It has been an insanely busy last couple of weeks. After our trip to Minnesota, we returned to Arizona with our friend Adam along for the ride. We stopped in Phoenix for one night, and the next morning headed to Las Vegas. We met up with our friend Pilks there (a teacher from New Zealand that I met during my student teaching). New Year's Eve is a bit of a blur, but we counted down to the new year on the Strip with fireworks going off over nearly all of the casinos.
Pilks came with us back to Phoenix, where we spent a lot of time catching up, playing Scrabble, and cooking Indian food. Pilks is more or less an expert on cooking Indian, and bought us a fantastic wedding present of an Indian cookbook and all the necessary spices.
The madness continued into this weekend. Our friends Angela and Alex from Minneapolis came to stay with us for the P.F. Chang's Rock and Roll Marathon. I used to work with Angela at the child care center in St. Paul. Alex is a big-time runner, and ran the full marathon in 3:10, which qualified him for the Boston Marathon. Woo-hoo! I finished the half-marathon (13 miles) in 3:04 and Curt did it in 2:24. Not bad! Before training for this, the most we'd run was maybe three miles. Thank you so much for all your words of support that day!!!
Well, Curt is back with some fried rice, so I'll leave you with some photos. I hope you are all well. Stay warm.
Love,
Nicole
In front of a mini Eiffel tower on the Strip.
Our off-the-Strip motel.
Indian spices.
Pilks keeping a close eye on my vegetable chopping.
Ready to eat!
