A Sleepless Night...

Yesterday after my surgery I was feeling really good, I hardly had pain once we got home. I was able to put full weight on my left leg with minimal discomfort. Last night, didn't go so well, I couldn't get to sleep and I was in a lot of pain. At 3 am I had to call Jeff to come down and fill up my ice pump and then I had to call him down again at 7 am to help me to the bathroom, which I wasn't able to make it to on my own, now that the pain was so bad I could hardly put any weight on my leg.
Here is a picture of my ice wrap. It works great, however it needs to be filled with ice about every 4 to 5 hours, and our ice maker can't make ice fast enough, so Jeff has to run to the store to get bags of ice. Once I turn this machine on after ice has been loaded in it helps my knee SO MUCH!

Right now I have some pretty heavy duty ace bandages on around my knee cap, where the sutures are, so the cold doesn't really get through to my knee cap, which is where the pain is. Tomorrow I get to take the bandages off, and I can't wait. For right now it mostly cools above and below my knee cap, which still provides major comfort.

I've been able to get much needed sleep this afternoon. I have been taking 1 of my pain pills every two hours instead of waiting four hours. I didn't realize I was allowed to take two pills with in the four hour period. This extra dose of pain killers has really helped me get comfortable enough to sleep about 30 min to an hour at a time.

I'm still hanging in there. I'm getting pretty restless just sitting on the sofa watching TV, reading, and surfing the net.

It's only day 1 1/2 what am i going to do for the next 12 1/2 days!!!

I know I will have two cuddly companions. Sasha in the foreground and Sabian in the background.

I'm home!

I made it through the surgery, so the easy part is over. Recovering is going to be painful and it is up to me to make sure I follow the docs orders. I will say I have never been so awake after having anesthesia before. I'm usually pretty drowsy all day, but not this time. I was awake the whole car ride home which was a little over an hour.
The pain was pretty bad in recovering but the nurse gave me something to take the edge off, and now that I'm home I started taking my pain meds (Hydrocodon). I'm feeling pretty good, right now.

Just a little update for now. I'll post later to keep you all updated.

-GLO

Facing Reality.

I have been putting this post of for a couple of weeks. I'm having knee surgery on Monday and I'm dreading every passing day.

But, here I am facing reality.

About a month ago, I went to an orthopedic surgeon, who diagnosed me with a substantial meniscus tear in my left knee, which he recommended surgery.

I had NO idea where or what a meniscus was. I know I had heard the term before but I had never really paid much attention to what it was.

The meniscus is the horizontal tissue (shown in blue) that helps cushion the femur and the tibia bone.
The Medial meniscus is where my tear is, and it is almost the whole length of Medial side. I have what is called a flip tear, which means the tear at times can flip up when jolted out of place. This is when the tear causes me much discomfort and pain.
My surgeon will go in arthroscopicly and clip off the torn meniscus, much like clipping a hang nail. I will have three small incisions, two on the front of my knee and one on the back of my knee.


After my surgeon went over all this information I was still in much shock over his findings, and having to make the decision of weather to have surgery or to put up with the knee pain. The meniscus had a poor blood supply so it doesn't heal on its own very well.

My biggest fear is that after surgery my knee will never be the same, but even if I don't have the surgery my knee will never be the same. So it is a loose, loose situation. Almost a month has past since I decided to go through with the surgery, and I am still not ready. I had my pre-op appointing three days ago and my surgeon tells me that I must take two weeks off from work to recover. At first I thought he was joking, me take two weeks off from work? I hardly get that much vacation time in a year and seeing that it is July halfway through the year I have already used up all my vacation days. I had planned on going back to work a day or two after my surgery, but I guess that is out of the question.

I think I have it worked out to take a week off from work, but I'm not sure what to do about the second week. I'm going to play it by ear and see how I feel after a week of being laid and see how crazy I have become. I'm sure I'll be ready to get out of the house.

What am I going to do for 1 weeks on the couch??

