When We Cook Together

Casey and I have been trying out new recipes for dinner. We have such good intentions, but lately they have been turning out more humorous than tasty!

Last night we tried to make Chicken Fried Rice...well, that's what we ended up making anyway. It all started when I pulled out the Teriyaki Sauce and said "Let's make Teriyaki Chicken!" He googled it and we started to make what the recipe said...well, it turns out that Casey took what I said and completely mistranslated it into Chicken Fried Rice...so we made Chicken Fried Rice, but not without several mistakes. First of all, for all of you cooks out there, please don't laugh at me when I tell you this...but I have never made fried rice before and did not know that you still had to boil the rice before frying it. So, in all my cooking knowledge, I poured oil in the wok and then poured in the uncooked rice. Two cups of it. Casey immediately tells me I'm crazy and we have to pour the whole thing out. Good thing rice is cheap! Anyway, besides that, we had wayyy too much rice and not nearly enough chicken by the time it was all said and done.

Then, tonight, Casey calls me as I am on my way home and says, "Hey, we got the Kroger ad in the mail and ribs are on sale!" So, he goes to the store and buys a rack of ribs and two baked potatoes. Well, this is another new recipe for our household. I know what you're thinking, "this is the first time you've had baked potatoes, and you've been married 7 months?!" Well, you're right. We've bought potatoes before, but they didn't last as long in the pantry as suspected. :) So, tonight, with both of us being verrry hungry, I decide to speed up the potato baking part by sticking them in the microwave for a bit. I had seen my mom doing this and knew it was okay. Then I put them in the oven for like 30-45 minutes. I squeezed them to see if they had softened and they had, so I took them out. Meanwhile, Casey is out on the grill working on the ribs. This was my first time to have ribs, so I was pretty excited about it all. Well, we sit down to eat what looks like a delicious meal and discover that it wasn't all that delicious. Don't get me wrong, it all still tasted good enough, but you could definitely tell it was our first crack at things! Ha ha. The potatoes were still hard on the inside, and the ribs were pretty burned and a little fatty. Nonetheless, just like the night before, we ate it all with a smile...because when we cook together we have no one to blame! :)

Wedding Weekend

This weekend Casey and I went to Blake & Stephanie Adams' wedding. It was really different because the ceremony and reception were in the same room, so you sit in the chairs around the tables that you are going to sit in at the reception. Does that make sense? That seemed pretty wordy. Ha ha. Anyway, here are a few pictures from their special night :)

Their first dance as husband and wife!

Casey and I hanging out at the wedding!

Blake & Stephanie Adams

Smelling Stephanie's pretty bouquet! :)

Casey & I leaving the wedding! It was a fun night!

The Legacy Lives On!

Recently I was on facebook looking at a girl's profile and pictures. The girl goes to GCA (my alma mater) and had facebooked me. I don't really know her, but she was a middle school cheerleader when I was a senior, so we had camps together and stuff. Well I was browsing through her homecoming pictures (homecoming week was always a fun time, so I was reminiscing!), and I came across a few pictures of her with her friends.

You see, when I was a junior, my friends and I came up with the idea to get t-shirts made for homecoming that said "The Six Chix," and we put our names on the back with the number "04" (the year we were to graduate). Our senior year we made another shirt that said the same thing! Since then, we still all get together from time to time! For the first 3 years of college we even met at PF Chang's every Christmas to exchange gifts (we didn't do it this year because my wedding was during Christmas so we saw each other a lot)!

Anyway, when I saw this girl's pictures I was surprised to see that she and her five friends had made shirts for homecoming as well. Guess what they said...that's right, you guessed it, "The Six Chix!" Ha ha. I guess our legend lives on girls! :)

Here we were our junior year on homecoming day!

This is me, Kristin, Crystal, Rachel, Lauren, and Amanda!

This was the night before at Tailgate Party that we always have the night before the big game!
The backs of our shirts!
The new Six Chix!! They seem to have body guards too :)

Another pair of shirts that they made!

I couldn't find the pictures from our senior year with our second shirt, but I still have both of the shirts in my closet! :) Ha ha. Love you girls!

