Easter, Earthquake and a child's prayer answered oh my!

For Easter morning Peter and I went to my parents' house for brunch. Peter made ebelskivers and crepes during the conference break. They were delicious. My mom had bought a jam injector which made filling the ebelskivers so much easier. They turned out perfectly. After conference my aunt and uncle were getting ready to leave. Our car was blocking them in, so we left first. While driving home a 7.2 earthquake hit the Baja area. We were driving so we didn't feel a thing. When we got home we called Peter's parents to let them know that we were still on for Easter dinner. They told us about the earthquake. I then called my parents and they said they felt it. They were saying goodbye to my aunt and uncle when the cars all started to shake. While we were home we felt a couple of the aftershocks, but they were clearly not nearly as big as the original. Then we headed to Peter's parents' house for dinner. While there Chris shared a cute story. Ellie (4yrs) had said a prayer the previous morning. Now with her prayers you never know what she might ask for. So it wasn't too surprising when she asked for a princess make-up kit. She then participated in an Easter egg hunt and got more plastic eggs than either of her two sisters. Many of the eggs contained candy and some contained numbers that coincided with prizes. She had one egg with a number in it. When she took it to the prize booth...lo and behold the number she had went with the prize for the princess make-up kit. A child's prayer was answered.

"That's going on the blog"

Famous words those are. Every now and then something happens and we look at each other and say that's going on the blog...other times its more like "please don't put that on the blog." Other times we look at each other and laugh, "that's definitely not going on the blog!" Most involve our momentary stupidity or embarrassing moments.

For example: We like to poke fun at each other-
Doing laundry-baskets are full down by the washing machine. The dryer is done and I wanted the laundry to be taken upstairs. Peter-we're out of laundry baskets, how am I supposed to get that upstairs? I take full basket, dump on floor and fill with clean laundry. Mandy-And I thought you were the engineer in the family.

Buying roll dough-
Last night we stopped at a grocery store to buy dough to make rolls for dinner tonight. We pick up our usual and go visit with my family. We get there and put the dough in the freezer. As we're leaving I pulled the dough out of the freezer. My mom says, "You're going to make rolls out of that (it was cut into three loaves for making bread)? Why didn't you just buy the kind that is already shaped for rolls?" Ummm we didn't think of that.

Normally I poke fun at my dear hubby...why, because it's so fun and relatively easy. Not to mention I'm the one that posts the blogs, though he does know the password so he could do it too if he wanted to.

Now of course I do stupid things now too....but we're sitting here and we can't think of any at the moment, so you will just have to wait for another blog.

Another year older and wiser too

Saturday was Peter's birthday and we celebrated it by helping Chris and Mary move. Chris called Friday and asked Peter to help him move stuff out of his storage unit and into the moving truck. He felt really awful for asking his brother for help on his birthday. So Saturday morning we get a wake up call at 7:30am...we dragged ourselves out of bed and eventually made it over to the storage unit around 8:30ish. We arrived to see the girls eating donuts and juice. They were being very good at staying out of the way. Mary then took the girls over to various houses to be watched for the day and then she headed to the condo for a last inspection and the keys. We stayed and helped empty out the storage unit. Debbie (family friend) also arrived to help. We cleaned out the first storage unit and then moved the truck over to the second storage unit. Filled up the truck to capacity and then drove over to the condo. Chris and Mary's condo is much like ours. It is two stories and is on the second floor. We started unloading the truck. We had two flights of stairs to climb as most of the stuff went to the bedrooms which were upstairs. Debbie and I took all the light stuff and the men took the heavier items. We were there about an hour and then more people showed up. At this point I was running out of energy. I slowed down and took less trips up and down the stairs, or purposely picked up stuff that would go into the family room so I only had to go up one set of stairs. Mary arrived with pizza. When we were done we drove over to 7-eleven and got slurpees for the crew. A few men stayed behind and helped put together the bunk beds. When we were all done and rested a moment, we drove home and took a long nap. Gosh we were exhausted!!!!

Afterward we had a little party at Peter's parents' house. We showed up late (overslept...yes we were tired!) We had a Snickers birthday cake from Vons...yummy! Sunday morning we felt the aches and pains of walking downstairs.

Redemption has come!

Take a look at this

Peter made enchiladas tonight. This time he used name brand green enchilada sauce. He made half with cheese for him and half without for me. It was delicious!

