Saturday night at home....

We have been loving the warm weather and we have been cooking on the grill several nights a week....Andy loves grilling and trying new marinade recipes....and I love letting him cook me dinner so much these days. This past Saturday night, we had a great dinner! Andy did some marinated steaks on the grill and I tried a new recipe (this is my version since I changed it and since I can't find the original link to the recipe I modified - the original recipe used mushrooms, which we don't like, shallots, which I didn't have, and lemon juice and zest, which is too acidic for Andy - he has some sort of allergy/intolerance to a lot of lemony things):

Grilled Potato Salad

I sliced up 3 potatoes, half of an onion, and some fresh broccoli and put it in a grilling pan. I brushed on some olive oil, but then needed more, I also sprayed PAM on the bottom of the pan. I put that on the grill for about 20 min. While that was cooking, I mixed up the dressing. I mixed 1/3 c. of red wine vinegarette, 1/3 c. of olive oil, and 2 T. of mustard with rosemary and garlic powder to taste (I didn't have any fresh garlic, but that would've been great!). When the potatoes and broccoli were done, I mixed it in the dressing.

Both the steak and the grilled potato salad turned out great! But the corn bit the dust. Andy soaked it well, but it still caught on fire too much to be edible....so we let the squirrels have it. Andy mixed up some drinks and we had a good night watching a classic movie - Top Gun. I am proud of Andy for actually watching movies with me lately - usually he watches about 20 min. and then his ADD kicks in and he goes in the other room to surf the web and channel surf. But we watched all of Top Gun this week and all of "New in Town" (with Renee Zellweger - it was really good) last Friday night together.

Last weekend we had a good time visiting with Andy's Dad for Father's day. We spent a lot of time up at the lake with Darrell and Rae and enjoyed spending time with them. Unfortunately, I was still feeling pretty sick and wasn't the greatest company and took a bunch of naps. But we were still glad we got to go and let Andy hang out with his Dad. I called my dad and talked to the rest of my family some on the way home.

Andy wrote a post a few months ago about finding out that he was on the back-up list to be deployed overseas with the American Red Cross to a military base for about 4 months. So far he hasn't been called. This week is most likely the last week that he would be called and told that he has to go because someone who is currently going cannot. Please pray that we don't get that call, as we are not really mentally prepared for him to go and because it would be so short notice at this point. But pray that we'll be able to quickly get ready and be at peace if he does. Thanks!

waterpark adventures...

June has been a crazy month for us so far. We still don't know if Andy will be deploying this month - as he said in his post a while ago, he's on the back up list and we still could end up hearing that he needs to go at the last minute. So that's been a little stressful to think about, but oh well.

We've both been busy with work and finishing up the year with the American Red Cross youth group we've been leading. A few weeks ago we had the big end of year awards ceremony for the youth. Then last Saturday we took 11 teens to Wet n' Wild up in Greensboro for an end of year fun trip. We had another couple help us chaperone and we rented a 15 passenger van to get everyone up there. It was a fun but exhausting trip - we left our home here at 6am to drive to Fayetteville to pick up the van and meet the youth on Bragg....and then we didn't get back to our apt. until midnight. We were thankful for the nice hot weather and that there were no major catastrophes that occured. I had fun going down a few of the waterslides, but Andy couldn't get in water at all since he had just gotten his smallpox vaccine (along with a whole cocktail of shots that he needed in case he gets deployed). He got his feet wet a few times and I made him pose for this picture:


We were both exhausted on Sunday and tried to recover all day. I ended up feeling worse and worse and had to go to the doctor on Tuesday to get medicine for a bad ear infection that I ended up getting. I'm still not feeling great and hope to rest up this weekend. I told Andy we're never doing a waterpark again and that I should get extra volunteer hours since I've gotten so sick.

Cinnabon Clone Recipe

I love Cinnabon cinnamon rolls...so much so that I long ago decided to pretend like Cinnabon didn't exist anywhere but in airports and I only allow myself to eat one of their delicious cinnamon rolls when I'm flying somewhere (but yes, I have definitely run across airports to find a Cinnabon and raced back to frantically catch my connecting flight - Cinnabon in hand). A week or so ago, I was really wanting one...so since they don't exist except in airports and I'm not heading to an airport anytime soon....I decided to see if I could find a good clone recipe. I tried the one below and it was pretty good. Not perfect - I need to work on rolling the dough out thinner I think....but it was pretty close to the real thing and the frosting was amazing! I would double frosting amount next time though so that there is plenty of cream cheese frosting goodness. I also decided that I shouldn't probably make these much, since Andy didn't help me eat any. I'll make them for my family sometime when we visit - my mom taught me to love Cinnabon - I have fond memories of my sister and I splitting one with her at the mall when we were kids.

