28Jan/120

January – New Jersey Experience

Author: Joe

My new years resolution for 2012 is to try something new / out of the ordinary at least once a month.  Since Heidi left me here for 12 days while she went to Florida I figured I'd do a little traveling as well.  I decided to start off the year by visiting a few friends and co-workers in New Jersey.

First stop was Princeton, NJ to visit a co-worker (Josiah).  He was born and raised in Princeton and enticed me to visit by showing me hoagiehaven.com.   I love to eat at one of a kind places, especially when they offer LARGE hoagies filled with meat.

Here's what our schedule turned out to be:

Friday - Jan 20th

  • Arrived 11:30 PM after 3.5 hour drive from VA
  • Talked till 2AM

Saturday - Jan 21th

  • Wake up 8:30 am
  • Take a driving tour around Princeton University
  • Stop by the running store... Josiah's got a thing for shoes.
  • First meal at 11:30AM is Hoagie Haven. We both get Bacon Cheesesteaks.

  • Hanging out at the house.
  • Stopped by Bon Appetite to pick up a White Chocolate Mouse dessert.
  • Stopped by Whole Foods to pick up a few essentials.
  • Challah French toast for dinner at the Princetonian Diner.

Sunday - Jan 22th

  • Wake up 8:30 am
  • Breakfast at Hightstown Diner, featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Josiah gets Fried French Toast and I get a 6 egg Greek omelette.

  • Watch the AFC championship game.  Patriots win.
  • Played ~20 games of Family Feud w/ Friends on the iPhone and beat the Fast  Money Round!
  • Grab dinner at Hoagie Haven again around 5:30 pm.  Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteak this time.
  • Watch the NFC championship game.  New York Giants win in OT. Josiah was very happy.

Second stop was Branchburg, NJ to visit friends from college who are also co-workers, Brandon and Jenni.   I've told Brandon I'd visit for a couple year so I finally kept my word.

Monday - Jan 23rd

Tuesday - Jan 24rd

  • Started work at 8:00 am
  • Worked all day, ate at a local mall food court for lunch.
  • Pizza for dinner
  • Went to Newark, NJ to watch the New Jersey Devils play the Buffalo Sabers. Good game but NJ lost in an OT shoot out.
  • Got back around 11:00 and played Dominion till almost 2am

Wednesday - Jan 24th

  • Started work at 8:30am
  • Worked all day, ate at CluckU Chicken for lunch.
  • Left at 7pm and drove back to VA.
  • Got back at 11:10 PM, just in time for our Wednesday software release.

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10Jan/120

Wheaton

Author: Joe

On Jan 1 we made the drive up to Chicago, IL to take my parents to O'Hare and hang out with my brother's family in Wheaton. We got to see their wonderful home, Wheaton College, and meet their friend Muhammad at Dunkin Donuts.  We got some quality time in with Cooper and Levi, the newest addition to their family.  We ate at Egglectic for breakfast one morning, visited Morton Arbortum, and ate Giordano's deep dish pizza.

We drove back to Upland, IN on Jan 4 to visit James and his new girlfriend Chloe.  We then made the drive back to VA on the 5th.  Heidi drove the whole 10 hours while I sat in the passenger seat working on my laptop via iPhone tethering.

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10Jan/120

Wrapping up 2011

Author: Joe

We spent Dec 23 - 26 with Heidi's family here in Arlington and then Dec 27 -  Jan 1 with the Heth family in Upland, IN.

We celebrated our nephew's (Caleb) 2nd birthday on the 23rd, with a Hunger Caterpillar theme party. On the 24th we had a family fitness "prowler challenge" at Health and Wholeness at noon, ice skating and Starbucks in the afternoon and hung out at the in-laws that night for sloppy joes, a couple puzzles, and treats.  We started Christmas day around 9am with breakfast and stockings, then opened gifts with all 12 people until mid-afternoon.  Christmas night we played video games, ate some great food, threw the football around, and relaxed.

