This made my night.
Category Archives: House & Home
I have to admit I’m curious as to what might be on here.
#purgetreasures
One of the truest pictures I’ve ever taken.
Partisan Pig Feast + More!
A Tivo-peep/Michigan friend, Therese, was in town for a conference, so we threw together a last-minute dinner downtown at The Partisan (I was thrilled to go there because that’s a dinner we recently missed when Tom had to be in Chicago for work).
The menu changes daily (and I forgot to take a picture of it—I’m slacking in my old age) so I checked their website hoping for tonight’s selection…but it wasn’t meant to be. That said, most of the items were still listed. I’m fairly sure you will be able to tell which descriptions are from the actual menu I found. (I also didn’t take pictures of the dishes like I normally would—so all the food pictures below (minus one) are all from TCF peep friend Jonathon.) As is usual practice, we all ordered a bunch of stuff then shared everything.
Three of us ordered this (which means everyone got to try it all). Unfortunately, none of the courses were listed so I’m going by memory:
– Lamb Koobideh Kebab, Doner Spice, Sumac Onions, Coriander Yogurt, Mint
– Beef Fat Fries, Roasted Garlic, Rosemary, Ranch Aioli
– “Head shoulders knees and toes” taquitos (Pig Feast course #1)
– Seared Scallops, & Morcilla [blood] Sausage, Adobo Cream, Lardo, Agave (ordered off menu but it was also Pig Feast course #3 so we had double portions!)
– Dan Dan Noodles with Beef Cheek
– Prosciutto and asparagus (Pig Feast course #2)
– Pasta with pig face ragout (Pig Feast course #4)
– Pork tenderloin with fava beans, polenta, and arugula (Pig Feast course #5)
It was at this point that Tom said “Well, I think that’s it!” And then the waiter brought out two more dishes! 🙂
– Rotissi-fried Chicken, Honey Hot Sauce
– Chocolate Cake Donut Holes, Chocolate Pudding, Chocolate Crunch Pearls
And the only food pic I took myself—my share of the dessert plate:
Goodbye selfie:
Nail + Screw = New tires
So, this happened:
Of course, it was the exact tire that had the last nail… And apparently since it was close to the edge, the guy said there was a chance the repair might not hold and it would split. GRRRRRREAT. How am I supposed to feel comfortable driving on that?!?!?! The tires are original and they are 2-3 years old…so we talked about getting new tires. And then as fate would have it, Costco was having a sale on Bridgestone tires, so off we went and $800+ later I feel safe driving again.
A great day and night with great friends!
Nancy was helping me with a Jamberry manicure and Ken decided he wanted a few nails done as well.
Nancy and I tried to recruit two friends to the wonderful LipSense world today…and I introduced them to my infamous (?!) stairwell shooting location. 😊
Tammy and Amy helping me roll bread balls for garlic bread bites.
The whole group!
Uncle Eddy!
We need a bigger table!
The dessert table! Eddy helped me make a cheese flan (with a caramelized top) in the instant pot (far right) and it turned out great! And Amy brought three cakes from Juniors Cheesecakes!
This is why we need better outdoor space! This is where everyone always wants to congregate and we only have eight chairs with barely enough space to hold them!
The party mostly died out by about 11 and just a handful of us stayed talking to about midnight. It was a great night with great friends…
Going away party prep!
This was the weekend of our first (of potentially two) going away parties… And it was all for the TiVo peeps! (We debated having just one party but that would be soooo many people!)
Ones of the goals was to pare down our alcohol stash…
And freezer contents… This is like four racks of ribs (another two went in the instant pot).
Somehow we have new starfish?!
Are these even starfish? Where did they come from?! They must have been really buried deep in the rock or sand because we haven’t added anything new in probably a year!!
Our tree from Halley!
The second graders all brought home trees for Project Plant It. We planted it in a temporary container so we can take it with us when we move this summer!
Purple pearls!
After all these years I finally have the perfect outfit to wear with my Grandma Smith’s purple pearls. She loved her costume jewelry…
A new TiVo peep!
