Skiing :: Schweitzer

Hello everyone!

Did you know that Idaho is beautiful?  Idaho isn't the most talked-about state in the world, and thanks to one of those United States picture puzzle thing I had when I was younger, Idaho will forever be linked to potatoes in my mind.  Did anyone else have that?  Every state had a picture on it to 'represent' it, and it was one of those supposedly educational geographical things from my childhood... Anyway, 'potatoes' doesn't really scream 'beauty' in my head, but gosh dang it, it IS beautiful here!

To be fair, it was beautiful all the way from Seattle to here (because we drove through the snow and the ice and the whole nine yards to get here)...

but I've already mentioned in every Seattle blog post just how beautiful it is there, so I'll just skip right to Idaho haha.

The reason for our Idaho visit was to try the slopes at Schweitzer!

We used to go skiing every year, but in the past couple of years, I couldn't go because of auditions and whatnot... you know, musician problems.. haha  I thought it would take awhile for me to get the swing of things again since it had been a few years since I strapped on some skis, but surprisingly, it only took 3 trips down the green slope, and we were back hitting the blue/diamond slopes!

with the crew  ;)

and really, you want to be hitting the higher slopes because that's where the view is!

I mean, isn't that just incredible?

On the second day, the weather wasn't as clear, but the view was still breathtaking!  it was breathtaking in more ways than one because even though the last picture above looks like it's a gentle slope, there is an actual ridge right where the person disappears, and that drop is almost vertical!  We all survived though  ;)  haha

baby bro and Chang decided to snowboard, and dad and I strapped on some skis.  It was pretty amazing how quickly Chang picked up the snowboard!  In 1 day, he was riding with us!

a little video of the 4 of us riding down one of the slopes, if you would like to see ;)

towards the end of both of the days, it started to snow, and all of us came home looking quite frozen (including my panda.  look at his icicled nose!) haha

Chang also developed a bunny tail  ;)   He says he isn't sure how such a perfectly round ice ball formed on his sweater, but we had a good long laugh over it  haha

Once we got home, all we wanted to do was... thaw. so we all hopped into the hot tub until we all became prunes!

Then we had dinner, and played boardgames before we fell asleep!

I can't think of a more perfect way to spend a couple of days with the peeps I love the most!  The only thing that would have made it better would have been if David could have joined us, but hopefully next year he can come!  =)

I hope you all had a wonderful end of the year spending time with your family!  Can you believe  that 2016 is almost here?  D=   I'm going back to Boston to spend NYE and New Years day with David before jetting out again, and I can't wait to see him soon =)

Happy New Year to all of you, and thanks for stopping by!

--Janny

Couple Friends!

Hello everyone,

You know how, in How I Met Your Mother, Lily and Marshall are forever in search of couple friends? For most of the show, they are the only attached people in their friend-group since rest of the friends are either unhappily single, unhappily in a relationship, or happily jumping from one significant other to another for like 10 years...  and we are beginning to see why they were searching for attached friends.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with hanging out with your single friends. In fact, for David and I, most of our closest friends are single, and we absolutely love hanging out with them!  

However, when the opportunity presents itself for a double date, we are on it!  It's definitely different when your friends are attached and you can hang out in a double date setting; you can talk about all the couple-y things like weddings, the fun (and the challenges) of living together, and others that you may not necessarily get to talk about with your single friends.  

Besides, 4 is the perfect number for most board games, so you know...  haha  

In Houston, we had our resident double daters, Amulet and Chris, and we are happy to have found more double daters here in Boston!  Actually, a lot more of our friends here in Boston are very seriously dating, if not married to, someone.  Maybe it's a sign that we are getting older and so are our friends..?

Anyway, our age doesn't keep us from playing games well into the night, and we did exactly that with this cute couple  =)

Rachael and I were suite mates this summer at Garth Newel, and have been close ever since!  So glad I still get to see her all the time since we are in the same studio at BU!  haha  Also, both of our guys are sciency types, so a double date just HAD to happen!  ;)

playing Splendor

It was such a fun night (though rather late.. we found out that playing 3 board games was too much for 1 night  haha), and we look forward to many more when David moves here!

ok, so how many scientists and musicians does it take to take a timed photo?  

haha

well, in the end we did get one!  

After all, among the 4 of us, we have 4 graduate degrees! 

Another couple we love to hang out with is Daon+Tristan couple!

We've gone on double dates before and it seems that our theme is food!  I am totally ok with this theme  =)   Last time it was the Marliave, and this time was La Morra!  It's a quaint little Italian restaurant, and it was incredible!  everything we tried was so. good. and my friends I've sent there have loved it as well, so it seems that you just can't go wrong here!  Definitely make a reservation before you go since it seems to be pretty popular!

Instead of bringing out butter and bread, they brought out some cheese... not cottage cheese, but something different..  Ricotta?  I didn't really have it because I'm slightly lactose intolerant, and it just looked like trouble for my tummy, but everyone else liked it!

we ended up ordering a few tapas and many mains, but we got side tracked chatting and eating, so not too many photos, sorry!  It was delicious though, so we'll have to go back. because you know. photos for the blog is important...  mmhhhmm  ;)

David is coming back to Boston later this week, and I'm SOO excited to eat our way around Boston again  =)  Please let us know if you have any restaurant recommendations!

Have a wonderful weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

--Janny

Easter Dinner!

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend!

We hosted an Easter dinner/pot luck and it was so much fun! For our contribution to the pot luck, we made spinach artichoke dip, and I'll be putting up the recipe soon because it was an experiment at best (one of my let's-throw-stuff-together-and-see-what-happens moment), and it turned out to be recipe worthy! haha definitely very happy about that  =p

So here is our spinach artichoke dip coming together!

and voila!  the finished product!

Other dishes that came to the pot luck include deviled eggs (which I surprisingly loved.. usually egg dishes tend to go untouched by me, but I actually had 2 servings of this dish!), cornbread, mac and cheese, cheesy potato dish, and of course ham!  apparently ham is the thing to have on Easter?  why is that, anyone know the answer..?

it was such a feast, and all of the dishes were soooo delicious that even when we were completely full, we kept going back to steal some ham.. and some more eggs,, and some more dip...

caught stealing some ham..  such a ham haha   =p

For dessert, we had some fruit and some spirited chocolates!

As they pointed out, here is the only liqueur cabinet Janny approves of  =p

I only tried the coffee flavored one (Kahlua?) and I have to say, still not a fan of that alcohol taste, but at least there was the chocolate to kind of cover it up...

And here is Amulet playing the good host and handing them out  ;)

After that we got onto some spirited egg coloring/dyeing!  I had never done this before (which is kind of strange I suppose because I grew up a Christian, and Easter is sort of a really big deal in our religion..  haha) but we had so much fun doing so!

and here is the finished product of our little egg family! the teenage son, the baby, the balding drunk uncle...  we have them all  ;) 

We also decorated a human.  and gave him a beard so he matches the other dudes in the bunch  ;)

Then, of course, we played some board games  haha

cuties  =)

So that's the gist of our Easter! A great day in my 100 happy days challenge!

Such a great evening hanging out with friends, eating amazing food, and celebrating Easter in each of our own ways depending on our religions  =)

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well and thanks for stopping by!

--Janny