My Poor Hubby

Yesterday it rained all day long. There were short periods of sunlight while the clouds were getting ready to drop another load of rain. We stayed inside for the most part. Later on in the evening Peter decided he needed to go to Vons and pick up some groceries. He left while the rain had stopped for the time being. Shortly before he returned the rain started pouring down. He arrives looking like this:
He is sopping wet. The picture doesn't quite do it justice. His jacket was quite soaked, his pants were all wet. The groceries inside of the bags were all wet too. It rained hard for about 5-10 minutes and then cleared up again...Peter was bummed. He enjoyed a hot chocolate after that.

An Eventful Day

This week our plan was to visit the Zoo on Monday and go to Sea World on Friday. Neither of our plans worked for their designated days. So we decided we would try to go to the Zoo on Saturday morning so we could see the animals all awake. Well after staying up past midnight all week long to watch the Olympics, there was clearly no way I was going to get up early. We managed to arrive at the Zoo by 12:00. To our surprise all the animals we visited were awake and many of them were being fed.

Here are a few of the friends we encountered
The newest baby panda (Notsobiggus Pandus) about 6 1/2 months old.

Here's the momma (Biggus Pandus) being allowed back into the exhibit. She was in her bedroom while keepers entered and cleaned up the exhibit a little bit

This Zookeeper said this little gazelle (Hoppagus Alotagus) is a grandma, she was the only one that would take food out of the bucket. She was very friendly. He also said she was overweight. Shocker, huh? The others waited for him to throw the food out.

These little meerkats (LionKingus Timonus) were super cute.

Let me out! (Longus Neckus, Flingus Poopus)

We enjoyed the sky ride. Look at the beautiful sky, the weatherman predicted rain all day and it didn't rain until late at night.

We stayed at the Zoo for a couple of hours. I love having passes-we go see a few things and don't have to spend the whole day running through the park to see everything. So we left the park and went to get lunch, then we headed over to Sea World. We met up with a few more friends.

The Sea lion Show is my favorite

Feeding the ducks (Loudus Quackus) is one of Peter's favorite things to do.

Peter touching the bat rays (Slipperius Fishus)

The gardens

We stayed at Sea World for a couple of hours and then went home. It was quite an eventful day!

Seaport Village

This morning we dropped my parents off at the airport. Now I should have learned from our last experience of dropping people off at the airport and take a camera with us. However, I clearly forgot today...so sorry no pictures.

After the airport we originally planned to go to Sea World, but Peter forgot a hat and sunblock and although it was a very overcast day, Peter easily gets sunburnt, so we decided not to take the chance. We headed to Seaport village which is right on the bay and is full of cool shops. There's a kite shop, toy shops, candle shops, several Hawaiian shops, apparel of all sorts, a hammock shop, wind chimes and flags, basically you name it they probably have a shop of it. We walked into one called The Little Viking that had a bunch of Scandinavian things. Peter's favorite was Captain's Cove, it was a cool pirate shop.

After Seaport Village we stopped at Fashion Valley Mall. We visited the Container Store, ate lunch at a Japanese place in the food court, picked up cinnamon pretzel bits from Wetzle's and then topped it all off with two slices of cheesecake at the famous Cheesecake Factory. We've been nibbling on the cheesecake as they are seriously rich. They're going to last a few days for sure. We bought a raspberry lemon cream one and a chocolate tuxedo one. Oh so yummy!

Valentines Day

Valentines Day started yesterday as we were out shopping. We walked by all these Valentine cards. Peter picked one up with a puppy on the front and it says "I woof you." He exclaims that this valentine is perfect for me. I agree and then was like "you're really awful at keeping surprises from me." Our conversation for most of the time shopping went a little like this:
P-Well it's hard to keep it a secret while shopping with you.
M-You could've conveniently picked it up without telling me about it and just told me not to look at it.
P-You still would've known what it was.
M-Yes I would've known it was a valentine, but I wouldn't know what was on it.
P-Oh
We continue shopping a bit and later on as I'm looking in one department he says, "I have to go get something, I'll be right back."
P-Don't look in the cart.
M-I woof you too. :)
P-Oh man
We finish our shopping and head home.
Later in the evening we are at my parents' home. Getting ready to watch a movie.
P-I need to run an errand, I'll be right back.
M-Okay
He returns much faster than I was anticipating.
M-That was fast...Where did you go?
P-Vons
(For those outside of CA, Vons is a grocery store...It is always open, and they sell flowers...Peter always buys me flowers from Vons.)
I'm chuckling at this point.
M-hmm I wonder what you got. (Yes I was giving him a hard time...but wait it gets better)
P-It's hard to keep secrets from you.
M-Well you could just lie a little about your whereabouts...then I wouldn't know what you did. So let's try this again. Where did you go?
P-Umm to get the windshield wipers cleaned.
M-Really, what place is open at 10pm?
P-Vons
(laughing a lot here)
Well there you have it I married an honest to goodness good guy!


