Quick update

Just a quick update about our lives for all of you.  Zak & I have been working almost every day.  Zak's had some trouble keeping the hours he's had the last few months.  The new manager's hours come out of the store's hours, but not the store's paycheck, so it's been irritating.  However, Zak worked it out so his hours wouldn't be cut in half, just slightly trimmed for the next month, until he starts school, and then he'll go to part time.  Macy's is still fine, we had training for the new company-wide way of selling, which isn't too bad.  My 'scorecard' has been steadily increasing, which is good.   

I also went to the doctor, who recommended me to physical therapy.  That wasn't too bad, the lady gave me several new stretches and exercises to do.  So far they've been helping.  Zak & I had a talk, and decided that I really need to get my act together to change how I feel about my body image.  He drew up a workout schedule, which includes working on my core strength and walking/jogging in the mornings.  Today we walked/jogged for an hour, and it felt great to come home to a cold shower.  I've been careful about what I'm eating, and I consume water like it's a rare commodity.  Things are looking good so far, Zak's been really helpful in keeping me motivated (like saying I can have ice cream on the days I work out harder).

The weather is finally hot, and it's been nice to have air conditioning at work, because we work out fans out at home.  We bought a cherry tomato plant last week at the Farmer's Market and we're hoping it will do well.  Our tomato plant has a dozen and a half tomatoes on it, with the early bloomer finally turning a beautiful red.  Our pepper is getting larger every day; we are excited to soon eat our veggies!

all three plants

our (hopefully soon to be red) pepper

cherry tomato

ready to be picked

Zak going in for the kill

oh Zak

Zak wouldn't let me take a good picture of it :-/

it was good!

That is about all that has happened lately.  Our anniversary is coming up in a few weeks, but we are still undecided about what we'll do; we might spend the day in Spokane, who knows.  Shortly after that, my sister Jenna is coming to visit for a week and we are getting excited to have her around.  I've already started thinking about the meals I'll make, and where we'll take her.

More updates to follow, if anything else, I'll write one about our anniversary. :)

Cherry Heaven!

We came back from Zak's grandparents' place with two huge flats of bing cherries, and a gallon sized bag of sour pie cherries.  We promptly decided that there was no way we'd be able to make use of two flats of cherries, so we bagged up one flat and distributed them to our fellow co-workers.  Whew.  One flat down.

 I knew Zak had been itching to have cherry pie since we came back from the weekend, so last weekend I set out to make him a glorious pie.  We made apple pie together a few Thanksgivings ago, and I might have made another pie since then.  Either way, I'm no expert, but I did my best and the result was a pretty good pie!  It had a bit more liquid than we would have liked, but boy was it tasty.  We still have about a quarter of that bag of pie cherries left and I think I might whip up some kind of mixed fruit cobbler. 

yum!

This week we impulsively bought an ice cream maker at a clearance price at Wal-Mart and made vanilla cherry ice cream, which was very good (& both one of our favorite flavors).  Zak spent awhile pitting and slicing up cherries...he said to me, 'Do you know how much I love you?  Look at my hands; you know how much I hate getting my hands this dirty.'  (It's true, he really hates getting his hands dirty--I end up scooping out the pumpkin guts, cutting the chicken, etc.)  Well, even though he was frustrated that his cuticles were dark purple, he sure enjoyed the ice cream!  It was a very simple recipe and very creamy.  I think next time we won't use as much cream.

poor guy

Today I am making cherry jam with the rest of the bing cherries.  Unfortunately, a lot of them were moldy and yucky, but I still picked out 8 delicious cups of dark red/purple cherries.  And pitted all 173 of them in an hour.  It was a lot of work, but I then relaxed while the slow cooker did its thing and cooked the cherries into a jam.  I was nervous because it was my first time making jam on my own, and I wasn't sure when I should ladle it out into the jars I had waiting.  I finally got smart and scooped out a little bit into a small cup and let it sit for awhile.  When I came back to check on it, it had started to set up.  I figured I should just ladle out the jam and let it get to room temperature before putting it in the fridge.  We haven't tasted it yet, but it sure looks like it'll be good. 

work station

all 173 cherries

on homemade bread

The recipes for the dishes we made above can be found on my recipe blog, Rachel's Recipes, or on the individual links:

Cherry Pie

Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream
Cherry Jam 

Fourth of July

Last week, Zak & I went to his grandparents' house in WA, partly for the 4th, partly for a surprise party for his grandpa's 70th birthday.  His grandma has been planning this for awhile.  Zak's family flew out from Connecticut to spend a week with them.  So, his grandpa had no idea that we were all coming, and on top of that, his grandma didn't know we would be coming earlier than expected (Zak's family changed their flight time to get in earlier than originally planned), so double surprises for all. 

