A New Seasonal Favorite

Move over Girl Scout Thin Mints and Oreos, for the best mint cookie ever! Sold seasonally only at Trader Joes!

One Good Meal

Miles and I had a very delicious dinner tonight. The best part was that it was so easy! We had baked chicken, a sweet potato, spinach salad, and corn. Don't you just love it when you're able to pull something together without any planning, and it actually tastes good? We were very excited. I thought I'd mention just a few of the tidbits I learned to make this meal such a breeze.

Tonight's chicken recipe, which I got from allrecipes.com—my all-time favorite recipe site, only called for 3 ingredients (including the chicken). I'm usually terrible at baking chicken—it always comes out dry and bland. I'm learning that chicken needs to be baked at a high temperature (400-425 degrees) for only 20-25 minutes, and most recipes call for more like 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Did you know you can microwave sweet potatoes? Yeah, all you need to do is scrub the tater, pierce it about 10 times with a fork and put in on a paper towel in the microwave. Cook for 3 minutes, turn, and cook for 3 more. I ate half of mine with just butter and salt, and the other half with butter and brown sugar. Both ways were delicious!

My secret to tonight's spinach salad was the scoop of cottage cheese. Miles thought it was a little weird, but ended up liking it. Really, it's just a cheap and handy substitute for something like feta.

You can never go wrong with frozen corn. We buy a huge bag at Costco (organic, because that's all they have here in California) and we eat it with just about every meal.

Yay for yummy, easy cooking!

Quiz F-U-N!

Which Harry Potter Character Are You?

Miles, you are Harry. You're a loyal and courageous friend. You'd do anything to protect the people you love, especially if it'll get you a break from class for a little while.

Michelle, you are Hagrid. You're an outcast with a heart of gold. Despite your own problems, you always find time to help those in need.

Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

TAG--I'm It

I've been Tagged by Laura to disclose 8 things you might not know about me. This is going to be tough!

1. I was born in a tiny hospital in Richfield Utah, and you are likely to have no idea where that is. Also, I was the only child my mother had naturally.

2. I've never been to the Eastern United States, but am planning a trip with Miles at the end of March!

3. I was in student government from the time I was in 2nd grade until I graduated High School.

4. I did not receive my Young Woman Recognition Award, but WAS Valedictorian. I guess you could see where my priorities were during adolescence.

5. I've been engaged twice.

6. There was a point when I wanted to go to Culinary Arts School. That phase lasted about 2 weeks, but I still get phone calls and emails from a small, local institute here in California--kinda obnoxious actually!

7. My family built 2 homes completely on our own. The first house took 10 months, which seemed like an eternitiy. The second took more than twice as long, and we lived in a tiny trailer on the lot for the entire 2 years! Needless to say, we did grow closer as a family during that time--quite literally actually.

8. One of my very favorite things to do in the world is pop Miles' zits! He pretends to hate it, but he'll never admit that sometimes he ASKS me to "help him!" But don't tell him I told you!

I TAG Paige, Abbi, and Michelle Shade.

Michelle Got Her Hairs Cut

She went for the new "bangs" look

Isn't she beautiful!

Shhhh

Miles and I attended an ASL (American Sign Language) class last night. The class is taught by a deaf sister from our ward, and is being held in our church building for the next 6 weeks. Last night was our first class, and we had a blast. It felt more like an acting class than a language class, as we were learning how to use facial expressions and body language to communicate. I was also surprised how easy it was to pick up, not previously knowing any sign language (except for the alphabet). And we weren't even allowed to use our speaking voices during class!

Jiminy Cricket!

Does anyone know how long crickets live? Miles and I have a cricket living in our oven somewhere. It's been there now for over a week! Every night, when it gets dark, our obnoxious friend starts chirping away. At first it was kind of charming, feeling like we were constantly outside enjoying a summer evening, but it got old really fast. I've used the oven up to 400 degrees cooking dinner, and the little guy still survives. Miles and I went away for the weekend, crossing our fingers our apartment would be silent when we returned. To our dismay the stridulation didn't cease. Once in awhile we'll make a racket by slamming the oven door to get a minute or so of silence. We just don't know what to do! But I guess we should count our blessings. In many areas of the world, people keep crickets for pets and are considered good luck in Asia. But I think I'd prefer a quiet goldfish!

Jumpin' on the Bandwagon

I've been struggling trying to think of a new fun post, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and tell you a bit about us. This questionnaire has been floating around many of my highschool-friends' blogs.