This morning he let me sleep in, then made abelskivers. My flowers looked pretty on the table, along with the I woof you card. I had picked up a card for him a week ago and it had two puppies on it. We woof each other :)

Facial Cleanser Bleck!

A little funny thing happened a few minutes ago. Peter and I were getting ready for bed. I was in the bathroom putting on facial cleanser while chatting with Peter. At some point he leans over and kisses me on the cheek and then pulls back and starts spitting and washing out his mouth. I am head over heals in laughter. I don't know why he didn't realize that yes I was putting this stuff all over my face, and why yes it was still on and I hadn't washed it off yet. He said it was the taste of an orange and tide laundry soap. Yummy!

Culinary Adventures

Peter loves to cook! He loves experimenting with new recipes too. Most of the time he finds a recipe on the internet and decides that it sounds good enough to try. He gives it a shot and sometimes it turns out well and sometimes it does not. He admits that sometimes its not the fault of the recipe, after all he went to engineering school and not cooking school.

He remembers having four disasters recently and wanted to blog about them so here you have it:

Disaster #1 Ebelskivers-These are a Danish filled pancakes about the size of a muffin. After our trip up the coast awhile ago we stopped in Solvang and had some of these at a restaurant. Peter then thought it would be great to make some of our own, after all he has an ebelskiver pan at his parents' house. Now the problem with the pan was that it was cast iron so we needed something other than a glass top stove. We took the idea over to my parents' house and tried making them. Well something went horribly wrong and they all stuck to the pan and it looked and smelled awful and we gave up quite quickly and just made regular pancakes.

Disaster #2 Enchiladas- Now we've all had delicious enchiladas so really what could go wrong here? I'm sure the recipe was probably just fine....but the taste was absolutely disgusting!!!! When buying sauce in a can, DO NOT PICK THE CHEAPEST KIND! BLECH! Lesson learned, we tried it and they were not good. To make matters worse Peter hands me a plate and then starts staring at me. I asked him why and he said he wanted to see my reaction to the first bite. Now thinking this is some kind of joke, or perhaps maybe not, I take a bite. It's in my mouth, I'm thinking how I should react to this nasty thing in my mouth. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I told him I didn't particularly like it, but would eat it anyway. He then takes a bite and says it tastes bad. I picked all the chicken out of mine to eat and then the whole dish went in the trash. It was pretty bad.
He would also like me to point out that he was trying to make a non-dairy type so I would enjoy it. On his side he used cheese sticks :( We'll just say the whole thing was a fiasco.

Disaster #3 Burnt soup! Peter made my favorite type of soup. All was going well until he decided that simmer meant leave the stove on temperature 6 and play a video game with me. Needless to say the stuff on the bottom got burnt and then he stirred it which stirred up the burnt pieces. The soup really tasted fine if you just scooped the stuff on top. So that's what we did. When it got to the bottom we threw it away. It wasn't that big of a disaster but he wanted me to include that in the list.

Disaster #4 Neither one of us can remember what disaster 4 was, but Peter insists there were four....so just assume there were four and we'll continue with the cooking success stories.

Success # I don't know....Peter makes a lot of tasty things like stir fry, sweet and sour, apple pancakes, crepes, and smoothies to name a few. I bought him a new ebelskiver pan that we could use on our stove that was a nonstick type. It got really good reviews from amazon, so I bought it.

So today Peter made ebelskivers.
They were delicious! The ones on the left plate were filled with homemade raspberry jam :) The ones on the right were plain. Both were very tasty! Now they don't look perfectly round, but really it was the first time trying so how perfect do you want them to be? And they shouldn't be gushing jam all over the place either...but they tasted really good. Peter blames his German heritage...he wishes he had some Danish heritage too.