The decision was made...

... we finally purchased our new "mountain vehicle". After many test drives and many discussions on what we really wanted out of our "mountain vehicle" we finally made our move and purchased a Subaru Tribeca and I couldn't be happier.

I love the color, Newport Blue Pearl.

I love the interior and all the amazing features.


I love the third row seat and ...

all the cargo room. We will definitely have room for our snowboarding gear.


Originally Jeff and I had narrowed our new car purchase down to either the Lexus RX350 (Jeff's choice) or the Mazda CX-7 (my choice). The same day we were introduced to the Tribeca we were very close to signing the papers on a pre-owned Mazda CX-7, but we decided to ponder our proposed deal, and I'm so glad we did. After leaving the Mazda dealership we went by the Lexus dealer to "just take a look". Of course there wasn't an RX-350 with AWD, which has been hard to come by. Vince, our sales guy pointed out the Subaru Tribeca and I didn't even want to walk over to check it out, but we did. As soon as, he opened the back hatch and I looked inside and saw all the room I was sold. I love the function of the hideaway third row seat. We ended up taking it for a test drive, which Jeff and I both agreed it drove better than the Mazda CX-7. We didn't make a deal with Vince because I had to go home and do more research on the Tribeca.

So we went home and I looked up all sorts of forums on the Tribeca. I like to read what current owners or past owners have to say about their experience with the car. There are always negatives to EVERY car, but you have to weight the negatives and see if they are something you could put up with. Honestly I didn't find too many negatives on the Tribeca. Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.

The next day, Sunday, Jeff and I went to check out the local Subaru dealer to see if they had a color I liked. Now that we found the vehicle it was a matter of getting the right color. At first we skipped right over the Blue because it was a rental. After seeing their inventory and talking numbers, we went home once again to weigh our thoughts.

Monday, we went back and looked at one of the cars they cleaned up for us which was a Gold color, but once I thought about it over night I didn't really like the Gold color. I went strait back to the Blue one, which skipped over the day before because it was a rental. We test drove it, talked numbers, and in the end we got a sweet deal.

I'm so happy with our purchase!

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday was the Apple Pie Baking contest, so I started with a lot of green apples...


and I am now an expert apple peeler.


I decided on three pie recipes. I wanted a verity of different types of Apple Pies to give the judges something different that would stick out among the other pies. The three recipes I decided on were a Sour Cream Apple Pie (pictured below on the left), Apple Pie with a Twist, this one had some lemon juice in it and turned out the best (pictured below in the center), and last but not least a Carmel Apple Pie (pictured below on the right).



Unfortunately I didn't win the Pie Baking Contest, but I still had fun and I'm going to enter the contest again next year. It was so hot yesterday on the 4th that the caramel apple pie turned to mush and the sour cream apple pie didn't do well in the heat.

Besides not winning the contest, Jeff and I enjoyed watching the fireworks show in our hometown. I couldn't believe how many people showed up. It was craziness, but we had a great parking spot and we made an easy exit after the show.

We have been doing a lot of laying around all weekend...


I love long relaxing weekends. I hope everyone else had a great 4th of July!!

Its always good to see family!

I love my family and I wish I weren't so far away from them. Here are a few pictures from my cousin Ryan's wedding.

This is a picture of my Dad's brother's son, Ryan (the one who got married) on the right, and my Dad's sister's son, Jared on the left, with me in the middle. We are all about the same age and when we were younger I would visit Iowa, from Cali, and our cousin Jared would visit from Nebraska. I have so many fawn memories of going to the family fun center in Iowa and the Science Museum in down town Ceder Rapids. We had such a great time on Grandma and Grampa's farm. I loved mowing the lawn on the riding lawn mower. That was usually the highlight of my trip. My cousin's and I would have races. Oh those were the good times. It is so hard to all get together now. Jared is going to med school, so his time is spent studying and Ryan and I work full time so getting the time off is hard to come by. We have all said that we need to get together more often, and we tentatively said they would come visit me in California but we'll see if that happens. I won't hold my breath.