Heidi and I started the Hunger Games trilogy mid-December and finished them by just after the New Year.  We loved all three books and are excited to watch the Hunger Games movie coming out in March.

I turned 30 (+1) on the 26th and we started driving back to Indiana that night.  Heidi drove the first leg of the trip and stopped at a hotel for the night in Ohio around 1am. We arrived in Upland on the 27th and hung with the Heth family until Jan 1.  The Heth family loves games so we play a lot of them when we are together. We played some rousing games of Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, scattergories, Dutch blitz, and speed Uno.  We had our Heth family Christmas on the 29th and celebrated James, Cooper, and my birthday on the 30th with Toppit Pizza and Karmel McNutt's donuts (best donuts ever).

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12Dec/110

Sedona Wedding

Author: Joe

Heidi's younger brother Stephen got married on November 5 in Sedona, Arizona.  We flew out to Phoenix on Nov. 3rd, drove 2.5 hours to Sedona and made the reverse trip on Nov. 7.  We stayed at the Los Abrigados Resort in Sedona where the ceremony and reception were both held.   Apparently Sedona is pretty popular for its New Age take on life with much talk of vortxes, crystals, psychic readings, etc.  Kinda creepy.

The wedding was a 1940's theme and surprisingly everyone came dressed to fit the theme.  The suits, dresses, hats, shawls, and color choices were great.  We even had a young man dressed as a newsy handing out the programs that looked like a 1940s newspaper, produced and delivered by the one and only Heidi Heth of Heth Design.  The programs were amazing and almost stole the thunder away from Stephen and Lacey, but they were cool about it.

Heidi did a lot of work preparing for this wedding. She took care of all the decorations, centerpieces, programs, menus, table linens, coordinating with the event planner on site, etc.  She even ordered candy cigarettes and matches for the favors. It was a busy 2 months for her since that was the allotted time to plan the wedding (Stephen and Lacey got engaged at the end of August and decided on November 5 wedding).

The weather stopped cooperating as soon as we got there. It dropped down to 40 degrees, rained the entire night, and the wedding was scheduled to be outdoors.  Lacey decided rain (snow) or shine it would be outdoors.  The morning of the wedding there was a beautiful layering of snow on the red stone mountains.

The groomsmen wore amazing 1940s style suits with long coat tails and fedoras, and the ladies wore black dresses with long pearl necklaces and red accents in their hair.   We took pictures about 2 hours before the wedding.  I don't know how the ladies survived in their dresses, it was very cold out.

The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was great.  We got to enjoy some dancing, hanging out with friends, and taking pictures at the photo booth.

On Sunday, a few of us drove a couple hours farther north to see the Grand Canyon.  It was 32 degrees, overcast and flurrying that day so we weren't there very long and the visibility was not great.  It was my first time to see the Canyon and it was awesome.  I'd love to hike it some day.

We made the drive back to Phoenix and flew back home on Monday (7th).

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30Nov/110

3rd Annual Turkey Trot

Author: Joe

Our Thanksgiving day started off with a 5k Turkey Trot and we both had our best times yet!  Heidi ran it in 29:46 and Joey ran his in 27:32.  After the race we participated in a Gold's Gym Body Pump class taught by our sister-in-law, Nina.  We had a great Thanksgiving day with the Elliot family in Arlington, watch a couple movies, slept, and ate the day away.

 

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27Oct/110

Weekend with Nomes and Caleb

Author: Heidi

This past weekend Christian and Nina participated in the Tough Mudder in Charlottesville, VA, with about 14 of their personal training clients. They decided to make a weekend of it so we got to watch Naomi and Caleb. We had such a nice weekend with them. They are both so well behaved and easy peasy to care for. Naomi is so sweet and does so well occupying herself...or should I say coloring her life away. That girl loves to color and our refrigerator was covered with her artwork by the end of the weekend. I actually ran out of magnets so she decided to just start laying her pictures on the kitchen table so I could "hang them up later". Caleb is at such a fun age (22 months). He loves to just run around, close and open doors, push buttons, and basically be a boy. He is such a cuddle bug too, which is a huge plus in Joey's book.