Clone of a Cinnabon

1 cup warm milk (110 degrees F/45 degrees C) (I used skim)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup butter, melted
4 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast (also known as fast rising, rapid rising, or instant yeast)

1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, softened

1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened (I used 1/3 less fat Neufchatel cheese)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Using KitchenAid mixer: dissolve the yeast in the warmed milk, along with 1 tsp sugar from the 1/2 cup white sugar. Let stand, covered, about 10 minutes, until foamy.

In the bowl of your KitchenAid mixer, add the yeast/milk mixture, eggs, melted butter, 3 cups bread flour, salt, and remaining sugar; mix on medium speed with the flat beater until combined. Switch to the dough hook and start kneading the dough on speed 2. Add 1/2 cup of bread flour at a time, until the dough becomes soft and elastic and no longer sticks to the bowl (approximately 4-1/2 total cups bread flour according to the recipe). This will vary depending on the humidity of your kitchen, but you can definitely start to see when the dough stops sticking to the sides. It will start to follow the dough hook around as it spins and will start flopping around the bowl in a large ball. After you reach a total of 4-1/2 cups, start adding the flour a tablespoon at a time so you don't risk adding too much flour. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl and cover with a damp towel for approximately 1 hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

After the dough has doubled in size turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.

Roll dough into a 16x21 inch rectangle. Spread dough with 1/3 cup butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough (lengthwise so you end up with a 21" roll) and cut with a bread knife into 12 rolls (approximately 1-3/4" each, or three finger widths). Place rolls in a lightly greased 9x13 inch baking pan. (If you want to make these the night before, follow the instructions up to this step but then cover and refrigerate your rolls before the second rise. In the morning, take them out of the refrigerate and allow them to rise before baking.) Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. (I baked mine at 350F for 20-25 minutes.)

Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes. While rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract and salt. Spread frosting on warm rolls before serving.

being creative...

I've been painting a lot lately. I am working on finishing up a painting for my brother, Patrick and his wife Jen. It's a late wedding present that they know about...I'm back to working on it because I want to get it done by their 1st anniversary - July 4th.

Tonight I had a good time with a few friends - we went to the paint your own pottery place in town and I finally used the gift certificate Andy got me for Christmas. It was a girls night out at the pottery place and they had chocolate covered strawberries and snack out and groups of women came to hang out and paint. We had fun and might do it again next month.

so many weddings...(more pics)

My sister, Katie, got her pro wedding pictures back. Her photographer was Ruben of Call Me Ruben Photography. Here are a few of my favorites:



Me and my niece Samara while her mom was getting ready.

Katie, Samara, and Dan - blessing of the family

A better version of the big group shot - both sides of the family

We've gotten pretty good at posing for wedding photos lately!
We have had 3 people in my family get married within
11 months.

My little sister, Katie married Dan on May 9, 2009



Me & Andy - Sept. 1, 2008

(photo by Brian Ray Photography)



My younger brother Patrick married Jen
on July 4th, 2008

(photo by me)

Crazy! My poor parents must be getting tired of marrying off their kids. Good thing we only have one brother left and he's 13, so it should be quite a while before they have to do another wedding.



My younger sister Emily got married a few years ago, but I didn't want her to feel left out. We don't look alike at all do we?

book review: The Bean Trees

Last weekend, on our long drive home from Maryland, I picked up a book that I had thrown in the car for a long drive a few weeks earlier. I didn't end up reading it on the previous drive, so since I was getting incredibly bored and antsy, I decided to give it a try.

The book was "The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver


It was a little violent and slow in the beginning, but I kept reading (mostly because we still had at least 5 hours to drive). And I really enjoyed it. The author used a lot of picture language and she has a good way of tackling tough issues in a nonconfrontational, roundabout way. That was what I appreciated the most - this book was entertaining while reading, and made me think more afterwards about one of the big issues in the book - illegal immigrants. I tried to read one of her other books, "Poisenwood Bible" years ago and never got very far with it. This book is worth the read. It's not very long and only took me a few hours to finish.

church

This morning we had a rough time getting out the door to go to church. But we made it. And on the way there, I prayed that God would show up and meet us in worship today. He did. It was a good message (I really like our minister and his style of preaching, and Andy likes him a lot too) and a good service.

I like this quote by C.S. Lewis:

"The perfect church service, would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God."