Ryan on the far left with my Grandma, Viola, in the middle and me on the right, of course. My Grandma will be celebrating her 80th birthday next year and she is in great health! She was up on the dance floor more times than I can count. She likes to line dance and she really gets into the grove! Go Grandma, Go!


Starting on the bottom left we have Ryan, my Grandma, my dad Larry, and top row left to right we have Jared, next to him Linda, Jerad's mom (my dad's sister) and me.

I didn't take too many pictures at the wedding because our family was spread out all over the place so it was hard to get everyone together at the reception. I really had a great time visiting with everyone. I miss all of you, dearly.

Take care!

Home sweet Iowa...

Thursday through Sunday I'll be vacationing in Iowa with my Dad. My cousin Ryan is getting married on Saturday in Denison Iowa. We are originally from Iowa, but moved to California when I was only 3 years old. I love going back to the Midwest it feels like home to me.

When I was 7 or 8 years old I started flying back to Iowa for a month or two during the summer so I could be passed around family members. I LOVED this! I think traveling at such a young age, by myself, has helped me to become the adventurous traveler I am today. As a child I wasn't clingy or "attached" to my parents as most children are, so being away from my parents for a length of time was not a big deal to me. I have always been an independent person.

My mother is 1 of 13 children, so I had a lot of family members to take me in. I have so many pleasant memories of these hot mid-western summers. I used to love the heat showers with thunder and lightening. As a child I didn't mind the thunder and lightening, but now as an adult I get a little stressed when the lightening gets too close. Probably childhood trauma, I don't know.

So Thursday morning I departed California a little before 8am, and I met up with my dad in Denver Colorado. We then flew from Denver to Omaha, Nebraska, where we rented a car and drove 1 1/2 hrs to Denison Iowa. We pulled into the parking lot of our motel about 10pm.

This morning (Friday), after stepping out of our motel room we were greeted with a very unpleasant smell. I almost lost my stomach the smell was so horrible. It smelled like pig crap to the extreme. By the afternoon the smell had calmed down, or we are now used to, either way it is now bearable.

The motel we are at is the Historical Park Motel. They had a nice website and it was recommended by the bridal party, but if we hadn't pre-paid I think we would be relocating. The sink hadn't been clean so there was left over toothpaste form the previous vacationers. The Motel is located between the train tracks and the main highway into town, so there is a constant roar of traffic through out the day. When ever a large truck goes down the road the whole building shakes, which gives it a real historical feeling. All night long we could feel the floor shake, which in turn vibrates the bed. Being from California my first intuition of a shaking bed is that it is an earthquake, so through the night I would wake up thinking there was an earthquake, not realizing I'm in Iowa where earthquakes are very, very rare.

Well the rehearsal dinner is in a few hours so I better start thinking about what I'm going to wear.

Take Care!

Did someone say Apple Pie??

I'm taking a leap and I've entered myself in the Apple Pie Baking contest for our cities 4th of July Celebration. I'm very excited! I have a receipe in mind, but I have been searching online for other ideas. I want to find something that will stand out, something that isn't your normal "Apple Pie." Six entries are allowed per contestant. I doubt I'll make six, but I keep finding delicious, mouthwatering receipes.



All my co-workers have incourged me to bring my pies in for a trial run. So guess what I'll be doing this weekend... yup baking pies!

Being sick is no fun!

I had a great time in Ohio (Jeff will return Monday afternoon). The Sighlo show at the Newport was awesome, by far their best! We got what we asked for, and there were some great thunderstorms while we were there. Unfortunately, I started feeling under the weather before we left on Thursday, which put a damper on things, and almost a week later I am still feeling crappy. I was taking a decongestant every 4 hours so I could breath, and at one point during the night on Saturday I woke with my nose completely stuffed and my throat was thick with mucus which made it hard to breath even through my mouth. It was horrible!



I'm sick of being sick!