A well-traveled TiVo friend that we’ve been wanting to meet forever finally crossed our path at a convenient time! (He’s the one we got our gnomes and awesome vases from!) We drove to his hotel in National Harbor and then went out for a delicious Peruvian dinner.
April Fool’s Saturday Night Dinner
When you find a paper from HS and you’re Facebook friends with the teacher.
Another reason why I say I hate people.Â
It just pisses me off that people only think about themselves.
Pre-k drop-off has changed to the front of the building. There is a parking lot (off to the right in the photo) but for the literally two minutes it takes to drop her off (where the buses are in the photo), it’s nice (and much closer) to park in the fire lane. Other people do it, too, but these two asshats always take up the entire lane (where there is room for four cars) with their two cars. I technically fit at the end but it ends up to be pretty close to the driveway (still safe but encroaching just a bit). If only they would pull up to the beginning of the lane instead of just stopping in the middle this would be a non-issue.
Why can’t we all just be decent scofflaws together?! 😆
So, we had our first housing panic today.
A house came on the market that seems just about perfect. It’s slightly above budget (but by the same dollar amount we’re over here so not a deal breaker) and there are no parks or playgrounds within walking distance (biking or driving, though). It’s really too early to snag a house, but if it’s perfect…
So we figured it couldn’t hurt to have our agent talk to the owner to see if he’d be willing to hold it for us in order to lock down a guaranteed 3-year military lease. He was intrigued by the lease length but hasn’t answered if he’d hold it yet. (According to the MLS it’s been on the market for awhile so we hoped there’s a good chance he would hold it just a bit longer for the guaranteed lease.)
We can’t imagine getting it done this quickly but wouldn’t it be nice? A bird in the hand and all that…but how can we tell the areas without even looking? There are just so many possible cities and neighborhoods that it’s hard to even start researching to narrow it down. We lucked into the house we are in now—with a community pool and playground around the corner—but we weren’t looking for those things! Now that we want to look for that stuff…it’s hard. We have a great agent, but she can only do so much. We Google each address and see what’s around via Google earth but that’s amazingly time-consuming.
We are totally willing to get the perfect house early (even though the extra rent would come straight out of our savings) but we also don’t want to jump the gun and take the first house we see that we like if it’s not perfect. House hunting three years ago in DC really messed with our preconceptions so we are now paranoid (back then we had a Top 10 List and by the time we had driven the five hours from Jacksonville to DC like six of them were gone!). If we knew what city (at least) we wanted to be in that would cut down our prospects, but we also don’t want to eliminate a perfect house if it’s in our third-ranked city. If it comes down to it and we are seriously considering it, Tom would fly out so it wouldn’t be sight unseen…but if we ended up passing on it, then we’ve wasted a trip unless he stays for some extra time and house hunts on his own.
We ended up telling our agent that we weren’t quite ready to fill out an application (it’s $70 a pop for each rental so it’s not like we want to do a bunch of them!) but that was a panicky 15 minutes while we were considering it.
I hate this part.
What a perfect night…
The weather was so awesome that we ate dinner outside and then just hung out. Tom rarely posts on Facebook so you know something was seriously good if he does…
Had a great Spring day. Took the kids out Pokémon hunting in the morning. Wood working followed by little league practice (pitching to an awesome group of kids), grilling flank steak and drinking really good beer on the deck and watching my wonderful kids play together and read bed time stories.
Truly I do not know if life can get any better. Life is great!
Owen was reading to us (getting his daily reading homework done!) and then it got dark so he was reading by iPhone light. The two books he picked to read to Katie were Hooray for Diffendoofer Day (Seuss) and The History of the American Flag. 🙂
Goofing around together:
Time for a panic attack: Purge Treasures
So, we just completed the pre-move walkthrough with the moving company guy. Consensus? We have too much shit. I know this comes as no surprise to people who know us… We NEED to purge but it’s SOOOO hard. So I decided today was the day to clean out the bulk of the four-drawer file cabinet. We just keep stuffing crap in there and never use any of it—and it’s about 200 pounds we can easily get rid of. Of course, I have to quickly sort through everything because there’s stuff I know I’ll want to keep, but I came across so much old junk that made me laugh or cringe that I posted some to Facebook.
