Weenie Roast!

My sister Jordan is working at a family camp this summer and so we never get to see her ever. I sometimes forget what she looks like. Then I check her Facebook page and remember. Barely.

Anyway.

She turned 19 (holy cow, sometimes I think I'm still 19) on June 8th, and we had a wonderful party with presents and a three-tiered cake and balloons and U2 live and a fireworks show.

Oh wait, we didn't. Sorry.

She was working. Lame. So we didn't get to see her. I did, however, leave her a musical phone message that morning and think about her, which is practically the same thing. Or something.

So.

A week later, we were able to get together--and by we, I mean, my parents, and Jordan, and my One and Only and me--(Elisabeth and Tyler were in Hebgen, Orgegon, Katie and Chad couldn't make it, and Daniel was at Youth Conference) for a little fun.

Fun, in this case, is a fancy word that means WEENIE ROAST.

I don't recall being present at one of these since basically forever. The last one I have a clear recollection of was in Oregon when I was about 7 at my Great Aunt Annette and Uncle Mark's amazing house. I'm sure I've been to one since, but it has escaped my memory.

So last night, we drove up the Provo Canyon for a lovely evening in front of the fire. After a valiant escape from some inch worms, my parents and Jordan found the perfect spot for us to tuck away in.

We cooked hot dogs on the roaster sticks that my mom has been waiting to use for 2.5 years, ate chips, an AMAZING salad, and watermelon, and had yummy cold drinks. On cute tablecloths with plastic forks and knives, and disinfectant wipes, and hand sanitizer, and store-purchased wood, and plastic bags to sit on so we don't get dirty. My kind of roughing it.

Then, things got serious.

We. Made. S'mores.

Not just any s'mores, we had regular marshmallows, and toasted coconut marshmallows, and Hershey's chocolate bars, and Reese's peanut butter cups, and graham crackers.

Mom got hers perfectly golden.

Dad made a double-decker

I had mine en flambe.

Michael looked really dreamy. Duh.

Jordan enjoyed her birthday hootinanny. Uh...really. She did.

It. was. Great. Gruh-ate.

And we were a delightfully sticky, marshmallow-stuffed crowd.

In the end, mom started cleaning up, and we all pitched in too much, so we ended up being done a bit earlier than we'd hoped.

I guess it's all for the best though. It was getting dark. And you never know when you'll be attacked by wolves. Or inch worms.

Birth Week

Michael's birthday was last Saturday (April 5th). This was also the same weekend that we had General Conference for our church, and Saturday involved three sets of 2-hour sessions, so Saturday hooplah was mostly out of the question.

Plan B was to celebrate on Friday, but Friday night, my sister Elisabeth went through the temple for the first time and I'm the only sister who could be there, so we forwent (there's that word again) Michael's mission reunion and went to Salt Lake to be there for her. So, plan B of was also out of the question.

Plan C was to celebrate Thursday night. We were invited to a mystery dinner that night, so Birth Week was invented.

We decided to celebrate a little bit every day last week to sort of make up for the fact that no one day would really work for celebrating. Here's how it went:

Sunday: I let Michael open one present (he was VERY persistent in trying to get information out of me, so I caved). It was a car air freshener. I know, lame, but do I get extra points since it was named "Vanillaroma" and was made in Michael's mission? Also, we ate funfetti cake.

Monday: We ate more funfetti cake and opened another present. Also we studied for a statistics test, but to me, that part was not so celebratory.

Tuesday: We ate birthday dinner, which was tacos. Michael sure loves tacos. Also on this day, Michael scored a 100% on his statistics test. I very much did NOT get a 100% on that test. YAY MICHAEL!

Wednesday: Since Michael was "floating" at work, he was able to come home early and he actually surprised me with a BEAUTIFUL little bouquet of spring roses. These pictures don't do them justice, but WOW they were gorgeous. Michael also opened a card from his brother Ben.

