What Happened in March

I'll be back at some point to finish up NYC trip photos. But that is taking way longer than it needs to, so I thought I would take a break and give a little summary of the last month of our lives.

• Derek's Birthday - We were in PA for his grandma's funeral, which was sad. But we also got to be with all his family, which was good. We spent the day of his birthday with his brothers and their families.

• Weekends at home - March is one of the few months Derek doesn't have to work on the weekends, so we enjoyed being home and spending time together and with friends.This included game nights, frisbee golf, more Sunday night soccer,yard work, watching basketball, the dog park, etc. And I made peanut butter pie (mostly from scratch - I bought the dough for the crust).

• Babies - My friend Angie gave birth to a gorgeous little girl, Elle, and our Bible study threw a shower for Megan who is going to have a baby girl any day now.
• 5k - Our friend Steven was planning to run a 5k a couple of weekends ago, so on Friday night, Derek and I decided to run with him Saturday morning. I can't remember the last time I ran a 5k, but it's been a while. I was super pumped that I was able to finish under 30 minutes, and even more pumped for Derek who did it under 25 minutes, and averaged less than 8 minute miles.

• Easter Weekend - we stopped in NKY to see Derek's family on our way up to Columbus to spend Easter weekend with my family, who we haven't seen since Christmas. Time with family is soooo good. We ate so much yummy food our stomachs were bursting by the end of the weekend, did some shopping, outfitte Derek head to toe in OSU gear (only to have them lose in the Elite 8 a few hours later), built a replica of the Eifel Tower since the OSU game was too painful to watch, played tennis ball with Moose, visited my grandma, spent time with the rest of my extended family, visited childhood friends, went to church, watched basketball, and ate some more. It's good to go home.

NYC Trip Day 3

Saturday morning started out pretty rainy. I headed out in the rain to the TKTS ticket booth to see if I could get us some discounted tickets to a matinee Broadway show while Derek worked out at the hotel. It was a very wet trip, but I was successful and scored us some tickets to see Mama Mia. I got back to the hotel and Derek and I spent a lazy morning just hanging out while it rained outside.

For lunch we hopped on the subway down to the West Village and got delicious bagels at the Brooklyn Bagel and Coffee shop, that came highly recommended to us by our friend Kari, and it did not disappoint.

After lunch we went to Mama Mia, which was fantastic.

We followed up the show with a little dinner at Carnegie deli. We shared a pastrami sandwich, onion rings and a cheesecake. The cheesecake was amaaaahzing, best cheesecake I ever had. Derek loved our meal so much that he took pictures of all of it.

Saturday night UK played Missouri, so we went to Jack Dempsey's to watch the game. The place was packed with UK fans. It felt like home away from home being surrounded by people wearing blue. We met a lot of great people, some from Kentucky and others with other connections to the Wildcats. Derek made friends with the owner who hooked us up with free t-shirts and drinks. The cats won in overtime and the place went crazy. We stayed late talking with our new friends, and since it wasn't too cold out we walked the 30 or so minutes back to the hotel and set our alarms for church in the morning.

NYC Trip - Day 2

After a successful first day in New York, we slept in a little Friday morning. One of my favorite things about vacation - sleeping in! Derek was disciplined and made use of the hotel work out facilities while I slept a little later.

We decided to start the morning by heading to Hoboken to go to Carlo's Bakery to get some delicious pastries for breakfast / mid-morning snack.

The place was packed, although we were able to at least get in the door, I've heard of people having to wait outside. We wondered if the bakery was really that good or if it was mostly hype because of the TV show. It was difficult to not come away with a small fortune worth of baked goods, but as you can see in the above photo, Derek talked to the guy working the door and got his recommendations, and we came out with a white mousse, a lobster tail, 2 cannolis and some chocolate chip cookies. Madeline, Buddy's sister, was working there, waiting on customers, and was really sweet.

Everything was amazing, and we decided that it was definitely worth the trip into Hoboken, and we will definitely be going back next time we're in NYC. Hoboken was also fun to walk around. It was a cute little city and felt completely different from NYC (in a good way).

