Birth Day

We just found out that Mia, a Hungarian Vizsla, whelped her litter of 2 girls and 5 boys early this morning. So far all the puppies are doing well. This is super exciting news for Matt and I because one of those boys is going to be our new puppy! He'll be coming home with us in 7-8 weeks so we've got lots to do and learn in the next few weeks.  It's going to be such an exciting adventure!

yum yum!

Friday was definitely a good food day! It was my work's International Food Day for lunch. For being a fairly small company - 300 employees, we have a lot of diversity. There's a lot of diversity among our 150 employees in DSM but the remaining 150 employees are spread across 11 countries. For the International Food Day, in order to participate in the eating, you have to bring a dish. Lucky for me USA counts as a country and I made my aunt's famous Caramel Bars.

There were soooo many tasty dishes to sample! One of my favorites, also from the USA, was the Cherry Pineapple Surprise. I didn't take any on my first pass through the line, but one of the gals I was sitting with got some and said it was delish - and she was right. Sooo good. Definitely a nice surprise.  :) Hopefully I can get the recipe and try and make it myself.

Don't worry. I didn't just try foods from the USA. I did a really good job of trying a little from many different countries. There were more than 50 dishes with 16 countries represented. CRAZY! I didn't try everything but I wish I could have. There was just too much. But it was really fun and I got to experience some new foods in a non-threatening environment. Here's some more pics of the foods I tasted.

This Indian dish was one of the first in the line and I almost passed it by because of the color. But it was actually really good and I'd have it again. Not too spicy either.

Very tasty veggies! There were lots of mushrooms in the mix which could probably be considered my favorite vegetable so definitely one of my favorite dishes too.

You can't really go wrong with italian and I was super impressed that this meal was not only homemade but also made in a crockpot. I really need to start using my crockpot more creatively on dishes like this.

 I wish I could have tried one of each section because they were all different - mushroom, cheese, cottage cheese...and some others that i can't remember.

 I'm glad I got to try this little individually wrapped snack from Vietnam. Our table's concensus was that it's probably considered a sweet or dessert in the country but in comparison to an American sweet or dessert this was much more bland.

 My Grandpa used to make homemade ice cream for special occassions and it was delicious. However, we always just had vanilla. This homemade ice cream was blueberry flavored though, so it was fun to try something different.

 This little ball was probably one of the biggest surprises. I totally thought it was going to be creamy but it wasn't at all. The consistency was so unusual - very much a shock when I took a bite.



I was excited to try this Indian dish out. Pretty much it was lamb pieces, rice and SPICES. It was good but had some kick to it. It's good that I only had a small portion because a regular helping would have been way too spicy for me.

Not only did I have a delicious lunch on Friday but my family went out to dinner with my Grandma at her "retirement resort". Dinner at the restaurant there was great and it was fun to catch up with my Grandma. We ordered a slice of red velvet cake to share but given how delicious it was both Jackie and I decided that next time we'll both be getting our own slice :)

10 years'ish

This weekend marked the anniversary of our first date - Valentine's Dance, Valley High School, 2001. Yep, we went on our first date 10 years ago!  Well, technically we went to a hs girls bb game a few days before the dance, but Matt had already asked me to the dance so the bb game was just a warm-up. And we officially didn't start dating then... our boy-friend / girl-friend anniversary isn't until April 16th, 2001. But, regardless, we've been together ever since.

It's kinda funny when people find out that we're high school sweethearts. On one hand people think it's super cute that our "puppy love" has lasted. On the other hand, 10 years is a looong time for kids our age to have been together and some people find that a little awkward. (Sorry, if you're one of those people and find this post uncomfortable.)

We've shared a lot of really great memories over the years... My favorite high school Prom memory includes Matt... I remember looking forward to seeing him on the Pentacrest as we walked between classes at Iowa... He helped me explore Omaha on my first adventure as a "grown-up"... Matt's still by my side picking out paint colors for our house...  I'm so glad that it's been Matt that I've shared all these moments with. I admit that I don't know it any other way, but I wouldn't change it for anything.

Pic from the past to come as soon as I figure out our scanner.

oops!

If it hasn't been obvious yet, it will be in a few minutes, I am totally inexperienced at DIY and home improvement in general. I discovered some new fun blogs this weekend and they got me in the mood to work on my house today. So I decided to tackle painting the trim in the downstairs bathroom. I bought the oil-based primer and white latex paint awhile ago but just hadn't started on it yet. Apparently this is the first time I've ever used oil-based primer before because I had NO IDEA that it was so much smellier than regular paint. I barely made any progress when I nearly passed out because of the fumes. I painted our bedroom at the beginning of January and while it did have some "paint" smell it wasn't unbearable. But this smell is definitely unbearable. So even though it's snowing outside I now have our front door open, the bathroom window cracked and the smell is still lingering after 45 minutes like this. oops! Lesson learned, I guess. :)

Score!

After a month of searching, Matt and I finally bought our new family room furniture! It's so exciting to have that done... now we're on to picking out a new paint color for the walls and finding (or maybe building???) an electric fireplace/mantel/tv stand combo. We ended up purchasing a couch, loveseat, chair/ottoman AND a coffeetable. We had almost finished checking out when we remembered the coffee table we had seen earlier and decided to throw that in too. More on the couch decision later but here's the coffee table we ordered.

Isn't it adorable! What's really fun is that it's actually two pieces smooshed together. We can separate them if we want and then we'll have so much room for activities (yes, Matt, that Stepbrothers reference was for you). It's kinda hard to tell in this pic but the color is actually dark brown not black. 

Sometimes I feel guilty about buying new furniture like this. So many people find used furniture super cheap and then can turn it into something a.maz.ing. I don't have those magical skills. I never seem to find the cute furniture (probably because I'm not going to the right stores because i don't know which ones those are) and then even if I did find cute stuff that needs some tlc, my painting and staining skills are severely lacking. So we forked over the cash and bought it new. 

But guess what.... I just saw this same exact coffee table on Amazon for $100 MORE than what we paid for it at Homemakers. How awesome is that!!! So even though I feel kinda bad about buying new, I'm totally stoked that we got a great deal! Hooray for new furniture and hooray for savings!   

Someday I want this hanging in my baby's nursery. I randomly stumbled across this photo today and have already fallen in love. Growing up I have many memories of singing this song with both my Grandpa Nash and my Great-Grandma Hogan. And of course with my mom. I know that I will sing this song to my own babies someday. So when I get pregnant (sometime waaaay in the future) this will be the first piece I search for when turning our office into a nursery. 

3rd week of work completed!

I love deadlines. It totally engergizes me when I have a short timeline to get something done. Is that weird? When there's a project that HAS to get done RIGHT NOW, I love it. I've always been like this. I think it's why I'm such an amazing procrastinator. Give me two weeks to write a paper and I'll still start it 2 days before it's due because I'm much more productive with my time when I know I have to be. If I actually started it in advance it would take me so many hours longer and the quality of the product wouldn't have been any better than only having a little while to do it.

This week at work we had a "drop everything else that you're doing and help us finish this project" couple of days. It was awesome. We had to finish the bonus/raise salary worksheet to present to our company's parent company for approval. It was fun to work on this type of project and I felt especially valuable because of my mad excel skills! :) Plus those days flew by too. I hope that my boss will continue to pull me into projects like this that are outside my training and development bubble. I think I was able to prove myself as being valuable in these kinds of situations too.

Now if only there was a realistic way to put some enforceable deadlines on our house projects and I'd have sooo much more accomplished!