summertime?

It's been awhile, and I do apologize. January dragged on forever, and February just flew by. We are at the beginning of a long stream of visitors. Shirley (Curt's mom) flew in Friday night and will be in Arizona until the 9th. She is staying at a Holiday Inn not to far away from here until Wednesday, when she will go to Scottsdale for an audiology conference. I haven't been feeling well (again), so we haven't been up to much this weekend. Last night we went to Cafe Lalibela, an Ethiopian place. DELICIOUS! We watched The Darjeeling Limited, the latest movie directed by Wes Craven (of The Royal Tennenbaums and The Life Aquatic fame).

Today we just lounged by the pool for awhile. We are going to grill out tonight. I wish spring break started tomorrow...it will be here soon enough.

More visitors will be my parents March 13-18th, Curt's cousin Pete et al at the end of the month, and my aunts Pat and Ginny towards the end of the month. It will be fun to see everyone.

After two bouts of possible food poisoning with seafood and fish, I am back to a real vegetarian diet. While I could never (ever) give up cheese, I am trying to cut back on eggs. I made vegan raspberry walnut muffins from scratch today and I think they turned out alright. :) I am turning our balcony into a bit of a garden...after visiting the farmer's market yesterday, I now have a pot of rosemary, basil and oregano. I hope it works (for eating so many vegetables I don't have much of a green thumb). I also got everything I need to pot a tomato plant from the market. Fresh tomatoes, year round?! Welcome to Arizona. :)





Ghost town in Apache Junction





Church on the Mount



Inside the church



As we pulled up to the ghost town, I secretly hoped they had ice cream.





A pretty cool Hawaaian concert I took some students to last weekend.



Some of my students.



Our new patio set (thanks Mom and Dad!).



The new herb garden.



Our balcony. <3

Yes, We Can

confessions of a non-athlete

Hello Everyone!

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!

2007 Highlights continued

2007

some highlights from the year...





















To be continued...

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

The show is over!

It went off without any major hitches.

Hooray!

We're coming to Minnesota now.

:)

Nik

stunning

I feel so far away from winter. It was 65* here today.

This is from the ice storms in Missouri.