Date night

Noel and I love trying new restaurants and new foods. We both love what we know of Mediterranean food and decided to try a new restaurant in Glendale. We were totally blown away with how wonderful it was. Our intention was to each order one entree, but when we saw that the menu offered a huge sampler that included a taste of MANY appetizers and entrees, we couldn't resist. If you're ever in the Glendale area and looking for a phenomenal restaurant, check out Carousel!

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week. Jon and Amanda were gracious enough to host and provide tons of food. Amanda's sister and boyfriend joined us as well as another couple Jon and Amanda know. The girls spent most of the day in the kitchen cooking while the boys played video games.

Jamie and Jason with their son, Parker, Jon and Amanda, Amir and Tara, and me (Noel's the photographer) sitting down to a delicious feast!

Amanda put together a very beautiful table!

Jon conquered the turkey!

We had lots of great dishes! Turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade biscuits, green bean casserole, dressing, cranberry salad, macaroni and cheese, creamed corn, and salad...as if that wasn't enough, we had pumpkin pie and baked apples for dessert!

We spent the rest of the weekend decorating for Christmas, catching up on odds and ends and spending time with our friends Kraig and Danielle and their daughter Kyriana. Kraig and Noel played video games on Sunday afternoon while Danielle and I baked delicious shortbread cookies. I'm so thankful that Danielle shared her childhood favorite recipe with me! We also ate white chicken chili and cornbread together. Overall, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend filled with lots of great fellowship.

Stuffed potatoes

I love trying new recipes and have recently found a new, great, vegetarian cookbook. It's called "Horn of the Moon" and contains recipes from a vegetarian restaurant in Vermont. One of the recipes is for stuffed potatoes. Noel and I were very impressed with how they turned out. I love that the possibilities for fillings are endless! What's on your dinner menu tonight?

Jackpot!

As I was driving home from church last week, I noticed a sign outside Wild Oats announcing that it was closing the next day (due to being bought by Whole Foods). Noel and I decided to go one last time since it was one of our favorite places to shop. Little did we know, everything in the store was 50% off! Wild Oats has some of the best quality meat, so we bought a LOT of meat to throw in the freezer. We got over 2 lbs of wild salmon, ground beef, organic chicken breasts, a roast, shrimp, plus lots of other grocery items. Lots of the shelves were already empty, but we were able to find a few staples as well as a few fun things. What a fun way to grocery shop! Will any of you miss Wild Oats like we will? Luckily, we also enjoy Whole Foods and a 2 story store just opened near us a few days ago.

Noel's holding some of the meat. He wasn't able to hold it all...we went a little overboard, but it sure was fun!

Some of the other delightful items we purchased!

A new toy

Noel decided that he needed an outlet...something fun to do at home...something to look forward to. Soooooooooooooooooooo, we bought our neighbors N64 with 4 controllers and a bunch of games. Noel really only wants the system to play MarioKart, but we're still looking for that game. In the mean time, he's playing lots of 1080 Snowboard. I don't know anything about these games, but he's having a great time, which makes it worth it. I hope I don't regret this purchase someday...

Neglect

I've been negelcting the blog lately. I'm not sure why, but sometimes it just seems so overwhelming to sit down and post something. Maybe it's because I still don't really know what I'm doing or what direction I want to go with the blog. Maybe it's because I get so frustrated trying to post pictures and I can't figure out how to make them look as good as everyone else does. Any tips fellow bloggers? I'm open to advice, hints, directions, anything...