Here's a look at the events of our weekend.

A double date to Chick-fil-A. Naomi is hoarding those chicken nuggets like their gold. Ha!

Joey went to play hockey Saturday night so Naomi and I had a girls' slumber party. Peter Pan was her movie of choice and, of course, we had to have popcorn. She is sort of a popcorn hog though, I have to sneak handfuls so I actually get some!

And this is how our slumber party ended...before the movie was even over. Little sleeping beauty.

After church on Sunday we took them for sandwiches at Potbelly, to play in the park, and to get smoothies at Robeks. Caleb is learning the difficult lesson of "sharing" as evidenced by the photo below with his big pouty lip. That's what we got when we told Caleb he had to let Naomi have some of the smoothie.I turned around and realized Caleb had found one of my headbands during one of his explorations in the bathroom and was wearing it around the house. This was so cute because he was sitting there chatting away with Joey, nevermind the fact that he still can't say any words...except for "ball" and "down".

This was the sweetest thing that happened all weekend. Naomi laid down on Caleb and he reached his arm around behind her neck to hold her. He was rubbing her hair. How sweet is that?! We love these two so much! How could you not when they are this precious!

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9Oct/110

Sleeping Beauty on a pumpkin

Author: Heidi

We spent yesterday with Miss Naomi Grace and Mr. Caleb. Naomi and I had a craft time where we painted pumpkins. I thought painting would be much less messy than actually carving pumpkins, plus, Naomi's attention span is a little short for carving. The idea was to paint faces on the pumpkins but convincing Naomi to paint something other than a princess was futile. She was determined to paint Sleeping Beauty.  It took her all of 4 minutes to finish her rendition of "Sleeping Beauty on a pumpkin" so I encouraged her to paint flowers or butterflies or something else with Sleeping Beauty. Naomi informed me that she didn't know what kind of flowers to do so she decided to paint the three fairy god mothers. What was I thinking suggesting something non-princess?!

Caleb wanted to be a part of our craft time so from time to time he would inch his way into the mix. He would sit and watch me for a bit and then reach his little finger out and touch the wet paint on my pumpkin.

We (Christian, Nina, Heather and Chuck) all walked to a new restaurant in Arlington called Cafe Caturra for dinner. It was a perfect evening. The weather was so nice. We sat out on the porch and had a great dinner. The food was great, very fresh.

Caleb loved this little game with Joey. Joey would put his finger tips up through the holes of the chair and Caleb would push them out of the hole. Such buds. Just look at Caleb's adorable little face!

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3Oct/110

A night of cooking

Author: Heidi

After Joey and I took our cooking class at Cookology we thought it would be a blast to do a cooking class with my family for my birthday. We were looking into various class options and stumbled upon a Groupon for a different cooking school nearby called Alice & Louise. I made Joey call them right away to inquire about a group party because I technically am not supposed to be planning my own party! They were very accommodating and so helpful. We requested a fall themed menu to try some new recipes.

There were 10 of us total (Christian ended up getting sick so he stayed home but Lacey's mom was able to take his place in the class after she surprised Lacey with a visit) and we made up the entire class. Nichol and Chef Lillian made us feel so welcome! The entry and kitchen were decorated so simply but so cute.

We immediately began selecting our aprons! It took us girls awhile to choose because they had so many adorable aprons. They gave plain brown ones to the men in the group.

The class centered around fresh herbs. We made a Rosemary Pear Butter that they served on top of ginger snaps with an aged cheese similar to blue cheese. It was so interesting tasting all the different flavors together.  We then made a basic custard with basil and mint. After it was cooked we strained it to make a super smooth consistency.  They put the custard through an ice cream machine and we ate it for dessert.

