The Love List

♥Insanity
♥PB&J shakes from Emerald City Smoothies

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♥Peanut butter in my oatmeal
♥Oysters

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♥Burgers
♥Spending the whole day at home with Tai

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♥Flannel sheets
♥Puppies

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♥Pinterest
♥Trying new recipes

What's on your love list?

Five Years

Five years ago I met the man who would become my husband. I've told this story before but it was before anyone really read my blog so I'll retell the story of how I met Tai:

In 2006, I signed up for match.com. I'd done internet dating before with mixed results. But I was willing to try it again. I wasn't meeting a lot of single guys in real life. After a few weeks, I saw Tai's profile. His picture was so cute. His profile was full of all sorts of things that I was looking for. I winked at him and waited for a response. For about a week we emailed back and forth. He was so funny. I loved getting his email. I didn't have a computer at home so I was sad when I left work and had to stop emailing him all day. He actually made me want to go to work! He made me laugh. I really wanted to meet him.
Tai had gotten a lot of emails from women from Russia. They were interested in getting him to get them visas. He wanted to make sure I was legit so he wasn't in a hurry to meet me. We scheduled our first meeting about a week after we started emailing. We met at a Starbucks.
Side note, in the emails discussing which Starbucks to meet at we discovered we lived a block from each other. We determined we never would have met without match.com. Despite living so close we just didn't go to the same places.
I got to the Starbucks a little early and grabbed a coffee. I was starving but not sure how this was going to go. He seemed so hesitant in his emails so I wasn't sure if he want to have dinner or just hang out. I was sitting there reading my book, waiting for Tai.
I started to get a little worried. It was about time to meet and he wasn't there so I scanned the Starbucks and looked out the window. I saw a guy learning up against a car outside, smoking a cigarette. He kind of looked like the guy I was supposed to meet. I figured that he was going to finish his smoke and come on in. But he didn't. He stayed there like he was waiting for someone.
I had emailed Tai earlier that day, saying let's exchange phone numbers in case one of us is late.
So I called him. I thought if this isn't the guy, then I'll hang up. But the guy outside answers his phone.
"Hi" I say
" Hi, how are you?"
" Good...are you going to come inside or do I have come out there and get you?"
Pause. "Are you here already?" As he rushes to the door. He comes in, laughing. He said later that what I said totally hooked him. I wasn't afraid, I was funny, and I knew what I wanted.
I remember that he shined, like the sun. His smile and his laugh hooked me.
"Let's have dinner" he said, hand outstretched.
I reached for it and didn't let go for the next five hours. We ate dinner, had more coffee. He introduced me to one of his roommates. I didn't want the night to end.
After I finally drove home, he called me and told me that not going home with me that night was very difficult for him. He didn't want me to leave. I never want him to leave now (or then). I couldn't wait to see him again. And I've felt that way since that first night.
Completely sappy I know. It's been the best five years of my life and I'm looking forward to many many more!

Valentine's Day Dinner

Ordinarily Tai and I don't go out to dinner on Valentine's Day. We prefer to stay home, away from crowded restaurants. But since Valentine's Day was on a Monday this year we decided to go out to dinner before his volleyball game.

We ate at Omar Al Khyam in Renton since it's close to the community center where he plays volleyball.

 

 We started with the olives.

 Tai ordered the lamb. He loves lamb and will eat it every chance he gets.

 I got the grape leaves. This my favorite dish there. I could eat 2 plates of these grape leaves.

And we finished with baklava. So good. The best baklava I've ever had.

Check!

Remember 2 years when I made a list of things I wanted to do before I turned 40? Yeah, I been failing on that list hardcore. I kept forgetting about it. But I really wanted to do number one on the list-get a passport. I kept telling Tai we just needed to do it. But things kept coming up. We didn't have Tai's birth certificate and his father refused to help us. Then we sent away for his birth certificate and had to wait to it. Getting a passport is expensive. $110 for each passport book! We considered doing the enhanced driver's license but if we wanted to fly to Europe or Asia we'd need passport books. Plus I had a hard time finding a passport office with open times that fit with our schedule. Finally a few weeks ago, I took a Friday off and since Tai has half days on Friday, we hussled to the nearest court house where a lovely women (seriously she was so nice) processed our paperwork and got us on our way in less than 30 minutes! And after a few weeks of me stalking the mailbox, here are our passports!

Now we can start planning our out of the country trips. First on the agenda is Victoria in the spring!