I returned Monday afternoon and by Tuesday I was able to get into the Dr. He diagnosed me with a sinus infection and fluid in my ears. He sent me out the door with antibiotics and an inhaler because of my horrible cough.



Well, it's Friday and to no avail I don't feel any better. I don't have the regular symptoms of a cold. I don't have the full body aches, fever run down feeling. In fact it is just the opposite. At night I'm wide awake and I can't sleep.



I wish I could hear again. I wish my cough would go away and my nose to stop running.



This is crazy!



**sniffle**



**sniffle**



*COUGH*



*COUGH*

Ohio here we come.

Jeff and I will be leaving for Ohio Thursday night. Jeff is originally from Ohio so we will be visiting with his family, and catching up with his friends. Some of his friends are in a band, Sighlo, who will be playing a headliner show at our favorite venue, The Newport, on OSU campus.




If you haven't heard them on XM readio check them out: http://www.myspace.com/sighlo They play a lot of hard rock but there are a few songs that are more mellow like My Calvary and Capture. They are very talented, which will one day pay off for them.



I will return on Monday morning, but Jeff will stay another week to travel to Chicago with Sighlo for a show case with a lot of important people, who could change their lives.




The forecast calls for a few thunderstorms which can be okay in small doses.

Reunited after over 5 years...

My very best friend from grade school is back in California after living in Okinawa for over 5 years. While Tiffany and her husband, Steve, were stationed over in Japan they had 2 beautiful boys.

Christian, who is 5 and Luke is almost 2 years old.





I can't believe how polite and well behaved they were. Luke doesn't say much, he is a little shy, but he was excited to see Sabian and Sasha. The girls (Sabian and Shasha) are a little sketchy with new people, especially kids, so they mostly stayed up stairs under the bed, where they thought it was safe. Christian would run up the stairs to check on them and run down and let me know they were hiding between the boxes under the bed. He is so cute he melts my heart. I showed Christian a trick for getting them to come out, which is to shake their treat bag. Sabian never came down, but Christian was able to feed Sasha a few treats, which he thought that was the coolest thing. I love that the simplest things can make children so happy.

I always looked forward to new pictures of the boys throughout the years, mostly because I didn't want to miss out on them growing up. A little over 2 years ago Tiffany, Steve and Christan came back to California and that was the last time I saw them. So this was the first time I got meet Luke. Did I mention how cute he is?


I look forward to getting to know the boys and catching up with Tiffany. She will be living a little over an hour away, at least it is in California, which I'm very thankful for.

Crazy weekend

This weekend we celebrated my sister, Gayla's, Birthday and Father's Day. Both are next weekend, but Jeff and I will be out of town so we took the opportunity to celebrate early.
We celebrated with a BBQ in San Diego on Fiesta Island (Fiasco Island). Despite the windy conditions we had a great time. My sister lives a little over an hour away, and my dad flew in from Norther California, so it isn't very often we all get together.

While we were trying to enjoy the sunshine we were fighting to hold down the fort because the wind was blowing incredibly hard. I am convinced it is ALWAYS windy there. This was my second visit to Fiesta Island and it was no different then the first.

Not only was the wind a little crazy but so were the people. I was very surprised the island wasn't patrolled or regulated by law enforcement, except for the two San Diego Police boats that pulled up on the beach to the site to the left of us. We never found out what happened, but there was definitely paper work involved and one of their cars was towed. The San Diego Police boats hung around for about 45min to an hour. That was about it for law enforcement.

Once the Police were gone things around us got a little crazy. Two sites to the right of us there was a dog fight with two dogs which included two men trying to break up the fight. One of the guys had one of the dogs by his hind legs and was trying to pull the other dogs off. I was completely freaking out and thought a dog had one of the guys hand/arm. I was panicking, a little, saying "call 911, call 911." This later became the running joke.