Mission Trip

It's been a while since I last updated! Well, a lot has happened! I guess I will primarily talk about the high school mission trip that we went on 2 weeks ago.
Let me start by saying it was awesome! It was cLife's youth group's first mission trip. I feel lucky to have been on the very first one. We carved the way for the years to come!
We left for McAllen, TX on Sunday morning at 6:30am. For those of you who don't know, McAllen is in The Valley, only about 15 minutes from the border of Mexico. We actually had to go through a border patrol checkpoint on the way back to Dallas--that's how close to Mexico it is. We actually arrived in McAllen in about 9 hours, but after Casey got lost several times we ended up at our destination in about 11 hours :)
To make this update a little shorter I will not give a detailed description like I would really like to. Basically, every morning we had a work project, whether it be painting a church or building a house. We typically had a few hours in the afternoon to play games and hang out. In the evening we loaded up and went to a nearby town called Donna. This was a really poor area with a lot of kids. We did what we called "Backyard Bible Clubs" with kids starting around 2 on up to 16. It was awesome. We had about 70 kids show up every night. That felt pretty big compared to our 23 high school students. By the end of the week we had around 15 kids accept Christ! It is always so awesome to be able to lead little children to Jesus and to be able to see kids leading other kids to Him.
It was also so touching to see how thankful the family whose house we were building were. The mother couldn't speak any English so she had her friend translate for her. She thanked us over and over. She began crying, then her translator began crying, and then I think I cried for the next 30 minutes. Some of the youth kids probably thought I was crazy! Ha ha.
The last day of mission trip is kind of a fun day! We went to Padre Island for a day at the beach! Then we headed for San Antonio for dinner at the Riverwalk! We spent the night in San Antonio and headed for Dallas early the next morning.
Here are some pictures from our trip!

Matt & I got really close to this group of kids!

The girl covering her face makes me laugh!

Janie telling the kids a story!

Casey and Jose!

Corena and Cassandra!

Wearing my sunglasses and some bracelets & necklaces I gave them!

Our group again!

Matt & the cutest little boy, Delfino!

Our entire group inside of the house we were building! Casey & I are on the right!

Fun Money Saving Night

Today was a fun day...well, I guess really it was tonight that was fun. It is a Tuesday, but Casey and I went to the Harbor to see a movie. That is highly unusual behavior for us! I guess some of you might be wondering how we have the money to be seeing movies and going out to eat for anniversaries, etc. Well, before we got married we had a garage sale. It was December 1st, actually (I remember dates pretty well). Anyway, we sold a lot of my old college/dorm stuff, clothes and some of Casey's old games and toys. We ended up making somewhere around $250 dollars on that stuff, and we decided to put all of the money in an envelope and keep it just for entertainment. We don't dig into it too often, but if we don't really have the money to spend on entertainment, we dip into that envelope. The rule is that it has to be on something that we are both going to do, and we both have to agree on it. Basically this means that it isn't golf money for Casey, and it isn't shopping money for me. It is strictly for entertainment for the both of us. So, tonight we took out a $20 dollar bill and went to the movies and bought popcorn and a drink! Fun times! We decided to do this tonight because we don't really have many nights to ourselves this week due to fourth of July and getting ready for the high school mission trip we are going on next week.

After the movie we went and got a Sunday newspaper so that I could start cutting coupons! :) This may sound ghetto to some of you, but Casey talked to this lady at our church that cuts coupons and she said she pays a quarter of what she would normally pay for groceries. After cutting them tonight, I believe her! The key is to learn not to buy stuff just because you have a coupon. I am going to buy stuff that I know we already buy. After getting the paper we headed to Mesquite where some people were playing volleyball at Austin Elementary. Casey played while I sat and cut out coupons while talking to Christmas. We had some fun conversations! We decided that cutting out coupons is kind of fun. Casey told me he thought I would like it because after cutting them out I would need to organize them all into groups. He was right...he knows me too well. I like to make lists and also organize things. I'm lame. Oh well, at least we'll save money off of my lameness. Ha ha.

Well, on paper that might not have seemed all that fun, but believe me, it was. "Fun" is in the small stuff!