I'm Thankful

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Every year Mom would make us go around the table and say what we were thankful for before we could eat. It was never my favorite part of the holiday. After my attempts to get out of it, I would either say I was thankful that the Cowboys were losing or that I was thankful for our health (everyone's favorite). But I don't say thank you enough so I'll take this opportunity to thank you to the important people in my life.

My husband-Again this man is a rockstar. I'm so happy that he has a permanent job now. His job is super stressful but he works hard for us. I adore him. I'm so thankful he's in my life.

My dad-I'm so lucky to have amazing men in my life. My dad has been dealing some health challenges but he's maintained his usual fantastic attitude. He's always there for me and Tai. I'm thankful that he's my dad.

My friends-When I was a kid, I had trouble making long term friends. I kind of thought I never would make the kind of friends I have now. I'm thankful for their friendship daily.

Blogging-When I started blogging I never thought I'd been blogging this long or that I would have met so many fantastic people. Each of your comments make me so happy and make blogging so much more fun. Thank you!

Have a wonderful day with friends, family and food. Hope it's a great one for you!

The One Where We Learn To Make Chocolate Candies

As part of our anniversary weekend extravaganza, we went to Oh! Chocolate for their chocolate class. I was lucky to get discounted tickets through LivingSocial for the class. At $60 a person it's not cheap but well worth it.
So Saturday we headed to Bellevue Square and Oh! Chocolate:

Once you arrive they give you either hot chocolate, tea, coffee or a mix of hot chocolate and coffee. We both choose the awesome mocha :)
Once class starts they talk to you about chocolate. Where it comes from, how it's made, etc. Then you taste some different chocolates:

Starting at the top it goes coco nibs, baker's chocolate, dark chocolate, a mango habenaro truffle, semi-sweet chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. White chocolate is not really chocolate. And I never really like white chocolate but theirs is pretty good.
After the tasting then we got to the dipping:

We each got a cup of milk and dark chocolate. They had pretzels, potato chips, marshmallows, oreos, graham crackers, strawberries and blueberries to dip.

Here's Tai tempering his chocolate before he started dipping.
Here's what we walked home with:

A ton o'chocolate! I highly recommend this class. It was so worth the money.

2 Years

 

Two years ago Tai and I said I do. Since then we've been through thick and thin, happy and sad.  Nothing has made me want to give up on him or us yet. I love you sweetheart. Here's to many more years!

Crazy About Cirque

When Tai and I first started dating he invited me to see Cirque Du Soleil with him. Delirium was coming to Seattle and Tai had always wanted to see Cirque. I had seen some Cirque on tv but wasn't super impressed. It was reluctant to go but did because he wanted to see it so much. I quickly became a huge Cirque fan and was looking forward to our next Cirque show. It took 4 years for us to get to another Cirque show, Kooza. Again I was amazing and impressed.

I couldn't get over how these ladies moved. They don't need yoga, they are yoga!

This was Tai's favorite part. He loved these guys can couldn't stop talking about them. Also our seats were in the 3rd row so watching these guys was super scary!
When we came home from Kooza, I checked online to see if there any other shows coming to our area soon or any close enough to road trip to. I discovered that Alegria was coming to Tacoma, just a short drive away. I quickly bought tickets and cannot wait for our next Cirque show!
Have you seen any Cirque shows?

We're Gleeks!

In the fall when the new shows come out I heard people talking about Glee. OMG, you've got to watch it, they told me. I asked what it was about but no one told me. Just watch it. But I didn't watch it. Months later in December, I decided to see what the fuss was about. I went to hulu.com and watched episode 6. Completely confused, I decided that I needed to see episode one. It wasn't on hulu anymore so I did a little digging and found the first episode. When they sang Don't Stop Believing, I was tearing up, begging Tai to buy the DVD for Christmas for me.

Tai reluctantly bought it for me and sat down to watch it with me. Tai didn't want to like this show. He was very opposed to me watching. But you guessed it. He loves Glee. Everyone one he meets, he tells them about Glee. He posts about Glee on Facebook. He's studied up on all the cast members. He's trying to be top Gleek. He's seen the first 13 episodes at least 4 times now. If you come to our house he will make you watch the first episode at least. And if we can't watch Glee, he'll want to listen to his current favorite song:

He really likes Kurt's version. He got Jeff into Glee to and Jeff got the 2 CDs of Glee music. See we're gleeks. And yes, Tai's a little OCD. Next month he'll move off Glee to something else though.

