A Penny For Our Thoughts

Monday, March 12, 2012

easter eggs

Love me a little Monday afternoon Pinterest-inspired crafting!

I found the tutorial here.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

We are loving Walnut Creek. It is a very beautiful area. We are about 12 minutes from Church, 7 minutes from downtown shopping, 5 minutes from Baskin Robbins, and 3 minutes from the grocery store. There are two county libraries within 10 minutes and I frequent at least one of them once a week. It is a seven minute walk to catch BART and from there Ben has a 40 minute ride into the city and then a 3 minute walk to the EY office. It will be easy for us to go into the city on weekends. There are 3 other families in our ward that live in our same apartment complex, and I am sure like 15 other families within a mile and a half. We are about a 5 minute walk from the Iron Horse Trail which is fabulous for walking, jogging, and (we would love to be) biking. And the Oakland Temple is about 25 minutes away without traffic.

I am getting to know the WC area more and more as I run more and more errands. It feels good to be familiar with the area, make connections as to where things are located, and to know where I am going when I drive around. I have made about 20 trips to Target in the past two months, but I don't mind because a) I love Target, and b) the Target here has an escalator for people and a separate escalator for shopping carts to help transport you between the store and the underground parking. For a Merced girl like me, I think it's pretty sweet.

The ward we have moved into is wonderful. Everyone is so friendly and we feel like we belong already.

Ben is enjoying work. He is pretty darn awesome, if you ask me. I am still looking for work. I had a bit of good luck last week which then turned into bad luck, so I am back on the hunt.

Okay - who's ready for a lot of pictures?! Here is our apartment!

Monday, March 5, 2012

fault-line life

We had our first taste of fault-line life this morning!

At 5:33 AM we both woke up to our bed, ceiling, and lamps shaking. I said "That was totally an earthquake!...I think." And Ben said "Do we need to get our emergency backpack??" Funny. I looked it up later in the morning and we were right. There was a 2.9 quake immediately followed by a 4.0 quake.

Hooray for living in CA!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

a 1/4 century birthday

Happy Birthday to my 25-year-old husband! You are growing up! Ha.

We had a great day celebrating! Grandma Rowan gave us her old waffle iron when we were staying at their house in January. She sent a waffle recipe up with my mom last week and I made them for Ben's birthday breakfast . . . mmmm!

Ben and I love popcorn, and in the Myers family tradition, we are very strict in how we make it. Vegetable oil, white popcorn kernels (preferable Orville Redenbacher's), a good pot on the stove, and Kernel Season's Popcorn Salt. Lately we have been thinking about how fun it would be to have his and hers popcorn bowls. (There is absolutely no bowl-sharing in our family because when we share, we are too stressed about getting our fair share, and there is less enjoyment. It's important, people, it is.) So, I took Ben to Color Me Mine today to create his popcorn bowl. In July, we'll go and create my popcorn bowl.

This is what we came up with. (All of the colors will be darker/more vibrant once the bowl is fired.)

An equation: popcorn kernels + oil +

a pot + salt =

Big Ben's Big Bowl of

POPCORN

Ben was the "artistic director" and I handled the detailed painting. We also painted BYU blue stripes along the top and bottom of the bowl.

I was worried that it would be too girly of an activity for Ben, but because we were painting together, and painting such a treasured item, mind you, we had so much fun! We were there for almost three hours and are very proud of our creation.

Then we had an early dinner at Chili's! It was surprisingly very yummy. Even the water was so refreshing. We must have been really hungry.

Tomorrow we will celebrate with Buttermilk Cake with Spiced Vanilla Icing. It is delicious. Click here for the recipe.

Happy Birthday to my sweet husband!

Friday, February 17, 2012

house of nanking

Our buddy DJ was in town for some business this week so Ben and I jumped at the chance for dinner in the city with him! We chose House of Nanking, one of our favorites in ChinaTown. We first discovered House of Nanking in our Frommer's Guide to San Francisco. Ben likes to call this guide "the bible." For this restaurant, Mr. Frommer gives a few recommendations - one of which is for dumplings with peanut sauce - we have tried those and they are delicious! After Mr. Frommer's recommendations, he then says that if the waiter or waitress offers you a special then you should order that because they know their food!

Well, we walked into the restaurant and Ben immediately started speaking Chinese to the employees. This caught the attention of the restaurant owner who then came over to our table personally. He asked if we were Mormon - lots of Mormons go to Hong Kong and know how to speak Chinese . . . and John Huntsman is a popular customer at House of Nanking. Who knew? We said that we were Mormon and he then verified that we had no allergies and he took our menus away, saying that he was going to "take care" of us for the night!

Our five course meal arrived immediately after that! We were all so delighted and humored by such personal service!

This is what we got -

Wonton Soup

Fried Pork Dumplings with Peanut Sauce (their peanut sauce is amazing!)

Sesame Chicken . . how did he know that Sesame Chicken is a Ben Myers' family favorite?!

Something beefy - it was too spicy for me!

Garlic Fish . . mmm hmmm!

The food was delicious and I think we all enjoyed it more than we usually would have because the restaurant owner was sending out all of his favorite dishes!

Then the bill came . . . haha! We did not begin the evening expecting to pay for a five course meal, but when it was the owner, how could we resist?? Ben went up to bargain with him over the price . . (he later told me that he just likes to bargain for the experience . . uh-huh . . . and the lower price, I am sure). He did get the price down to half of what it was, but he felt badly about bargaining his way to such a good deal, so he came back having paid the full price but with some free restaurant t-shirts!