Dinner date

My co-worker, Josh, invited Chris and I over for dinner last night with his wife here in town. We'd been to their house last year for St. Patty's day so we knew we got along great with them. Josh had mentioned to me that his wife had recently switched them over to a Paleo diet which is very close to what we eat so I volunteered to make dessert.

Grain and dairy free brownies with dairy free (coconut) peppermint chip ice cream. We went over there at 6:30 pm and were having such a good time we didn't leave until almost 11:00 pm, way past our bedtime! The highlight our of evening was Josh introducing us to a new drink - orange juice mixed with whipped cream flavored vodka. It tastes exactly like an orange julius.

We brought two meads to share; blackberry and lemon which were big hits. We've made tentative plans to go to Wine Time together and then once we clean our humble abode we'll invite them over for dinner here. Look at us, being little social butterflies.

Travel bound

It's never too early for me to start planning our next vacation, especially when it's somewhere as historically interesting as Boston. Boston's been our list for awhile, and since Chris likely couldn't get the time off from his new job that we'd need to do our European cruise this year, we decided on a shorter East Coast trip instead.

We're eyeballing the end of September or beginning of October so I've got a little time to work on our itinerary and restaurants. And now that I've got another year before planning our cruise I decided to go on the website for Viking River Cruises, which we see on PBS before every episode of Downton Abbey, and order a catalog. First we were interested in a Norwegian cruise to the Baltic capitals with stops in Denmark, Finland, Russia, Germany, Estonia, and Sweden. But now, after reading the Viking River Cruise catalog, we think that we'd really like to do their Cities of Light cruise which starts in Paris with multiple stops in Luxembourg and Germany before taking a motorcoach into Prague in the Czech Republic for the last few days. It's 12 days which sounds just long enough to enjoy all the stops. And what's nice about Viking is that all of the excursions are included in the price, plus the added bonus of being on the interior rivers enjoying a more scenic voyage. Again, probably something we'll do in the fall. Now, if only I can wait that long!

Dominator of the dice

Tonight was my last minute rescheduled bunko night which was, much to my delight, in Chico. In fact, she only lives two streets behind us. And somehow through trickery and magic I won the prize for "most wins".

An honest to God prize I actually like - a jewelry holder! And the gal who hosted makes beaded jewelry and included a pair of beaded earrings in the little pink bag. Next month is my month to host so hopefully I can find some equally awesome gifts to dazzle them with. I mean, besides autographed photos of myself.

Party till midnight

While we don't usually have plans for New Years Eve, this year my bible study put together a couples evening at Kari's where we all brought finger foods and drinks to share.

Unfortunately, I had to work that day before coming home to get ready so I made sure to buy food that was pre-made like shrimp cocktail and tortilla roll-ups. Much to our surprise, we made much later than we'd anticipated - 11:00 pm! We all agreed that we would celebrate east coast new years, but we kept going strong for hours afterwards. By the time we got home it was no big deal to stay up until midnight, after which we promptly went to bed so we could sleep off all those bottles of mead we drank!

Belated birthday party

Two weeks later we finally got our schedules together and had my mom's birthday outing. Per my suggestion we did dinner and a movie up in p-town. If there hadn't been such crappy movies out we might have actually got this done sooner, but nothing decent came out until this week. Mom picked This is 40 which was playing at 6:45 pm so we picked her up at 5:00 pm for dinner at Ikkyu, the new Japanese restaurant in town. Since I was the only one who'd been there before I put myself in charge of ordering dinner (whether they liked it or not!). We got orders of miso soup and salads for everyone and then picked two orders of Japanese tacos (fried eggplant slices as the taco shells with spicy tuna or crab filling), two dragon rolls (California roll topped with eel and avocado), a salmon skin roll (crunchy salmon inside), and a Jimmy roll (fried in tempura with cream cheese in the filling).

As expected, everything was fabulous! After dinner we headed up to the theater and enjoyed an uncrowded showing of This is 40. Now Chris and I know what kind of life drama to expect in just a few glorious years. Back at home we were anticipating breaking into the chocolate mint cheesecake Wilson had made earlier in the afternoon with her new cheesecake pan.

And the best part? It's gluten free. We made the chocolate cookie crust out of gluten free faux-reo cookies. Thankfully, Wilson's reputation as a cheesecake wizard turned out to be true because it was delicious. I know what we'll be eating for breakfast!

Feliz Navidad!

Another year, another Christmas I tricked Santa into spoiling me rotten! We had a small gathering this morning at our house for breakfast and gifts. I ran up the hill and grabbed mom while the Canadian, Chubs and Wilson took kitchen duty. As I do every year, and because I'm the bossy one, I doled out the gifts from under the tree in steady fashion until all of our treasures were revealed.

And the best gift of all? Ribbon!!

After presents Wilson and I both drove back up the hill to drop off mom. I drove her home in Tango, so I could drop it off there, while Wilson followed so that she could bring me back. We filled out the title transfer today and traded keys so it's officially hers now. After we got home Wilson ran off for awhile to visit a friend and when she got back we went out for our early-bird Christmas dinner at Ginger's Chinese food.

Now we'ere just settling in before watching another movie that we rented. Last night we watched Trouble With the Curve with Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams while we had our seafood Christmas Eve dinner (crab sandwiches and shrimp scampi - yum!). Tonight's movie is The Words with Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana with steaming bowls of hot and sour soup for everyone that we were smart enough to get an order to-go from dinner!

Happy Christmas Eve Eve

Today was an incredibly stormy day which made running errands a horribly bad idea. I had to wade through numerous rivers just to get to church, but was rewarded with a cute little Christmas play put on by the Sunday School children.

After last minute trips to Pep Boys, K-Mart (worst idea EVER), and Safeway we settled in for a little (Hyundai like) Sunday football.

I did not know Chubs was such a football fan, but she parked it on my legs for what felt like hours mesmerized by both the TV and the spiders on the ceiling. She's enjoying our company so much she didn't even notice that Wilson was off playing hooky all afternoon - especially since she has Chris snapping rubber bands across the room for her to chase.