eight in one.

YIPES!!! this is going to be a big one...and fair warning: it's food and beans filled. story of my life. I'm going to try to post mid week and on Sundays to avoid these wicked long posts from now on...

february 20: So I accidentally (okay, on purpose) signed up for Martha Stewart's cookie of the day email. Some days it doesn't tempt me...and then others I can't wait until it's the weekend so I can whip up a good cookie. There really isn't anything like a good cookie in my opinion. I'm partial to chocolate chip, but I've decided to branch out...and then these Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk cookies just had to come waltzing into my inbox. I just had to make them for bible study...

february 21: So Beans, our lovely and wonderful double doodle, has oficially picked his favorite...and it is so not me. Whenever Ryan enters the room or says one word, Beans will go flying towards him. I mean, I probably would pick Ryan as the favorite, too, but it's getting a little bit ridiculous. We even ask Beans who his favorite is and he always goes to Ryan. Whatever, I'm over it. I'll just take pictures to document it, even if Beans thinks he's a human and sits like a human on Ry's lap:

february 22: OH BOY. Another crock pot success. I cannot express how excited I am to have two of these successes in a row. It's so exciting that I'm trying ANOTHER crock pot recipe this week. So my dear friend Kayla from church told me to try salsa crock pot chicken and claimed it was the easiest meal in the world. She did not lead me astray. Since I had to find the recipe at the last minute, I found one online. This recipe was SO good and we put it over rice, ate it with chips, put it in tortillas and made it into quesadillas. The possibilities were ENDLESS:

february 23: So our dear dear friends Lauren and Michael got us HOOKED in wing night at Hale St. Tavern. The wings there are SO good and I think we could eat them every week if we tried. Since we do try to watch our wallets and our waist lines, we often will decline to join them for wings on Wednesdays. But, one can only resist wings for so long and this week we just couldn't say no. I think I could have eaten two dozen they were so good. Here's me and Lauren trying Ryan's interesting, yet successful, drumstick technique (I feel as though this evening would make my brother proud):

february 24: darn it. I had full intentions of taking a picture this day. I had been planning on what I was going to take all week. You see, I started my indoor soccer league on Thursday and couldn't wait to blog and tell you all about it. But then I forgot to take a picture, but I"m still going to tell you all about it. It was AWESOME!! It felt SO good to be out there playing again and playing with one of my best friends who I've never played before because she was busy winning national championships at Wheaton while I was at Gordon. SO MUCH FUN!! Maybe next time I'll remember to take a picture :)

february 25: So you might notice that all the pictures in this post are a bit, well, low-quality. I blame this on my cell phone camera, though, I really should blame it on the fact that I continually forget to charge my camera's battery. So look: I'm charging!!

february 26: Again...another Saturday in which I could have taken a ton of pictures. It was an all around fantastic day. It started with a good work out at the gym with a good chuckle and chat with Meg-a-leg. She's always good for one of those. Then it was back home and Linds and Erin came over for our little bible/prayer/whatever we choose to discuss Saturday morning thang. They're the best. really. the best. We ended up spending most of the day together and planned on going mini golfing later that evening. We met up with Linds and Warren at the most ridiculous and overstimulating indoor mini golf place I've ever seen...so then we decided to go back to their house and they taught us how to play Settlers of Catan. BEST. GAME. EVER. Anyways, when the girls were over in the morning, for some reason Beans decided that Linds was the favorite of the day and would NOT leave her alone. He took his spot on her lap for most of the morning...apparently he's a lap dog:

february 27: Woke up this morning to four or five inches of fresh snow falling and church being postponed until three this afternoon. Perfect. Ry siphoned coffee and I made carrot cake pancakes. We were bummin around when Ry had the genius idea to go buy Settlers. Genius, I tell you. I'm currently obsessed with this game and since no one was really around for bible study that we were supposed to host tonight, Matt and Michael came over and played with us!! Don't worry...I won :)

a random week.

so it seems like Sunday's might be my designated blog day. Sunday is usually a day that both of us take time to sit down and relax, Ryan out of necessity due to the crazy of tax season and me out of wanting to spend as much time as humanly possible with my husband during the craziness. Did we mention he's starting grad school on March 28th?! VERY exciting...and VERY much during tax season. I suppose we're gluttons for punishment. Anyways - on to the pictures

february 14: VALENTINE's DAY! We usually don't make a HUGE deal out of this day, but we both did a little something for each other. Ryan got me a really nice card (in addition to the roses from Saturday night). The card was all in Spanish because he couldn't find one in English that was suitable for his liking. So Spanish it was. And it was cute and so very Ryan of him to do that. As for me, instead of nice words in a card, I decided to satisfy our (my) sweet tooth and make fondue to enjoy while we watched the bachelor. The Bachelor, I know, SO ROMANTIC, HUH?! :) The fondue was delish, at least!