After the fight had settle down we didn't see either of the men hurt but one of the dogs was hurt pretty bad. From where we were sitting we couldn't see much, but it didn't seem like the dog was hurt enough to need immediate assistance. But all throughout the day we kept watching this group with the dogs because we suspected they were on drugs. A couple of them were acting really weired and he couldn't stand still or hardly stand up for that matter. They got crazier as the sun set and the fires were lit.

My 9 year old nephew, Jordan, and his new friend found a MOUSE on the beach, and they proceeded to pick it up.

I had to put that in for my mom, she is completely repulsed by these four legged creatures.

Here are a few pictures I had to snap before the sun set.


Me and Jordan
Me and Jeff
Me and my sister, Gayla

Once the sun set the wind died down, but it did get pretty chilly, as long as, we stayed close to the fire we could keep warm. The night ended with some delicous s'mores, is there a better ending to a perfect, but crazy day at the beach?

FAN-tastic!!

The monthly average temperature in Aliso Viejo has been over 90 degrees, so we decided it was time for ceiling fans for our bedrooms. Even though it cools down at night it is so hard to sleep when it is that dam hot.

So here are the fans we bought....




...and here are the fans installed.

Master Bedroom fan.
















Guest Room fan.















The fan that went into our master bedroom was suppose to be a 5 min fan, but I'm not sure how anyone can install a fan in 5 min. It took longer than that to get everything out of the box and un-wrapped every piece that was individually wrapped in plastic (non-earth friendly) wrapping. The cool thing about the 5 min fan are fan blades that snap into place so they are super easy to take off for cleaning, which is a major plus. Other than that I didn't see a major difference between the two fans. They took the same amount of time to install, about 30 min, the first one the "5 min fan" might have taken a little longer, but I think that was only because we didn't know what we were doing. My mom has asked Jeff to install two ceiling fans at her place so we'll see if we can perfect our time.

Stay cool!

Welcome!

Well the house warming went off with out a hitch. Just about everyone was able to make it, which means our house got croweded fast. I think we had about 30 to 40 friends come through. It was really good to see everyone! Thank you for all the beautiful gifts. We got a lot of flowers, which is exactly what our place needed! Here is a picture of tulips my friend Susie brought. They are the perfect addition to our dining room table. I wish I could keep them forever! Oh well, I will enjoy them while they last.

I have a lot of organizing to catch up on. After the party and a few house guests back to back I feel like I have fallen behind on my duties. This weekend I will play catch up on filing and cleaning the garage. I think it is time to put the snow boarding gear away for the summer.

This weekend Jeff and I are going to attempt to put up ceiling fans. The Master and Guestroom are already pre-wired and blocked to support the fans. These were options we choose while they were building. Jeff is a little nervous working with electricity, but I keep assuring him everything will be fine. Plus for his birthday my mom got him a "How to do" book. Now he has no excuses for not getting things done around the house, because he has a "hot to manual" for everything now. I think it will come in handy!

Another thing we might try and tackle this weekend, is test driving a few more cars. We are back on the search. I would really like to get my car sold before buying a new one, but we'll see what happens. Anyone looking for a convertible? White VW Cabrio 1998 FOR SALE!

Thanks to everyone who could make it to the housewarming. Jeff and I really enjoyed having you.

-Gloria

April came and went...

The time has gotten away from me and I haven't been keeping up on posting. I'm more motivated to read other blogs than to write in my own.

Let me re-wind to April 18th (Friday). That is when I picked my 4 girlfriends up from the airport for a fun and exciting weekend at my place. I had a list of potential fun activities that would get us all out of the house, but it is funny how after an exhausting week at work all you want to do is relax. So that is exactly what we did all weekend. We had good intentions of getting out but we enjoyed our time together indoors. We turned my house into a beauty shop, a BBQ/restaurant, and then back into a beauty shop.

Let me explain...