After our incredibly healthy breakfast of pastries for Carlo's, and a little bit of walking around Hoboken, we took the ferry back to Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were closed for repairs because of hurricane Sandy, and we didn't want to pay for the tour if we weren't going to get to actually go visit the places themselves, so we figured that a ferry trip from Hoboken around the southern tip of Manhattan to Pier 11 would give us a view of both monuments, and we could go back and actually do the tours when they were both open.

The weather, clearly, was not amazing that day, but we saw the statue of Liberty, as well as Ellis Island, so for $14 instead of $50, I'd say the ferry was worth it. We got off the ferry at Pier 11, where we were able to see the Brooklyn bridge.

After we got off the ferry we walked down Wall Street to the World Trade Center Memorial.

We continued walking to the World Trade Center Memorial. Being there and seeing the footprints of the two towers was a very somber experience. I don't really have the words to describe it, so I'll just share pictures. 

After visiting the World Trade Center memorial we headed back to the hotel to relax a little and get cleaned up for dinner and our evening at the theater. We didn't really know what the dress code was for musicals, so we may have gotten a little too dressed up, but it was really fun and we didn't care. 

We had tickets Friday night to the Phantom of the Opera! I have loved the Phantom of the Opera probably since middle school. I've never seen the play, or even the movie, but I own the soundtrack and know all the words to the songs, so this was probably the thing I was most excited about during this trip. 

The show was amazing. I loved all of it, and Derek and I sang our entire conversation home to the various melodies of Phantom of the Opera. It was glorious. Yay for Day 2!!!

NYC Trip - Day 1

And finally, here is a little recap of our New York trip from a couple of weekends ago. We packed a lot into the trip and took way too many pictures, so to keep from stressing myself out, I'll recap in multiple installments.

We flew in on a Thursday morning and arrived right around lunch time. We figured out how to take a New Jersey Transit train to Manhattan and arrived at Penn Station, where we bought our subway cards and navigated the way to our hotel. We stayed in midtown Manhattan at Lexington and 49th. Luckily our hotel was just a couple of blocks away from the subway station, so we were able to get there without having to haul our suitcases for miles and miles.

Once checked in, the next order of business was lunch. Derek wanted pizza and the concierge recommended a little restaurant right around the corner. It wasn't bad, but wasn't exactly what we had in mind for New York pizza. But at least we weren't starving anymore.

We had tickets to see Letterman that afternoon. On Thursdays they do 2 tapings of the show, one for Thursday night and one for Friday. We had tickets to see the Friday night taping. The process of reporting to the theater to get your tickets, then waiting an hour until you're supposed to go back, then waiting some more to get inside, was a little much, but once we were in the studio it was really cool, and seeing the show live was a lot of fun. Luke Wilson was the guest, and was actually really funny, and Imagine Dragons were the musical guest.

After the Letterman show we walked down a few blocks to Times Square. Times Square is quite the spectacle, and while it's cool to see, all of the people and traffic and everything is a little overwhelming to me. Plus, I'm not really sure what there is to do in Times Square besides eat and shop. And go to Broadway plays of course, but you need to have tickets for those, which luckily we did, just not for Thursday night.

We grabbed a quick dinner in Times Square and then hopped on the subway over to Serendipity to try their famous frozen hot chocolate.

We didn't quite realize how big it was going to be, so we also ordered an ice cream sundae. We had our hands full between the two, and while the frozen hot chocolate was good, we the sundae was both our favorite. Of course they also had really fun decor.

After Serendipity we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel. And just to prove that it's not a myth, rats really do live in the subway tunnels. Awesome.

Overall, Day 1 was successful, although I could have gone without the rats in the subway (this was not the only time we saw them either) but other than that we had a pretty good time.

One thing I will note that stuck out to us almost immediately was the disparity in wealth. Also, as we ate our first dinner in Times Square in the midst of all of the lights and advertisements, it was crazy to think how much we are being sold that we can buy happiness. And it's not that we don't do this where we live also, but when you're surrounded by so much world class entertainment, it became evident how easy it is to just entertain ourselves to death, and again, how we are being sold that as another place to find true life. Just our initial thoughts, although those didn't stop us from enjoying the city and all it had to offer, just something to keep in mind, that all of those things in bright shiny lights are not where true life is found.