february 15: last weekend Ry and I were sitting around and realized we could earn $40 of free clothes from Banana Republic if we used our credit card, so we decided it was time for Beans to get a new collar! I tried my best to get a soccer ball one, but Ry wasn't having it. So I giggled to myself as I typed "coffee bean dog collar" into google...and the most amazing thing of life popped up - a coffee bean collar! WHO KNEW THEY MADE SUCH A THING?!?! Fabulous. We ordered without hesitation...and it finally came in! Here's our studmuffin of a dog modeling his new collar:

february 16: no picture. sigh. this day was not awesome. it was the one year anniversary of Christopher's (my cousin) death. it was sad. we miss him so much.

february 17: Ry was on the road in Maine on Thursday and wasn't going to be getting home until 7:30. Long day for him. Lonely home for me. So I decided to call Patrick and Sarah (our pastor and his wife) and see what they were up to. Lucky for me, they weren't up to anything and took me in for dinner :) I headed over after work and, since it was GORGEOUS out, decided to go for a run when I got there. Church is located right on the water and the parsonage is right across the street. When I finished my run up I looked over and saw an AMAZING scene. The moon was HUGE and reflecting off the ocean. This picture is from my cell phone and doesn't accurately depict what I saw, but sometimes I think that God intends for us to see things and enjoy them in the moment...but I tried taking a picture anyways:

february 18: Young Alumni Night!! Woohoo!! So my friend Katie is the Assistant Director of the Annual Fund at work and also dabbles in planning the young alumni nights! This was our second event this year and we were super excited about it. It was at a home of a recent grad and we had many people signed up to come. Before the event, though, we (Me, Katie and the Director of Alumni Adrianne) stopped off at a DELICIOUS mexican restaurant: Cielito Lindo. Yum. With our full bellies we hurried off to the event, which was a HUGE success. It is so encouraging spending time around other Gordon alumni who are doing REALLY cool things. Anyways...check out this VAT of gauc we had when we were out to dinner:

february 19: What a great day this was. I wish I had taken pictures throughout the day because I hung out with two of my absolute favorite people in the morning and then they came back over with their significant others for a pizza and game night. I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did last night in a very long time. It was awesome. Oh and we made milkshakes! Too fun. BUT my day did start off at the gym. I ran, elliptical-ed and then noticed that there was an empty gym due to the basketball teams being away and the spring season sports practicing outside. PERFECT! I grabbed a soccer ball and spent time juggling and hitting the ball against the wall (I signed up for a soccer league that starts on Thursday...the rust that's been gathering for 2 1/2 years needs to be shaken off ). It was AWESOME. There are few things I love more than having a ball at my feet:

lots of food...

yipes ... i've been really slacking. i'm trying, i promise.

february 7: So this is SORT OF cheating. I had two different pictures I wanted to use for february 6, but that's cheating. So February 6 was the superbowl and last year we held the superbowl party and chose to do so again, despite hating the fact that Pats were not in it. We planned a menu and I cooked all weekend. It was finally the day and all our friends from church came over, including a couple steelers fans (we still let them eat). It was a fun night with great people. Our menu featured buffalo chicken wing dip, chipotle lime crab crisps, caramel corn, seven layer dip, bacon wrapped smokies, proscuitto and spinach stuffed bread, and peanut butter banana cupcakes (I'm counting this for the seventh because you should have seen the pile of dishes waiting for me as I woke up on Monday morning):

february 8: So we were exhausted on Monday morning and rolled out of bed and to work, which meant I had to make the bed at lunch. I'm a sucker for getting into a made bed at night - another thing Ry has taught me to enjoy, along with black beans, puppies and Guatemala. :) HOWEVER, making the bed has been a near impossible task since Beans came into our life. Without fail, any time I try to make the bed, Beans finds it necessary to get his bone and jump up and sit right in the middle. What a crazy pup:

february 9/10: Here I go again with the cheating...we made a TON of caramel popcorn for the superbowl. IT WAS A DELISH recipe!!!!!!! Found here:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000000420375

Anyways - there was so much left that we've been eating it all week...and it is ADDICTIVE! I highly suggest making this tasty, low-calorie, treat! (ps - how do i make my links not so ugly...anyone know???) Oh and cousin...notice the jar??:

february 11: So three people at Gordon that I know of have been diagnosed with pneumonia and another handful have been out sick. YUCK. Everyone in the office seems to be sniffling and coughing and it finally caught up with me on Friday. Ugh. Sitting at my desk that morning was TERRIBLE. So I fed myself soup (from a can...I hope I don't get disowned by my Lembo family) and crawled right into bed. Not cool:

february 12: aaahhh what a LOVELY day this turned out to be. I had a friend keep me company while I watched movies and then was able to serve with some wonderful people at church at the local food pantry. and THEN Ryan and I went on our much anticipated date!!! We had decided earlier in the week to make a reservation and tried to do so at our favorite restaurant...to be told they only had an 8:30 seating left. So we searched around and settled on a restaurant someone from church had recommended: http://www.zabaglioneristorante.com/