(Saturday) Our dear friend Jordana came with blonde hair and we all decided she would look great as a burnett. When we were in college she often dyed her hair red or brown, so we knew what it she looked like with darker hair. So needles to say we hit the beauty supply store for some hair dye to fix her up. After about 1 hour of deliberating over exactly what undertone (red or coco brown) we bought some dye, headed home and started the beauty shop in our kitchen. We took some great pictures but unfortunately I don't have any of them and I will once again have to update with pictures later.

After the beauty shop we started dinner. We had delicious hamburgers and hot dogs. Jordana and Stephanie made some zucchini to put on the BBQ, as well as pepper and mushroom kabobs. It was so fun to have everyone in the kitchen cooking and having fun.

The next day (Sunday) Jordana wasn't digging her new hair color, and to be honest it sure didn't come out the color we all expected it to. Instead of reddish undertones her hair was kinda pinky, gray, blonde. So off to the beauty supply store we went. This time we went darker to make sure it wouldn't turn pink again. I think since her hair was so light to begin with the first dye didn't take as well. I wish I had the pictures because her hair come out absolutely beautiful. It was exactly what we all pictured.

So, all and all, our Girly Weekend wasn't as eventful as I expected, but it was great to have all my girlfriends together to relax and have fun. I love my girls!

The following Tuesday, Jeff's friend Trevor came in from Ohio. It had been 2 1/2 years since Trevor had been to California so we had to hit all the Ca. Local food joints starting with Inn-N-Out, which is just where Jeff and Trevor went after the airport. I unfortunately was getting sick with the stomach flu so I didn't join them. I ended up coming down with a 102 fever and left work a few hours early. The next couple of days I felt crappy, but I didn't want it to get in the way of having fun and showing Trevor around.

Wednesday, the boys went hiking in Laguna and at one point were chased by bees, and I had one more day of work becuase I took Thursday and Friday off so I would be able to partake in showing Trevor around.

Thursday we went to Six Flags Magic Mt. Since it was a weekday it was so dead. I think the longest we waited in line was an hour. We rode our favorite coasters that were operating, and some even twice. Unfortunately X-2 wasn't running due to renovations, which means Jeff and I will have to go back in the middle of May to ride the new X-2.

Thursday night after Six Flags we went out to Lucille's Memphis BBQ, which is Jeff's favorite place to eat out. I think it won Trevor over with the mouth watering Tri-Tip. I still wasn't feeling great so I ate light.

Friday we mostly hung out at home and threw some steaks on the BBQ.

Saturday at 3am we set off for Mammoth, which is a 5 hour drive from our house. Trevor had never been snowboarding and Jeff and I were determined to make him a pro. We started by walking up the bunny hill and having him go down the hill as we walked infront of him. We did this for couple of hours and then grabbed some lunch and rode the gondola to the top at 11,053 feet. From there Jeff boarded down to the bottom and Trevor and I took the gondola down. Trevor gets extremely motion sick and he almost lost it while we were in the gondola. If he would have thrown up I probably would have too, so I'm glad he was able to keep together. After the exciting ride in the gondola Trevor needed a few minutes to settle his stomach.

Once Trevor regained his strength we took him up on the lift for his first time. Even though he was pretty nervous about falling he did great. I think he went all the way down the bunny hill about 4 times and every time he got better and better. The last run he even made it without falling. By this time Trevor was getting really tired from falling and picking himself up so he called it a day, and Jeff and I took a few runs by ouselves. Although the snow wasn't the greatest, keep in mind it was the end of April, it was better than I expected and the snow coverage was better now than it was in December.

Sunday was a lazy day. We got home about 10:30pm the night before, so we had a very long day with 10 hours of driving (most of which I slept) and 7 or so of snowboarding.

Trevor left Monday morning and I think his trip was fulfilled with exciting adventures. We hope he doesn't wait another 2 1/2 years to come back.

Picture Post

I thought I would update with pictures.

Here is a pic of the ceiling storage Jeff installed. We love it and it keep sour garage so clean.


This is the alcove at the top of the stairs just before entering the main living area with the kitchen, dining and living room. Jeff finished painting the alcove this weekend. It is amazing what a little color can do. The table in the picture is the accent table I was referring to in my last post. I love it, and it fits perfect!