1. Who is your man? Miles
2. How long have you been together? Married 2 ½ years
3. How long did you date? 10 months
4. How old is your man? 25 now?
5. Who eats more? I’ve figured out I eat about ½ - 2/3 what he eats, and he’s usually done in about ½ the time as well.
6. Who said "I love you" first? I did.
7. Who is taller? He is, though we are both pretty short. We always tease each other that we don’t realize how short the other is until we see them with a group of other people.
8. Who sings better? I think I have the pitch and Miles has the volume! Sometimes I have to shhh him while singing hymns in sacrament meeting at church.
9. Who is smarter? Definitely him—he’s the one getting his PhD!
10. Who's temper is worse? Temper? Neither one of us really has a temper, but I’m the one who gets irritated first.
11. Who does the laundry? Usually a combined effort. I need his muscles to carry the very full hamper to the coin-op.
12. Who does the dishes? Miles, but he REALLY likes it when I help.
13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Me, there is no way we could ever switch. We’ve tried a couple times, and neither of us could sleep a wink!
14. Who pays the bills? He pays the “bills,” but I do the shopping.
15. Who is better with the computer? Yeah, that would be Miles—he is currently designing and building a website from scratch for us. Keep an eye out, we will be posting to that site soon!
16. Who mows the lawn? No one. The grass at our apartment complex is like 12” high right now!
17. Who cooks dinner? Me. Miles claims it’s because I’m good at it.
18. Who drives when you are together? He does. We’re a relatively traditional couple when it comes to that. He’s also very good at always opening my car door.
19. Who pays when you go out? Whoever gets the debit/credit card out first.
20. Who is most stubborn? Usually me, but Miles has “opinions” about certain things and will not budge!
21. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? I want to say me, but it’s probably him.
22. Whose parents do you see the most? Mine, even though we live equidistant to both now—6 hours to St. George, and 6 hours to Mesa.
23. Who kissed who first? Miles kissed me first, though we have different ideas of how the details played out.
24. Who asked who out? He asked me out, because I had a car.
25. Who proposed? He did, kneeling in the snow. It was a total surprise! How romantic ☺
26. Who is more sensitive? If you mean more emotional—then it’s me. Miles is way more sensitive to my needs than I am to his.
27. Who has more friends? Probably me, but he's better at making friends
28. Who has more siblings? He does.
29. Who wears the pants in the family? Well my nickname for Miles is "Pants" (shortened from his full nickname of Turkeypants) but that doesn't mean he WEARS the pants in the family. Like most of ya’ll we feel pretty equally yoked.

Bakersfield

Michelle came up with the fun idea to take a quick trip to Bakersfield this last weekend. Now I know what some of you must be thinking, "Why in the world would they want to leave the beautiful weather and coast of Irvine to visit the hot, barrenness of Bakersfield?" Well for those who don't know, and are probably the ones asking the question, my family and I lived there for six years (while I was in junior high and high school). Since my family now lives in Arizona, I haven't had any reason to visit Bakersfield since I left for BYU seven years ago.

It was Michelle's first visit and she wasn't too impressed. Sure she thought it was fun to put places to all the stories that I have told her about, but she thought overall the city was pretty ugly. Now, it doesn't fair too well with air quality but that's not its fault (Bakersfield lies at the bottom of the San Joaquin valley and accumulates all the smog from Sacramento and San Francisco), but all the oil rigs don't help either.

We visited my old house. While there we caught up with the Hemingway's, a neighbor family in our ward.

Next, we went to my high school. West High Viking pride, yeah!

CSUB swimming pool. This is where I swam throughout high school. All of our swim practices and almost all of our swim meets took place in this pool.

The LDS ward building we attended. It doubled as the Stake Center. Here we had church, seminary, dances, even performances.

Western Warehouse. This is were my dad worked and was the reason we moved to Bakersfield.

Those were the major attractions. Besides that, pretty much all we did was eat.

Dewar's is a well known ice cream and candy shop in Bakersfield. We had a black and white, bought some chews, and even a t-shirt for me.

Michelle has a bad habit lately of leaving her door open when we walk away from the car. I was able to catch it on film.

On the way home we made a stop at the Los Angeles Temple, another first for Michelle. By the way, this is Michelle's accidental "artistic" shot.

Wink Blink

Miles and I are always teasing each other because neither of us can keep our eyes open when we take pictures. So here's the test...who is the worst at keeping their eyes open? I think from my calculations (from perusing through our computer images) Miles is the winner!

M&M (Miles and Michelle)

http://www.becomeanmm.com/