Thursday: Michael opened packages from his mom and sister Stacy. He is now the proud owner of new ties, new movies, and lots of treats and snacks. What a happy boy! We also attended the mystery dinner with our friends. Turns out, I'm a murderer. Who knew? Not me!

Friday: We drove up to the Salt Lake temple to be with Elisabeth as she went through for the first time. Afterwards, we went over to Tyler's parents' house for dinner (which was Cafe Rio--Michael's favorite!) Unfortunately, tummy aches and tired eyes forced us to return home early, which in this case means earlier than everyone else; we got home at 11:00ish.

Saturday: We attended the morning session of General Conference at the Conference Center. Michael had never been before. We were there for the Solemn Assembly and the sustaining of not only the new president of the church, but a new apostle! Turns out we were actually on the Utah broadcast of Conference. My parents saw us on TV when they were watching at home. FUN! That afternoon we watched the next session of Conference with my parents, ate pizza for dinner, and Michael opened the rest of his presents--some new shirts, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Mambo cologne, and a new memory foam pillow. After the Priesthood session, we ate ice cream and watched Michael's movie "Carbon Dating: The Formative Years of Marvin D. Farnsworth."

Sunday: We ate a big breakfast (pumpkin muffins, almond poppyseed muffins, sausage, orange juice, and hash browns) and watched conference. We also went on a short walk, played a few rounds of speed Scrabble and And it Came To Pass, then ate a delicious dinner and had strawberry-topped cake for dessert.

What a fun birthweek!

Easter Feast Adventures

Why, yes, folks, I am more than a week (okay, fine two) late in posting our Easter festivities.

Better late than never, though, eh?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Anyway.

I was REALLY excited to play Easter Bunny this year. It was my first time, and although we forwent (yes, I think I just made that word up) baskets, I was very excited to put out the treats the night before. When we woke up in the morning, I played the part of very excited younger sibling, hopping in to announce, "IT'S EASTER! THE EASTER BUNNY CAME!!!"

The Easter Bunny was very kind to us, bringing (for Michael) Lemon-lime gatorade and two kinds of Starburst jelly beans (he couldn't find the right flavor for a long time, but that's another story), V8 Splash and Sweetart bunnies, chicks, and ducks for me, and a variety of Hershey's chocolate and Mound's eggs for the family.

My parents and younger brother were in sunny California for Easter weekend, so Michael and I decided to host my sisters and future brother-in-law for Easter dinner at our apartment. This created a series of adventures. I love adventures.

Adventure 1: Table seating. Michael and I have exactly 4 chairs to our name and we were to have 5 people there. You do the math.

Solution 1: Move kitchen (folding) table to the living room and place it in such a way that two people can sit on the couch (loveseat). Because the table was so snug, we put the food out buffet-style on our computer desk. We even decorated with personalized Easter egg napkin rings and (although not pictured) a beautiful slice of lemon on the edge of each cup that looked amazing with the tropical-colored juice we had. I love being a newlywed.


Adventure 2: preparing a rather elaborate meal with limited counter space (as in about two feet of counter space) and no dishwasher

Solution 2: use all parts of the kitchen--stovetop, table, step stool, chairs, sink...even floor (with covered food) and washing 7 batches of dishes before guests arrived. Michael was such a trooper.
Adventure 3: Repairing a badly damaged lemon bundt cake that like a stubborn two-year old threw a fit and somehow stuck to the pan although it was VERY well greased and floured.

Solution 3: Coconut and lots of icing. This is more complicated than it sounds. The first bag of powdered sugar I used tasted like taco seasoning for some reason, so that gooey taco-vanilla mess had to be discarded and a second bag opened for a second try, which--thank my lucky Jupiter--worked.

**As a side note, Michael had to zest and juice (by hand) 7 lemons for that cake. I know...superzester.

Even through all the adventure, dinner was a FANTASTIC success!!! My sister Elisabeth (and her fiance Tyler) made a ham that was sooo good. None of us Lynn girls had ever made a ham, so we were all very impressed. We grew up in a house where we just didn't eat much meat, and ham was a "once or twice a year" food that our mom made. Michael was...well... incredulous that none of us knew how to prepare ham. (It's not our fault!)

