12 dates of 2014: February

For our February date, we did a cooking class at Sur la Table! This was my Christmas present to Tommy. I kind of had no idea what to give him, so I was looking for fun date ideas instead of gifts (because gifts usually end up being less exciting), and I stumbled across the cooking classes they offer. They are way too expensive for us to do regularly but I figured for a special Christmas/Valentine's Day present it would work. Especially because I found this class that was being offered--a pizza-making class! It's a class basically made for us, because we love making pizza and trying different dough recipes and we never feel like we're doing it the best we can. So this was an awesome idea for us to try and learn some new tips.

Basically, one thing I learned was that buying the nice cheese DOES make a difference. We never do, but when we had this margherita pizza with the fresh mozzarella--my socks were knocked off. It might be worth a splurge now and again.

Yes, we were those dorky people who kept pulling out their camera for pictures (we don't even have iphones so it was a REAL camera, no less), but I figured that this was our Christmas present and we needed to have documentation of it.

We learned some dough-rolling techniques (which I think will be the most helpful of the class!) and Tommy was the clear master at it. His was a perfect circle. We were all amazed.

The class was really fun. We ended up making three different pizzas, including the dough, and got to eat them all afterwards. It was awesome cooking with all of the stuff already measured out for us in little nice bowls, and with nice fairies who came around after you to clean up! And it kind of involved a lot of marketing ploys with not-so-hidden attempts to sell us stuff from their store, but we are immune to that sort of thing and got out fast. (Although I am kind of thinking about a pizza stone now--maybe once we move we can invest in something like that. We know we make it enough now to make something like that worth it.) And then we snuck over to the movie theater just a few feet away and saw Monuments Men afterwards--and really enjoyed that too. (Using the free tickets we got for completing our family health challenge--thanks Mom and Dad!) All in all, a successful date.

tommy and dane go to utah, and i stay here by myself

Last week, Tommy and Dane flew out to Utah for five days and left me here in North Carolina with no demands on my time and nothing to do. When we started planning this trip for them, I was looking forward to it like you can't believe! It was in the midst of Dane being sick and tired and I could think of nothing more fun than a few days with nothing to do. And then as soon as they left, I spent most of the time they were gone wanting to skype with them and waiting for them to come home. But don't worry, I did enjoy myself by sleeping in a few mornings and I got a bunch of great projects done without my little companion, but I was so excited for them to come back.

Tommy and Dane, on the other hand, had a complete blast. The reason why they went out there in the first place was for Tommy to present his research at a BYU Stats Department seminar. It is a would-be job talk, because they desperately want him to work there, although he has broken their hearts by already having a job (and by not wanting to go into academia at all :). This invitation included a free flight to Utah, and he managed to work it by asking them to let him stay the weekend in addition so that he could see his family. And we figured that since Dane is free, it would be worth it to have him go out with Tommy to see his grandparents and cousin. Tommy wins father-of-the-year award for gamely flying across the country by himself with our crazy toddler, but man, once they got to Utah, it was totally worth it. Dane and Zach had a BLAST while they were there, which I could see by all the pictures Tommy and Melissa were sending me. Check out how funny and cute they are together:

Sharing a milk cup, haha.

Dane loves it when Tommy pulls him around on this blanket, and Zach got involved too.

Doing "hello goodbye!" with Tommy's dad.

Bath buddies!

Tommy and Melissa took the two boys to the children's museum in Ogden and Dane was apparently obsessed with this model fire truck.

The two little firefighters!

Tommy also got to go skiing one day, basically fulfilling all of his dreams for the winter (we hadn't gotten to go while we were there earlier). Hooray!

The two matching boys!

Dane and his grandma.

I was so glad every time I got a picture of the two of them on my phone while they were gone--it was so good to know that he was having fun there. We weren't sure if he'd remember the Leiningers' house from when we were there over New Year's but it sounds like he just jumped right in and had a blast playing and felt totally at home. And once he got home, he started saying "Grandma" and "Grandpa" whenever he saw pictures of them! How cute is that? We were just dying over the cuteness--and that alone makes it definitely worth it, that he now has memories and associations with his grandparents (although maybe you'll have to ask Tommy if it was separately; he's still recovering from flying with him). He loves his Grandma and Grandpa!