For the main dish we browned butter in a saute pan with fresh sage leaves. We then added cranberries and candied pecans to the pan before adding the squash filled tortellini. Everything was delicious and so filling. We thoroughly enjoyed our time. It will definitely be a memorable birthday experience!

 

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3Oct/110

A dash for warriors – Warrior Dash

Author: Joe

Our best bud Dominique told us about WarriorDash.com many months ago and we signed up about mid-summer.  Warrior Dash is just one of many races that Red Frog Events puts on. Since we live in Virginia, we ran the Charles City, VA race.

It's a 3.56 mile course with 12 different obstacles spread throughout the course.  You climb over a series of walls, swim/trudge through water, jump over fire and crawl through mud under barbed wire.  Heidi and I went with a group of 13 Grove City College students and we had an awesome time.  Hanging with college students is fun and depressing at the same time: 1) It makes us feel young and cool, but 2) It makes us feel super old.

According to the results, there were 5717+ that ran on Saturday.  It was hosted on a huge Virginia plantation right on a beautiful bay of water.

It was definitely more running than obstacles and I wish we would have actually trained for the race.  We generally assume our daily workouts at the gym will suffice for ~5k races.

We were notified the day before the race that they weren't allowed to serve beer, which is apparently a BIG draw for an event like this.  We didn't care at all since neither of us drink, but we did get two benefits from it 1) Free Parking (saved $10) and 2) Registration is FREE for any race in 2012.  I'm planning to do another one next year with some guys from work, possibly back in Indiana.

The race ends with 3 obstacles right in a row.  You climb up and over a rope/net wall, jump over a couple lanes of fire, and then crawl/swim through a channel of mud.  The mud did not smell good at all.  While we waited for friends to finish the race, the mud began to dry and we finally washed it all off in the bay/lake nearby.

After we got all "cleaned up" (as clean as you can get in a body of water with about 5000 other people rinsing mud off their bodies) we grabbed some dinner, the famous turkey legs that everyone raved about.  They were excellent!

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3Oct/110

Craft Night with Martha…and Joey

Author: Heidi

On Friday night (of my birthday week), Joey announced that he had a date night planned for us. He then presented me with a book I had thumbed through earlier in the week at Costco.  I love Costco, by the way.

This was the book!


My instructions from Joey were to pick out a craft that I wanted to do.  Since it's Fall, we narrowed down the choices to either a Halloween or Thanksgiving craft. Once I picked the craft I was told we would go to the craft store to pick up whatever supplies were needed. After some careful consideration I chose a candle making craft - gourd candles.

The idea is to take acorn squash, hollow them out, and fill them with melted wax from candles you might have laying around the house. Once the wax dries you break the squash skin and remove the candle.

I was a big wimp when it came to hollowing out the gourds...apparently you need big muscles to do that part.  The book said simply "use a melon baller" to hollow the gourds.  I don't believe you, Martha! Whoever used a melon baller to hollow their gourds out is lying because those things were tough! Joey had to do most of the work for that step but once he got them started I could finish.


Once we finished that step we began melting the wax on the stove.  We used some scented and unscented candles, mixing and matching to get different colors. This is what they looked like with the hot wax.

And here are all six of our candles cooling on the table.

We let the candles cool overnight.  When we checked them in the morning the middles had sunk quite a bit.  When Joey broke the gourds open we realized that we hadn't hollowed the pulp enough so our candles didn't have the rounded gourd shape like the photo in the book. Personally, I think it's a conspiracy.  They don't give you "insider pro tips" on how to make your craft look like their rendition so you can never be as good as Martha.  I'm on to them. My next craft is going to be the bomb, with or without their tips!

We ended up giving the candles to my family as party favors for my birthday!  They loved them and Joey and I had fun doing the project together, so that's all that matters! Our next ones will look just like the book's photo!

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