Oh and I forgot to mention in my previous post, another task we accomplished was getting the picture above the sofa re-matted because it had a green mat which looked horrible against the soft green wall.

I am anxious and excited about my girlfriends coming down this weekend. I'll post pictures of our fun "Girl Weekend" next blog.

The Past Month

Okay so it has been almost a month since I last posted, but it has been a hectic one. Here are some of the things we have been working on...

We finally picked a date for our housewarming party, and I made the invitations in Photo Shop. They turned out really nice, but I am afraid that our friends will mistake them for junk mail since I made them as post cards. Lets hope our invitations don’t get lost amongst the sea of junk mail. There has been a total of 58 invited, so far we have 17 confirmed attendees. Now we just need to get the food figured out which shouldn't be too hard. We have thought of having it catered by a sub shop so we don’t have to hassle with cooking anything.

Another major task we have been working on is shopping for a new car, one that will get us to the mountains safely. We had already test drove a 2004 Lexus RX and the 2005 VW Toureg and this weekend we looked at the 2008 Mazda CX7 and a 2009 Nissan Murano. Out of all of them I really liked the Murano, but it was a little pricey. The packages that include AWD or 4 wheel drive seem to hike up the price. The Mazda in my opinion is the most practical because we can afford a brand new, where as the Lexus we would have to buy used and you never know what kind of problems you are getting when you buy a used car. But after all is said and done we have decided to wait on buying a car because of other reasons due to Jeff's current work situation, which I don't want to get into. That is a whole another post or blog for that matter.

Jeff and I, well mostly Jeff, installed 4 ceiling hung storage shelves in the garage. The hardest part was finding a Lowes that carried 4 shelves. I guess ceiling storage is a hot thing around here. We tried 4 Loews locations and finally got the 3rd and 4th shelf. I can’t believe every other place was sold out. Incredible!

I finally bought an accent table to place in a niche at the top of our stairs, which really helps finish off the entry to the main living space. Now Jeff has to paint the niche the accent paint color, and I am still searching for the perfect side tables for the living room.

The month of April and May are not going to slow down any. We will have house guests for about two weeks. Then we have my nephew’s 1st birthday one weekend, and then the housewarming party in May. Our first house guests EVER will be my girlfriends, Jordana, Megan, Gina and Stephanie, from the bay area. They all get here a week from Friday and stay until Sunday. After they depart we have to get ready for our next houseguest, because Tuesday afternoon we have a much needed visitor from Ohio. We have been trying to get Trevor, Jeff’s friend, out here for over a year. Jeff finally booked him a plane ticket, and we are kidnapping him for the week. I'm taking a couple days off work, as is Jeff, so we can relax and spend time with Trevor. He will be in town until the following Monday so that gives us plenty of time to show him around. We plan to go to Six Flags, and maybe teach him how to snowboard in the local mountains.

I am certainly looking forward to the end of May beginning of June my best friend Tiffany, whom I have known since 5th grade, is finally moving back to California. Her husband has been stationed in Japan for the past 3 or so years and they are finally getting stationed back here in San Diego. She has two sons which are little beautiful angles from heaven, which I can’t wait to spend time with. I have met Christian her oldest son but I have not yet met her newest addition Luke, which I’m sure is a young man like his older brother Christian, by now. OHHH I cannot wait!!!

What a stinker!

Okay so the smoky oven wasn't just for pizza night. I didn't realize how much charred garlic butter smells after being consecutively cooked. Let me start from the beginning, so a few days after the garlic pizza incident I was preparing manicotti. I pre-heated the oven and noticed the burnt garlic pizza smell was back. That is right I forgot to clean the oven and the garlic butter was just roasting on the bottom of the oven. It was sizzling and smoking, and the smell was just as bad the second time as it was the first. I had already stuffed the manicotti so I felt obligated to follow through so I reluctantly put the dish in and kept the oven door closed until the manicotti was done cooking. When it was time to take out the manicotti the garlic butter had plenty of time to brew up a good smoke cloud, so we did the usual drill, of opening all the windows and lighting the candles. The manicotti was delicious if you could get past the eye watering smell of you guest it burnt garlic butter.