FYI: He's also starting to say Grandma and Grandpa for my mom and dad too--he's apparently seen them enough on Skype and in pictures hanging on our fridge for him to get that they are Grandma and Grandpa too. And yesterday, he looked over to the fridge and pointed to my little brother Cole's picture and just said, out of the blue, "Cole!" He is learning a mile a minute over here. IT IS THE BEST!

some more things I didn't know

I wrote a downer blog post a few weeks ago. Like I said then, it was a hard week and I just wanted to complain a little bit. But I don't want to be (or seem like) one of those moms (and there are so many out there) who just are so bogged down in the everyday drudgeries of life that they complain all the time and make it look so terrible to have kids and stay home with them. 

I had a friend, who is pregnant, ask me, "Why don't moms ever talk about the good things? All I ever hear about is how hard it is, and I really think moms should be more encouraging, especially to those of us without kids yet." And I 100% agree! I think moms rarely talk about the good things because, really, most people aren't that interested in the good things. I say, look at the cute thing my kid did! And they think, that's great, but look at what cute thing MY kid did! Unless you're talking to your parents, most of your audience is only tangentially interested in the adorableness of your baby. But usually they can help you commiserate when things are not going super well, and I think that's why a lot of times people are more negative than positive when talking about parenting.

But really, guess what? Oh, my gosh, this whole parenting thing is a wild ride but it is ridiculously, oh, so fun. I didn't know I would be so thoroughly entertained by every single dang thing my child learns, and that I would so wildly excited about it. I mean, look at what Dane was doing while we were skyping my family the other day:

He was trying to kiss the computer! Look at those luscious lips coming right at you. This is just a pretty recently learned skill that I don't think I will every be tired of. He'll do an "mmmm" sound while he's getting ready to kiss you, and when he wants to give you a hug he'll lean into you and say "hug" (sounds just like "ha" though), every time. Oh, and he's learned how to blow kisses too:

How could you ever be ready for that? How could anything prepare you for how absolutely hands-down killer amazing that is to have your baby lean in and say "hug" while he's hugging you and blow you a kiss when you're saying good night? I didn't know how invested I would be in every single little change and little thing he learns and how proud I would be of him.

He's learning how to feed himself with utensils as well. We took about a bajillion pictures of him (refer back to how invested, proud, and obsessed we are). He's way old enough, I'm sure we could have done this months ago, but it just means he is really good at it right off the bat.

Soooo proud of himself.

Something I was pretty nervous about with having a toddler--something I heard a lot about as Dane was getting more and more mobile--was how we were going to handle the messes and craziness that come with a toddler. And guess what? You just get over it. As long as he's not dumping out eggs or toxic cleaning supplies or something, I kind of don't care about the messes he makes. Case in point: He has found a box with 250-some-odd business cards that Tommy had in his bedside stand, and now makes it his job to dump them out every single day. Then he sorts through them and strews them across the house. And he's so happy about it I don't even care (yet). 

All in all, I have never had more fun in my life as I have had watching Dane grow and learn things and develop his little personality. Even when he gets mad at me and hits me, I am so impressed by all the things he's learning. Sure, I don't want him to hit, but he'll grow out of that, and it's just so cool to watch him developing these emotions and learning how to handle them. I can't imagine enjoying any stage any more--but I hope I keep thinking that about each stage as it comes!

12 dates of 2014: January

We're getting all crazy and out of chronological order here, but I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. For Christmas this year, Tommy and I basically had the same idea for each other's presents--we both got ideas for dates that we could do and planned them out for each other. Tommy went above and beyond, though, and promised to plan one real, fun, organized date per month for this year. (This makes it sound like we never go on dates, and that's not true, but the number of dates we go on has been severely cut back since having Dane. Now, most of the time we end up just watching movies or playing games together, but it's still fun to get out when we can.)

So, for our January date, we got all into the Olympic spirit and went ice skating. We headed into Raleigh and ate dinner at this delicious Lebanese restaurant called Sitti--we had the most amazing homemade pita bread and these mind-blowing sweet potato dumplings. And then Tommy found out about this outdoor ice skating rink that was set up in downtown Raleigh for a few months of winter, which was really fun (I'm not sure if I've ever ice skated outside before). The rink was hilariously tiny and had tons of cracks and grooves in the ice, but neither of us are very good (although Tommy is much better than I am) so we didn't need very much. I was proud that I didn't fall--that's all I can say for myself. Going ice skating just before the Olympics is a good reminder of how ridiculously amazing those Olympian ice skaters are.

And then this couple got engaged while we were skating, and it was pretty hilariously awkward for the rest of us watching.

So there we go! There was date #1 for the year--and now that I've written about the first one we'd better be sure to actually do the rest.

