out and being healthy, read Kelly's story, and hopefully it will inspire you. Also my friend Lisa wrote about her experience with helping Kelly complete several races. Check them out! Happy running!

Birthday Festivities

"the" briefcase

the sleeve

Sushilicious, our tower of plates

For Ryan's birthday this year I: got him some new clothes, an awesome leather briefcase (Christmas/birthday), a computer sleeve, made him a chocolate cake, went to sushilicious for dinner (amazing rotating sushi bar) with some great friends, and had Sunday dinner with his parents. What a good weekend!

New Year's Blog Inspiration

This week, I read this article:

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs, as I'm sure many of you did. I loved the article. It's great that so many mormon women's blogs can make such an impact on very "not so mormon" women, to the point of making them want to have children. So I decided to read some of the blogs that the author was obsessed with, and I found my new blog inspiration. Her name is Naomi and her and her husband live in D.C. They are an adorable couple, and she's cuter than I can handle. I want her clothes, bangs, talent, everything. Don't get me wrong I'm happy about who I am, but it's nice to get inspiration from others. So now I've resolved to blog more, and become more interesting by being more adventurous and learning new things. 2011, it's going to be a good year.