Here is a picture of my delicious manicotti.

















Fast forward a day or two and I still hadn't cleaned the oven and I was craving macaroni and cheese with breaded fish fillets, so since we didn't have any oven cleaner and I was determined to get that black garlic butter crustiness cleaned off of the bottom of the oven I reached for the 409. It is suppose to cut grease so why wouldn't it cut through crusty garlic butter? After I let it soak in and I gave it some elbow grease I didn't do much but make a black swampy mess, so I gave up. I cleaned up what I could and I put some tin foil down. I figured it might help keep the smoke down to a minimum. I'm not sure which was a worse, the 409 or the tin foil? Well we are still alive so the 409 didn't kill us after eating the fish + 409 vapors at 425 degrees. The tin foil probably helped heat the crusty black burnt garlic butter more than if I would have left it off. The smoke that creped out from under the tin foil was brown and smelt even worse then the first or second time.At this point I gave up and I decided I was absolutely not going to cook in the oven unless I bought real approved oven cleaner. :) So that is what I did. Boy that oven cleaner works wonders. How in the world does it lift that crusty black crap off from the bottom of the oven. I was amazed at how clean it go my oven.

BOTTOM LINE: Use real approved oven cleaner and don't cook garlic butter crust pizza without at pan. PLEASE! Or least in my oven!

Burning down the house!

I was really hungry when i got home from work, and I don't usually have the time to put a huge elaborate dinner together, so I decided to put in a delightful frozen pizza. We got a new kind of Digiorno pizza with garlic crust, so I was excited to try it out. I always cook the pizza directly on the rack so the crust cooks crispy. As the pizza was cooking I had to take a peak, as I opened the oven door there was a waft of smoke that poured out of the oven. The pizza wasn't on fire, but there were drippings coming off the pizza that were burning on the bottom of the oven. The contents on the bottom of the oven seamed greasy which makes me think it was the garlic butter or what ever garlic flavor they put on the crust . The pizza wasn't done cooking so I left it in the smoky oven to finish cooking. Once the timer went off and the pizza was ready to come out the smoke had gotten thicker and soon filled the kitchen with a cloud of eye burning thick smoke. I couldn't believe all this smoke was coming from a few drops of burning garlic butter. We opened all the windows in the kitchen and the living room and of course the air outside was at a stand still so the smoke wasn't going anywhere. I was really surprised none of the smoke detectors weren't going off. Since we live in a condo community our building has a sprinkler system and I was praying they wouldn't go off, but Jeff assured me they were heat censored not smoke censored. After the smoked settled we enjoyed our garlic crust pizza, and it wasn't half bad. If you cook one I would suggest laying a piece of tin foil down on the bottom of the oven for easy clean up.

-I’m off to buy some oven cleaner.


FUN FACT: This fact is totally un-related to cooking pizza, but I thought it was interesting so I had to share.
Did you know that bananas aren't part of the fruit family they are actually considered an herb! That is right you read that correctly I said bananas are an herb. I guess since the stem of a banana plant (commonly referred to as a banana tree) does not contain true woody tissue it is considered an herbaceous plant. CRAZY FUN FACT FOR THE DAY!

Our table arrived!

I didn't get this posted before we left for the weekend, but our table arrived on Thursday night. The chairs were a lot lighter than I remember the sample swatch being, but I think it still looks good. It is a step up from the plastic one we were using for a while.


It is hard to tell from this picture but the sofa pillows have the same sea foam green as a accent color.
Since we were out of town this weekend we haven't had a chance to eat a meal at the new table yet, but it sure is helping to complete the living/dining room. Now we have to save up the money for the entertainment center.