Sweet Mary

Derek and I went to NYC a couple of weekends ago on a sweet little trip together. We had a wonderful time and I have lots of pictures to share, however when we got home we found out that Derek's grandma's health was rapidly declining and that she only had another 24-ish hours. So we worked for a few days last week, got unpacked and laundry done from our NYC trip and packed back up to head to Pennsylvania for the funeral.

Most of Derek's aunts, uncles and cousins live in PA, as do his brother and sister in law and our nephew. It was so good to be with family, but we wish it had been under happier circumstances. There really aren't words to describe the difficulty of saying goodbye to a mother and a grandmother. We are so thankful that Mary loved the Lord. I told Derek that I remember the last time we went to visit her we had to wait to see her because she was participating in a church group at her nursing home.

The priest at the funeral was right when he said that we are not sad about death, because we know that she is with Jesus and is no longer in pain, it is the separation here on earth that brings sorrow. Because we lived so far away, I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with Mary, but from the things that her children and grand children said about her, I know that was a wonderful woman who loved people well, and who loved God. She will be greatly missed, but we look forward to the day that we will see her again, where there will be no more sickness and no more pain.

I Love Love

Lots of fun things have been going on in the past few weeks, but since I apparently only blog once a week (or less) it seems the blog is turning into a bulleted list of the happenings since the last time I blogged. This post will be no different.  So here's what's been going on:

Valentine's Day!!! I love this day. I love to make people feel loved. I made little heart Valentine's and brought them, along with chocolate to my work book club. Over half the women in the book club are single, and really appreciated the Valentine's love, which made me really happy.

We also decided that Fondue Valentine's Day will be a tradition, and made our cheese fondue and steak that I shared about last year. This year we invited some friends over who have a chocolate fountain, which is basically fondue, so we added that to the menu. Also, our friend Andy was staying with us for the week, so the 5 of us enjoyed all the fondue goodness and there was still lots left over.

Also, I got the best Valentine's gift I could have hoped for.

After watching Pitch Perfect on our girls weekend, I decided it is most likely my new favorite movie, and I was really hoping that Derek would get it for me for Valentine's Day. But I didn't want to come right out and ask for it. Not because I am above that, but because sometimes Derek and I share a brain and I wanted to see if he could read my mind. I wouldn't have been at all upset if I hadn't gotten it, this was more of just a fun little experiment on my part. And Derek came through like a champ!

And I updated our collage wall for V-day.

Lent has begun. We went to Ash Wednesday service again this year, something that is also turning into a tradition. You can read a little more about last year's service here, but again it was such a powerful reminder of our identity in Christ and what this season is about. This year I didn't decide to give anything up, but instead commit to the discipline of prayer every day. So far it has been really great being intentional about spending specific time in prayer every day. (Although I have already totally failed on a couple of days!)

Soccer. Some friends at church have started playing soccer in the gym on Sunday nights and Derek and I have joined the past 2 weeks. I haven't really played soccer since high school, and for a couple days after our first night, I could barely move. And I wasn't very good. But after our second time playing I think my skills are already starting to improve and I'm much less sore this time around, which is a win! Unfortunately my legs are accumulating bruises, which isn't very pretty, but it makes me feel tough!

Young Life. Last Friday, new young life leaders were placed at the various high schools and middle schools in Lexington. LCA got 3 new leaders, which we were super excited to meet, pray for and encourage. Even though we no longer lead young life, we still love LCA and deeply care for the students at the school. We got to have the new leaders over to our house Friday night and share with them fun stories and some of the lessons learned from leading young life at LCA, and pray for them. I'm excited to see the way God uses this next group of leaders to change lives!

