It's All Good!

It's been a while! We have been busy, but most of all we have been enjoying this wonderful fall season and pampering ourselves. Hubby and I had gotten into a wonderful habit of creating new dishes together on the weekends, so I had lots to blog about, but we haven't done that in a while... until tonight actually, but more on that later.

So what has been going on since my last post? Not a whole lot. The most exciting thing that has been going on is enjoying being newlyweds. We got some awesome news on the 14th last month that the long legal battle with my hubby and our former employer had ended. They had started the lawsuit back in May when he left the company to work for a competitor, and then after a motion to dismiss the parties decided to explore a settlement. Hubby said he is very happy and that it could not have gone any better, so we of course went out to celebrate. Since then we have pretty much been thrown back into newlywed bliss and celebrating ever since! For the first time since November 2010, just 3 weeks after our wedding and the week after we returned from our honeymoon, we are both employed, not trying to leave our jobs, there is no pending lawsuit, and we are very happy and content with our lives. It was a long 10 months, but it is finally over, and we are so much happier now on the other side!

What else...? We met with our photographers to get all of our pictures and go over our final selections for the photo album. There has been so much going on since we got back from our honeymoon, that we never really got around to it until recently. It will be another 2-3 months until it is ready, but until then I have been going through the pictures and getting my favorite ones and posting them online. Here is a teaser!


As part of us enjoying our new, relaxing, newlywed bliss (again), we have been doing some fun date nights. We went to see the re-release of Lion King, and I got to see my first movie in 3D. It was really good, and definitely worth the extra price of the 3D ticket. Neither of us saw it in the theater as a kid, so it was great to be able to see one of my favorite Disney movies in the theater!

We also went to the Grand Opening Night at the OKC Philharmonic. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Pearl's Oyster Bar and then watch/listened to performances of Wagner's Lohengrin: Prelude to Act III (my favorite piece of the concert), Liszt's Les Preludes (also a wonderful piece), Turina's Danzas Fantasticas (a piece that sounded part romantic and part contemporary that I didn't like so much), and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto performed by violinist James Ehnes. James Ehnes played Tchaikovsky so delicately and precisely. I never used to be a fan of violin concertos, but have really started to enjoy them more in the last two years. Tchaikovsky is probably my favorite composer, so naturally I really enjoyed the performance. The Philharmonic sounded the best they have sounded in years. The last few years have been good, but not great. This past concert sounded much more rehearsed, the orchestra was together more, and they just sounded excellent. We have season tickets again this year, and I'm really looking forward to the remaining concerts if the first one was any indication to their new sound.

Speaking of orchestra, after a year break from playing, I have returned to the OU Civic Orchestra. I didn't join Fall 2010 because I was too busy trying to finalize our wedding, and would also have to miss about 4 rehearsals. That wasn't fair to the orchestra, and I don't think I could have handled anything else on my "to-do list" last fall. In Spring 2011 I was unemployed and trying to save every penny we had, so that was part of the reason for not joining. Even though hubby encouraged me to join, I was on round 4 of 5 of interviews for a big company in downtown OKC. If I had gotten the job, I would have had to drop out as I would not be back in Norman in time for rehearsal. If I didn't get the job, I still didn't know if my new job would have a schedule that would accommodate it. But I am employed now in a nice 8-5 job, so I have once again joined. We are performing Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 (New World Symphony) and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"). I'm very happy to be playing again. Hubby has been spending money on paint ball stuff, so I decided I deserved some new strings, new chin rest pad, new metronome, and a pickup tuner that clips onto my instrument and plugs into my tuner so I can tune in noisy places (it will be very handy trying to keep the new strings in tune through rehearsal). Everything came in the mail last week, and I am one happy musician!

Hubby got really into football the last two weekends in September and I didn't feel like trying new recipes alone, so we didn't do anything fancy. There hasn't been a whole lot to post food wise from the last 4 weeks. Instead we have been enjoying the season. Last year at this time, we were getting ready for our wedding and were very stressed. We were too busy to stop and enjoy the season. We didn't get to do any of the stuff we normally do this time of year: going to a pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, decorating for fall, decorating for Halloween, baking yummy pumpkin things, laying in bed enjoying the cool weather, and eating way too much. This year, we have done almost everything on that list! We were going to knock off the pumpkin patch on that list this weekend, but our patch is flooded.

For those of you who don't know, Oklahoma has been going through a horrible drought. All of our small ponds are completely dried up and have weeds growing them, and the larger ones are very low. Wildfires have been a big problem, and the summer heat was unbearable. We broke all kinds of records. This weekend however, we are getting some much needed rain. It started around 3:30 PM yesterday, and it pretty much has not stopped. As I'm writing this, we have had 3.80" since the event started. Once the rain started, the temperature held around 61F until today around 4:00 PM when the temperature started dropping again. It dropped to around 57F at about 7:30 PM and it's been hovering there ever since. The rain has been so refreshing. There has been lots of flooding, but we need the rain so bad that no one is complaining.