We had a lovely drive to their house; it only took about 2, 2 1/2 hours to get there.  Plus, it was very simple and we didn't get lost!  And to make it even better, we were able to hook up with his family (who were coming from the Seattle airport) the last few minutes before arriving.  We didn't want to ruin the surprise by showing up early, so we waited a few minutes at an intersection for his family. 

It was a nice, relaxing day.  We had some yummy salads and a beautiful cake, that I should've taken a picture of.  We just hung around and talked, took some pictures, and ate food.  We also wandered around the rows and rws of cherry trees and ate a decent amount of them (some of us paid for it more than others).  And we also ate raspberries, right off the bushes!  I was pretty happy.  The only fruit I've ever remotely picked was on my family's traditional apple picking-Conference weekend in the fall (which I've sadly missed out on for the last four years ]: ).  When night started to fall, a bunch of the cousins started lighting off fireworks.  I'm pretty sure I've never done that or been around that, because ... it's a big suburban area back home, and I've always been in CA for the 4th of July.  So it was exciting and new (and slightly terrifying at moments) for me!  It was very cool, though.  Zak and I got to light some sparklers a bit later, and we experimented with time lapse stuff on my camera.  It was pretty great.

It was a great overnight trip, and we left the house with two large flats full of bing cherries, several containers of freezer strawberry (and a few plum) jams, and some bags of frozen berries.  Thanks, grandparents!  We are already enjoying the strawberry jam and boy, is it good.  I grew up almost always having homemade jam, so I am happy to have it in my life again, instead of that store-bought stuff, haha! 

Zak's parents and sisters followed us back to Moscow, where we made dinner that night.  I got a little carried away and made a TON of teriyaki chicken skewers, but we just threw a bunch of them in the freezer to (hopefully) have later (I hope they survive).  So we had a delicious dinner with them.  Zak's youngest sister, Olivia (10 years old) stayed the night with us.  Zak helped her play the game Little Big Planet; she really liked it!  We set up the queen air mattress that my parents gave us last summer and put the new sheets and bedding we had bought a few days before.  We heard she slept great on it, so hopefully when Jenna visits, she will too!

The next morning, Zak had to work (blah), so I got to drive his family around.  I did my best to make our tour around Moscow interesting.  Unfortunately, we are still new to the area and haven't done much more than work, so we haven't explored everything.  I drove them through the U of I campus and downtown; we walked around the Co-Op for a bit and then headed to the mall, to pick Zak up for a long lunch.  We went to the delicious bagel place in the little downtown area, and walked up and down the streets for a bit before taking them back to their rental car.  We really enjoyed seeing them, even if it was only for a few days! 

I didn't take too many pictures, but there are some fun ones below: 

the beautiful sunset

waiting for fireworks

his parents found the hat that he lost at Christmas and brought it back...too bad you can't really see it?

sparklers are fun!

the drive home, yes we live where that background for Windows was taken

Another reason why Macy's is pretty ok.

A few weeks ago, Zak started talking about wanting to get a sport or suit coat to go with his brown pants for work (corporate requires the guys wear suit coats at work).  So he started looking at Macy's to see if there were any good deals.  There was a small 70% clearance rack that we sorted through, and we actually found a coat that would work!  We also found some the pants he loves in a color that would work well with the new coat as well.  We went over to my co-worker to check out and sign him up for a Macy's card (it was an extra discount to use your card on top of the discount you get for opening the card).  The total damage: $52.  For both the pants and coat.  I'm still really happy about it, and Zak loves his new coat.  Plus, he looks really handsome!