MY OH MY. it was AMAZING. We could only get an 8:15 seating (funny that we didn't just take the 8:30 at our fav...but I'm SO glad we didn't). We showed up and found ourselves in this tiny little restaurant with an open kitchen (the best kind, in my opinion). It was such a wonderful experience. We sat, we got a glass of wine, we slowly ate our appetizer and enjoyed each other while waiting for a meal. The meal came and we LOVED it...and all of a sudden it was 10:30! WHAT?! We weren't rushed through like other restaurants these days, but instead were welcome to enjoy the whole dining experience. It was SO nice!! And to top it off...the evening started with these beautiful roses from ry:

february 13: CROCK POT SUCCESS!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOO!!! So I decided that pulled pork would be a great choice for the week because we can do so much with it (pulled pork sandwiches, bbq pulled pork quesadillas, pulled pork burritos), so I turned to my crock pot after getting one of my Martha Stewart emails. Oh Martha, you rarely steer me astray. This pulled pork was SO GOOD!! It was so tender and had such yummy flavor!! I'm so excited to have my first crock pot success (recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pulled-pork-sandwiches-easy-tasty?backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/slow-cooker-recipes#slide_6):

a paper chain, beans the mechanic, goalkeepers and a stroll on the beach.

february 3 (take 2): So I had the 3rd off and one of the things that I did was to make Ryan his week three tax season present. I usually do something on Saturday's, but because of the Superbowl party prep, I had to do something early...so I made a paper chain to count down to the end of tax season!! Then it had 72 rings...but it's slowly working it's way down :)

february 4: I took Friday off so that I could pick up our NEW TABLE (which I should have taken a picture of as this day)...but I couldn't resist this! Ry had to fix something on his car that broke when we hit a racoon in VT in November. Beans thought he'd help:

february 5: GOALIE MOVIE MORNING!!! I had the privilege of coaching the goalkeepers with erin this past fall. One of the things we always talked about was having a goalie movie morning...and we FINALLY did it!! We made pancakes, bacon and eggs and then we watched aladdin....it was supposed to be mighty ducks, but disney won out! It was a fabulous morning :)

february 6: It was a GORGEOUS day on Sunday - warm and not too windy - so we took FULL advantage! We made plans with our friends Lauren and Michael, who were dog sitting two dogs, to meet up at Singing Beach for a stroll. We LOVE bringing beans to the beach - it's AMAZING exercise for him and he gets to socialize with other dogs. We feel like such good parents...a walk on the leash just doesn't cut it for this crazy puppy...he needs to sprint up and down the beach. Anyways - we had to take advantage and take a new family pic and it came out GREAT!

I'm totally slacking on this week's pictures...back to watching live to dance...there's some crazy talented 11 and 12 year olds on the stage!

no more snow, please.

i think i'm missing a picture from the 31st - Ry had a headache all day that day, so he slept while I read and ventured off to our friends for a little bit of game night (without the camera). Sorry about that.

February 1 - February 1 came with warnings of another major storm! Can you believe it, it's storm number 19385473921, i swear!!! Anyways, I came home to let beans out at lunch time and came home to a giant tractor removing snow from the driveway to accommodate the 21 inches they were predicting for Tuesday and Wednesday. Beans noticed the tractor out there and started barking like a maniac and wagging his tail furiously while watching out the window:

February 2 - One of the best things about working in education is that we have to keep the students safe. This often works out in our favor, especially this winter, because if it's bad outside we can't let the students be driving around, right?! So soon after we all arrived at work on Tuesday the snow started coming and coming fast. Around 10 we heard a rumor from somewhere over near the president's office that they'd be making a call soon. At 11:30 the text below came (which, may I add, happened ONCE in my 4.5 years as a student...we've had these texts five times this winter!!):

February 3: The grinder is here! The grinder is here!! So Ryan has a little bit of a coffee thing. He loves it. He got that fancy pants coffee siphon last year and has been using a little $10 grinder for the past three years. Not okay for someone who loves a good cup of coffee. So for week #1 of tax season, I bought him a new grinder! It's pretty awesome...it's a conical burr grinder...apparently those things provide a super even grind. I must say, there is a marked difference in the taste of the coffee!