So that's about all that's been going on. Last week we finally got back to making dinners at home and trying to get back on the diet. Then this weekend, we used the cooler, cloudy weather to stay in and created some new dishes. I'll report on those in another post. We had a wonderful weekend together in true fall fashion. We slept with the windows open listening to the light rain last night, slept in this morning, and ate a late breakfast together. Hubby has gotten into coffee, so he filled the house with the wonderful aroma of coffee while we ate. I don't like the taste, but I sure do like the smell! We actually got hubby a french press and a hand crank coffee grinder (any decent electric one is really expensive!) last weekend and he is thrilled with the new addition to the kitchen that's just for him. After breakfast we went to see Moneyball, which was one of the best movies we have seen this year. Then we came back and cooked up a new meal. While Hubs was watching the Green Bay Packers game I baked up a yummy fall treat and caught up with my blog.

Well, I think we are all caught up. I'll try and post more soon. Off to bed to start a new work week.

Impromptu Date Night and Another Weekend Already

Yesterday afternoon my husband randomly asked me if I wanted to go on a date night with him that night. I was excited. We had been talking about seeing the movie Contagion. Worried about how eating out would fit into my Weight Watchers points, he thoughtfully suggested Thai! I can't seem to get enough Thai food lately. And I have been in a great search to find a new "go-to Thai place" that is easy to access and affordable. We have a nicer Thai restaurant that is amazing, but it is too expensive for us to eat at regularly, as in once a week. Our old Thai restaurant that closed down and changed hands is not very good anymore. I found this new one through some co-workers though that seems to be doing the trick.

Usually impromptu date nights don't work as movies start either too late and I can't stay up that late after working an entire week, or they start too early and don't give us enough time to get home and made something or even go out. But this Thai place is really fast. So we met up at home around 5:30 and headed out to what is becoming our new Thai place. Being so early the restaurant was very calm.

We started with some pork spring rolls which had pork, carrot, onion, and green onion. They were just OK, but were served with this orange colored, thick, sweet & spicy sauce. I forgot to ask what it was called, but the sauce was amazing. I began drenching my spring roll in it and they were delicious. I'll be ordering that again!

For dinner I ordered their Basil Stir-Fry with a spicy level of 4 out of 5. The last time I went I ordered a 4 and it was perfect. I like my Thai food hot enough that my sinuses are running, but not so hot that I can't enjoy and eat bite after bite. Last night however, it was hot! I'm not quite sure if they gave me what I ordered because they added green beans to it, which were not on the menu, but it did have basil. I like green beans, so this was not too much of a problem. But it was so much hotter than the last time I ordered a 4. It was so hot I couldn't take more than 3 bites at a time without having to wash some water down. I went through 4 large glasses of water and finished the meal in actual physical pain in my mouth. It was delicious though. The green beans, onions, and bell peppers were cooked perfectly, but way too hot to enjoy. I do love Thai restaurants that take their spicy level seriously and don't joke around with it, and this place is no exception! I was hoping that the fortune cookie at the end would tame the heat, but my mouth was so much on fire that anything touching it burned. I had trouble getting through the fortune cookie! Part of the roof of my mouth was numb, and my lips were tingling. I had finally found something that was too hot to enjoy! Something that is very rare for me these days. My mouth didn't stop hurting for another hour or so. It was without a doubt the hottest thing I have ever eaten.

We were out of the restaurant within an hour and had plenty of time to get up to the theater, get our tickets that my husband ordered online, and get good seats. A few weeks ago we made the mistake of getting to the theater 10 minutes before the movie started and had to sit at the front and it was not pleasant. The screens are huge, and my eyes and head were in constant motion for 2 solid hours trying to take in everything on the screen. We won't be making that mistake anytime soon! We got great seats near the back of the theater that were perfect. The movie was really good! There was not much of a personal story line which was unique, but focused more on the spread of a contagion. It was pretty scientific, but no so much that you get lost. It moved quickly, but not so quickly that one had trouble keeping up. I found it to be very fascinating and enjoyable. This is a movie I will be adding to my wish list when it comes out.

It was a wonderful date night with the hubs. We are so excited that another weekend came so fast. This week went by so much faster than we expected it to, even with it being a 4-day work-week. He is out playing paintball this afternoon to enjoy the end of this cooler weather before it heats back up a bit next week into the 90s for a few days. I think I'll finish up cleaning the last of the house today that I have not gotten to over my last 3 weekends of cleaning and will start decorating for fall. We have no real plans again this weekend and are just going to be relaxing once again. It's so nice to have time on the weekends again. And just in time for the fall season of staying close to keep warm! There is supposed to be another cold front coming through mid-week that is to bring the highs down to the 70's.

It seems as though Fall is starting to settle in. I hope this is the start of the fall cold fronts that come every two weeks or so. After this summer's heat, I'm so ready for fall and winter.