Tai's Fragrance Choices

When I met Tai I thought he was pretty low key. He didn't seem to need a lot of time to get ready or have a lot of "beauty" products. But after a while I realized he did have some things he was high maintenance about. At first I didn't notice that he wore cologne every day. At first I thought he was just trying for me, but no he wears cologne everyday and he likes to have a bunch to choose from.
At first he just had Obsession.

But right around our first Christmas together he mentioned he was running out, so I could him the Calvin Klein sampler of men's fragrances which included Obession, CK One, Eternity, and Euphoria.

 

He really liked all of them and they lasted him a while. But Jeff took him fragrance shopping and he came home with an old favorite of his.

Tai used to wear this when he lived in LA. He hadn't been able to find it locally here. He didn't want me to buy it online since it might break in route or be the wrong scent. But he found it when he went shopping with Jeff. This is his current everyday scent.

But when he was shopping with Jeff he also discovered a new scent. He raved about it and took me to Macy's to check it out.

Neither of us are a fan of the packaging but I admit it smells good on him. I bought him a bottle as a just cause gift. This is his special occasion fragrance.

I have one bottle of perfume. Tai bought it for me when we first started dating.

I still have about 3/4 of the bottle. I rarely wear perfume. I prefer scented lotions so I only wear it when I have unscented lotion which is rare for me.

What about you? What's your favorite fragrance?

Dane Cook Cracks Me Up

When Tai saw one of Dane Cook's comedy shows with Jeff he insisted I watch it too. I'd seen Dane Cook before and failed to see why he was funny. But since my honey insisted I gave it a try. Ah the things we do for love. But I love it. We watch it over and over again and quote him frequently. Here are some of my favorites. These are not safe for work and could be offensive, so watch at your own risk.

This is probably the worst one but so worth it to me for the Mortal Kombat reference.

Tai and I use this insult all the time when we're being silly. Never fails to make us both laugh.
And I couldn't get this one to embed but here's the link. And this one is so true for us. We reenact this part every time we got to the movies.

Murder Mystery Party

Saturday we went to our friend's house for a murder mystery party. I love murder mystery parties. It was an old west theme.

I'm a widow (Helena Handcart) and Tai's a cowboy (P'Elvis Swaggerin').

Tai and Christy (the hostess) goofing off.

This is my favorite. Tai really loved his costume. I love the hat!
Hope you had a great Halloween!

Corn Maze

On Saturday night Tai and I (along with a few friends) went to a corn maze. Tai and I were corn maze noobs. So for our first corn maze adventure, we choose the Farm at Swan's Lake with the largest corn maze in Washington state.

We took a wagon out to the eastern part of Washington and walked through the maze back to the west coast. The roads are all named for parts of Washington. While walking through you can learn about Washington history and look for towns along the way. We did get separated a few times (cell phones come in handy). But it took us about an hour to walk through the whole thing even with some detours. It was fun. I would go again but I think Tai would enjoy a haunted one better.
Have you ever been to a corn maze?

My Honey Bought Me Bling

Last weekend, Tai bought me the ring I've been waiting for. I mentioned how I wanted a ring to go with my wedding band, an engagement ring of sorts. Tai agreed that I needed something a little more than just my wedding band. Remember my wedding band looks like this:

We've been doing a little jewelery shopping, supposedly for  a holiday gift. But we found what we were looking for so Tai decided that I should have it then. Here's what my wonderful husband bought me:

I tried to take pictures of my ring but they were so crappy I couldn't even show them to you! I'll keep trying and hopefully I'll take some real ones for you all.

Scaredy Cat Goes To A Horror Movie

I'm a scaredy cat. I don't go to scary movies period. Tai loves scary movies. When he heard about Paranormal Activity, he asked me to go. I've been watching some scary movies (The Thing, Alien) at home, with the lights on. I've been getting better about them. But Paranormal Activity was showing at midnight. Since Tai really wanted to go, I decided to try it (this should earn me major brownie points).
Here's the trailer:

Holy fucking shit (excuse my language)! This movie was so scary. The movie was almost sold out. The crowd was prepared to be scared and got into the movie. They were screaming and some of their reactions made the movie better.  I did have to hide a few times; I missed the last 5 minutes of the movie because I was too scared to look at the screen.But I know what happened since Tai filled me in.
This movie is similar to Blair Witch since it's a mockumentary although I did forget that towards the end. But it's mostly steadycam rather than someone running through the forest carrying a camera. So you won't feel sick from the motion of the camera.
If you like scary movies and Paranormal Activity is playing in your area (it's not achieved wide release yet) check it out.

Do The Puyallup!