House. I've also been slowly but surely re-decorating our 2 guest rooms. One has been re-painted, and I mostly just need to add finishing touches like window treatments, a new duvet, wall hangings, etc. The other has pretty much turned into a holding space for random things. I'm hoping over the next few weeks to be able to keep making progress, and hopefully share some photos. {I'm including this so that it will hopefully be motivation for me to finish what I've started!}

Juicing. So Derek has decided that we need a juicer, so that we can make our own juice. I bought the juicer, and have assembled it, but have yet to actually make juice. Maybe tonight? I'll let you know how it goes. This is the latest in our attempts to be healthier. Who knows, maybe a juice cleanse is in the future. We'll see!

So I think that mostly hits the highlights of the past couple of weeks. We have fun plans for the upcoming weekend, so I'll be back with a fun post or 2 next week!

Fun Things

Here is a little recap of what's been going on around here lately:

• Whole 30: Part Deux - I mentioned in the last post that we decided to do the Whole 30 again. Good news - we'll be finished on Tuesday! Bad news - Derek wants to keep doing it. This time around it has definitely been easier, in the sense that we haven't been as hungry, we know what to make for ourselves, and it wasn't quite as big of a shock to our bodies. We've also been watching more food documentaries, and are becoming more and more convicted that a Whole 30 type diet is probably one that we should try and stick to for good. We wouldn't stick to it quite as strictly, as we would allow ourselves to cheat (where as in the Whole 30 there is NO CHEATING!) and eat tasty things that aren't healthy every once and a while, and allow a little bit of dairy, whole grains and legumes, but we are becoming more convicted about what we consume and as we learn more about the foods we put into our bodies, we are really hoping to make permanent changes to our diet and the foods we eat.
• Girls Weekend in Batesville - Last weekend (2 weekends ago?, I'm not sure the correct terminology, the last weekend of January) a bunch of us girls went to visit our good friend Jenna at her new home in Batesville. She has the cutest house, and we all had such a good time just hanging out and being together. We took a little tour of Jenna's new town, a few girls were crafty and sewed, while the rest of us napped and just enjoyed a relaxing day. We watched Pitch Perfect Saturday night, which I have decided is my new favorite movie. We capped off the weekend with church, lunch at Maggianos, and an IKEA trip. Lunch at Maggianos was rough. For $12.50 you can order a delicious pasta and they let you order a 2nd kind and bring it to you at the end of the meal to-go! I had to pay $12.50 for a salad, didn't get to take any to go, and was still a little hungry at the end of my meal. Thanks, Whole 30! I told Derek that I want to go back and fully take advantage of that little deal one day. (So much for trying to stick to the Whole 30 for good! It's ok as long as we don't do it regularly, right?) 

• Super Bowl Sunday - We got together with some friends from our church small group to watch the Super Bowl together. This was more torture, food wise, and I may have taken some left overs to reheat on Wednesday (I swear, I really am going to try and continue my healthy eating, I just need a day to throw caution to the wind and then I'll jump back on the bandwagon). But the point in bringing this up wasn't to talk about food more, but to say how incredibly blessed we've been by friendships that we have made in the past year through this group. Leaving Young Life was hard, and no longer being a part of the YL community regularly makes me sad sometimes. But I know that God has prepared for us the work we are doing serving in our church, and He has blessed us a lot, even though it has been hard at times. (I could write a very long post about all the feelings I have about this, what has been good, where I've struggled, etc. but we'll save that for another day!)
• Snowy Winter Weekend - The snow showed up this weekend, and Derek ended up cancelling all his basketball games on Saturday, which meant that we got a whole day to hang out. We were supposed to go to NKY for a baby shower, but ended up deciding against it, since the weather was so iffy. We were super sad that we weren't able to see our good friends, but not to sad to snuggle up in our warm home and watch movies. Apparently since I grew up without cable, I missed out on lots of great movies, so Derek has taken it upon himself to educate me. Saturday we rented Groundhog Day and The Breakfast Club. I love Groundhog Day. Breakfast Club was ok. I think I might like it better if I had seen it before I was almost 30. I don't think I have enough teen angst left in me to really appreciate it. Next up: 16 Candles and Uncle Buck.