V-Day

Valentine's Day luckily fell on the second snow day we took this week. And it was lucky because Tommy stayed home with Dane and me all day. What better way to celebrate than spending all day cooped up in our apartment together? Just kidding, it really was awesome. All we ever do to celebrate holidays and birthdays nowadays is make really delicious food and stuff our faces all day, and Valentine's Day was no exception. We made some chocolate chocolate chip pancakes with this berry sauce and eggs and bacon for breakfast (Dane was definitely a fan), and then we tried our hand at making some filet mignons for dinner. Both meals turned out great.

Dane eating bacon. He's a man's man.

And then, for the piece de resistance (pretend there are accents on those words to make them French), we actually made a cheesecake together. We made it the night before V-day so that we could enjoy it on the big day, and oh my GOODNESS it turned out great. I was totally not feeling confident about our abilities to make cheesecake but thanks to a friend loaning us a springform pan and a little luck, we made it! It was a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and it was sooooo, sooo good. 

We ate it together while watching Casablanca. Cute fact: our wedding song that we danced to was "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca. I honestly don't remember how we settled on it, and for a few years I looked back on that decision a little un-fondly, but after re-watching that movie I'm remembering why I liked it so much.

snowpocalypse 2014!

Something I love (and hate) about North Carolina is how totally awesome they are about snow. And by "awesome" I really mean "not awesome" because even a hint of potential snowfall shuts everything down. And I really do mean just a "hint"--even just thinking that there might be snow means that schools close early and people rush to leave work before the storm hits. The funny thing is that usually the snow is no more than half an inch but it is still always considered very serious here. However, there was a REAL snowstorm here last week, on Wednesday, and it snowed probably more than five inches that day, so naturally things got a little crazy around here. 

As soon as the snow started, everyone in the entire Triangle area decided they needed to leave work and get home, so there were crazy, two-hour-long traffic delays everywhere, and the snow was falling so fast and hard that nobody could get up and down hills in the road (and many people don't know how to drive in the snow here), so there were cars abandoned left and right as people gave up trying to drive and just started walking home. Tommy and Russell started walking home from Duke after being stuck in traffic for a while, but eventually realized the roads weren't so bad off of Duke campus so they ended up making it home just fine in the car. But Dane and I were safe and sound at home and all three of us ended up spending the next three days at home without leaving the house! The snow basically mostly melted by Friday morning, and the roads were pretty much clear, but even on Saturday my class at Durham Tech was canceled, so now I have to figure out a way to have my students make it up. But really, it was so fun to have Tommy home and have several snow days with the three of us. 

I took a few pictures of Dane a few days before the big snow storm, when it was just starting to do a little snow sprinkling, and he loved it.

Then on Thursday, after all the snow was about done, we went outside and played in it for a little bit. It was so adorable to see Dane's tiny little footprints in the snow and see him trying to walk in it.

He insisted on walking. He was very offended when we'd try to carry him.

It was an awesome snow week! Great for us, but a bummer for a lot of people (like schoolkids and teachers) who have to make up all these days eventually later. I'm glad to have it be business as usual this week. And of course, just a few days after the crazy snow storm, the weather is supposed to be in the high 60s and 70s the rest of this week! We will hope that this is a sign that winter is officially over in North Carolina now.

a visit from my best friends

I was lucky enough in college to make some amazing, excellent friends. Friends who I lived with and who knew everything about me. And even though some of us (ahem, me) may be terrible at keeping in touch as much as we would love to, when we get together, it really feels awesome to see each other and it's like we slip back to the good ol' days back in Chandell on 50 East in Provo. It was AWESOME, hands down awesome to have them here. There's nothing better than long talks with old friends, that's what I say.

Right before we took them back to the airport on Sunday afternoon.

The main reason this trip was planned was so that Chelsea could go to another Duke game (she came out last year and had such a great time she wanted to come again). We worked our magic and got her in! There were a few worrisome moments where we thought they had lost their spot in line after waiting there for three hours, but luckily it all got worked out and we managed to get in. (Tommy sacrificed to stay home with Dane while I hung out with them at the game.)

Most importantly, we ate LOTS OF BLUEBELL ICE CREAM.

Not pictured: the hours we stayed up talking FAAAR to late in the night, and when our car got towed while we were eating BBQ at the Q-Shack. Good times were had by all. Thanks to SEF and Chels for coming down and visiting us. Crossing my fingers for a WKWWL reunion in the summer!