CMU line dancing class coursebook. Because you know I still need a list of 60 line dances. #purgetreasures #recyclebin
A whole folder of song lyrics. Notice the year? #purgetreasures #recyclebin
A real stock certificate, circa 1995. #purgetreasures #keep
/sniff
A friend’s senior picture. #purgetreasures #recyclebin
#purgetreasures #keep (But I’m sending it to Dana to keep!)
How many of my Grayling peeps remember these report card folders?! #purgetreasures #keep
Kindergarten
From September 11, 1995 Central Michigan Lumber ad. #purgetreasures #recyclebin
Isn’t the limit for keeping taxes 25 years? 😆 #purgetreasures #shredder
#purgetreasures #recycle #roommatefromhell (I had quite a few roommate from hell pages!)
I’ve definitely needed to move this from Michigan to North Carolina to Michigan to North Carolina to Virgina. #purgetreasures #recyclebin
#purgetreasures #recyclebin
#purgetreasures #keep #nolongerexists #weddingreception
From the first time I saw it with my mom, circa 1992? #purgetreasures #unsure
Ahh. Taking out a $2500 loan to pay for uniforms. #purgetreasures #keep #usmc
This is looooooong overdue.
I hate doing it. I always feel like I’m ruining them…or not sharpening them enough. 😆 My stepdad usually does it for me but he hasn’t been here and it was getting dire.
Do not buy lemon cookies at the dollar store.Â
These? Suck. They’re horrible and not one of us liked them. They went straight into the trash.
These are what I hoped they were like—just a cheaper version. I was wrong.
Three deployments, three tags, three ranks.
#thingsyoufindwhenpreparingtoPCS #amateurhoarders
This is what it looks like when you’ve waited three years to start sorting and organizing bins in the basement and now you only have months left. In an hour we got rid of one bag of recyclables and two boxes of garage sale/donation stuff. Now we only need to get rid of about 35x more stuff. 🙂
On what planet is this a legit pizza?
The local pizza hut didn’t have good yelp reviews but Owen had a free personal pan pizza coupon for competing his February reading so we ordered. Yeah. Look at this pathetic Meat Lovers pizza.
Where’s the meat? Hell, where’s the cheese?!
Never again. If Owen gets another coupon it will be just his pizza.
Laundry transfer fail
This is what can happen when you ask your 8yo to switch his laundry (remove pants from dryer and move clothes from washer to dryer and start it). Keep in mind he’s successfully done this before.
You will notice that in addition to all the socks that never even made it into the dryer, the dryer door isn’t. even. shut. (so it never turned on). Yet he did remember to turn the dryer to permanent press and put in a dryer sheet.
Saturday Night Dinner!
Pre-dinner selfie.
Pre-dinner family selfie.
We loved that the three of them all crammed together on one side even though they didn’t need to. The boys were at the other table. 🙂
And I forgot to take a pic of the food (Slow Cooker Bacon Cheeseburger Sloppy Joes, Tangy and Creamy Macaroni Salad, and KFC’s Cole Slaw) and our group!
It’s like Christmas all over again.Â
When you’re cleaning your bedroom and you happen upon a Christmas present that you left inside something else so it’s like Christmas all over again.
Driveway Drinking
Knocking on our neighbor’s door like a big girl.
It’s been so nice that we decided we had to have at least one day of driveway drinking while waiting for the bus. 🙂
It was so damn good we went back again.
I mean, what is vacation for if not for splurging? 🙂
A dangerous dessert combo.
Leftover birthday cake frosting plus amazing cookies…
Two sets of Len toes
Gramma and Katie toes…
And a cuddle…
To the pool for the first time!
A cantaloupe as large as Owen’s head!