On Friday Tai and I headed to the Puyallup Fair, largest fair in Western Washington. It was Tai's first time there and his first county fair he's been to. It's by far my favorite fair. Plenty of good fair food, lots of animals and interesting hobbies & crafts to look at.
Since the fair at it's roots is an agricultural fair there was plenty of produce to look at.

I love how creative people can get.
Then we had to see all the animals. Sadly the cows and pigs weren't available to visit when we were there. But we saw lots of sheep, some donkeys and a zebu.

But the real reason we went to the fair was the food.

We decided to try a deep fried twinkie. We each took a bite and promptly dumped it. It was a lot of dough and not very tasty.

I had to get my roasted corn. It was damn tasty.

We stopped at BBQ Pete's for some ribs. Yeah this was definitely too much for the 2 of us but we wound up sharing with the family next to us.  

I had to get my scones before we left. I got a bag to go so we'd have some for breakfast.

Tai'd never had a scone. He really liked them and was glad I brought some home. He devoured half the bag for breakfast!

We had a great time. I don't know if we'll go every year but we'll definitely go again.

The title has to do with the song for the fair. I couldn't find the youtube version but the website does have the song for you to hear. It's terribly goofy but most people who've lived here for a number of years can sing at least the chorus when you mention the Puyallup Fair.

And for those of you who aren't local, Puyallup is named for the Puyallup tribe of Native Americans. It's about an hour south of Seattle so the drive there was fun :)

Anniversay Cruise

For our anniversary I knew I wanted 3 things: to find something related to the water (either close to it or on it), to being doing something, and it had to fit in our price range. After going through dozen of options I finally decided that a cruise with Argosy to Tillicum Village would fit the bill. I've been on this tour at least ten times but it was Tai's first experience. Tillcum Village is on Blake Island, a state park. Tillicum Village is an Indian Longhouse where they have a presentation about Native American culture and serve an all you can eat salmon dinner. Tai was just excited about the boat ride.
So on Sunday we boarded the boat for the 50 minute trip to Blake Island. Here are some photos I took from the boat:The Space Needle (top left), a light house on Alki (top right), Qwest Field (where the Seahawks and Sounders MLS play) and Safeco Field (where the Mariniers play) (bottom left), and Mt Rainier (bottom right). As you can see we had a beautiful day.
Once on the island, we got a steaming pile of clams to enjoy as an appeitizer.
Inside we scarfed down our salmon, bread and salad. Sorry no picture much too hungry! I remember the food being so much better though. The salmon was a little dry. Then Tai and I bailed on the show and went for a walk around the island. It was so beautiful and peaceful.I got a little photo happy and tried to be a little artistic! After a 30 minute walk, we headed back to the boat for the trip home. Once we got home we had some cake:Chocolate Mousse on top for Tai and Black Forest at the bottom for me. Since everyone devoured our wedding cake we didn't keep any. So Sunday morning we stopped at the bakery and bought slices of cake for tonight. Just as yummy as I remember them.
It was a great day. We had so much fun together. Sigh, one year down, dozens more to go!

Happy Anniversary!

One down!

Symphonic Video Games

For Tai's birthday I got him tickets to Final Fantasy:Distant Worlds. When I saw the signs on the bus I knew he'd be into it. So I bought tickets and we eagerly awaited July to use them.Saturday we treked to Benaroya Hall to see the Seattle Symphony play music from Final Fantasy.
We had pretty good seats (Go me!).
Tai wanted me to get up to the stage and take more pictures but I didn't want to. Close up pictures of empty chairs you do not need. And on that screen, they showed pictures from the game while the music played.
Ok, I've never played Final Fantasy. Jeff and Tai have both given me the opportunity to see the game, the movie, and listen to music. I knew I'd enjoyed it because I love classical music. It was very beautifully done. To show you how pheomenal this was, I found 2 youtube videos of the music from the concert. I think these were both done in Japan, but it's the same thing we heard.


Definately not what you expect from a video game huh?
Plus here's part of Final Fantasy IX, so you can see how well done the characters are. It's such a beautiful video game.

Asparagus with Garlic, Ginger, and Sesame

Tai had a lemon garlic asparagus years ago. He asked me to attempt to recreate it. Again, he didn't know what was in this magical dish. I did some searching and found this recipe.
So delicious. It's not the magical asparagus dish Tai was looking for but he did enjoy this one. I leave out the chives and the sesame seeds. If you leave the asparagus in the sauce while you get the rest of dinner ready, a few minutes, it gets better!