Anyway.

The ham turned out great (and Michael and I even got to have some delicious leftovers complete with a barbeque glaze). My sister Jordan brought the world's most absoutely amazing fruit dip of all time ever, which we served with apples, pears, strawberries, bananas, and grapes. Mmmm.

For side dishes, we had twice-baked potatoes and caesar salad in parmesan cheese cups. (Although the lemon cake was supposed to be my crowning joy, I was REALLY pleased that the parmesan cheese cups turned out...especially since my uncooperative cake did not).

After dinner, we dyed Easter eggs, tried on bridesmaid's dresses (for Elisabeth's wedding next week), and called my parents to wish them a happy Easter. As usual, Michael's creative abilities TOTALLY TRUMPED mine and his eggs looked fantastic. After making sure everyone had some leftovers to take home, we all said goodbye and Michael and I put our very stuffed selves to bed.

I love Easter.

Rosie the Riveter vs. The bathroom mirror and the laundry room

I typically do laundry on Friday nights, since Michael doesn't get off work until 8:45 and usually doesn't get home till 9ish. Also, pretty much NO ONE uses washers at 7:00 on a Friday night.

Anyway.

I was really excited to clean our apartment while the laundry took care of itself, since we were having my sisters and future brother-in-law over for Easter dinner on Sunday. I decided to wash an extra load of towels, kitchen rugs, etc. to really add the final shiny-clean touch. I was relieved that of the four washers down there, only one was taken, so I filled up the rest and went back to cleaning.

I changed into my Rosie the Riveter outfit (grubbies), and super-cleaned the kitchen and tub and even played handy-girl by fixing a light above our bathroom sink. By then the laundry was ready to put in the dryers.

As I walked down the stairs to the laundry room I noticed that it smelled a little...wierdish. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that the floor was flooded.

Up to my ankles.
As you can see, the washers and dryers are on raised platforms. On the platform by the dryers crouched my beautiful Asian neighbor with her hand over her mouth and a very horrified/pensive look on her face as though to say "how will I ever get my clothes out of the dryer without going into the sicknasty lint water?"

I asked her if hers were the clothes in the far washer. At the sound of my voice, she suddenly jerked, and her hand came away from her mouth:

"My neighbor already call manager. MANAGER NOT HOME! MANAGER NO ANSWER HOME PHONE! MANAGER NO ANSWER CELL PHONE!"

I calmed her down, kicked off my shoes, and crossed the linty water of death four times as I moved all the clothes to the dryers. I assured her that things would be okay, picked up my shoes and slogged back to my apartment.

I decided to just go back to cleaning. As I was washing our bathroom mirror, my finger caught on the metal border at the top and sliced for a good six inches of mirror as I wiped across it.

Obviously, intense agony and a lot of blood ensued.

Four bandaids and a kitchen towel later, the bleeding stopped and Michael arrived. I explained everything to him and asked him for help getting the clothes out of the dryers. Not even questioning, Michael grabbed his flip-flops, rolled up his suit pants, and picked up the laundry basket. Armed with the camera and more bandaids, I trooped after him to document the experience.

I won't lie, I had the giggles pretty intensely:
















Although the water had gone down quite a bit, it was still pretty gross and really hilarious.

After losing a heroic battle with the bathroom mirror, my finger and I felt much better because of Michael's life-saving sense of humor. Well, that and a freshly-baked batch of cookies.

Thank goodness for funny husbands, boxes of bandaids, adorable Asian neighbors, gooey-delicious cookies, and live-through-able adventures.

Muffin Thursdays--Banana Chocolate Chip

As Michael can easily attest, I am sort of a muffin fiend. Of all the things I bake, I most often bake muffins and cookies. Last fall, Michael would come over to my apartment on Thursday nights to watch The Office and I'd bake a batch of muffins. It sort of mutated into Muffin Thursdays. This semester, I'm not quite as vigilant about muffin Thursdays, but I still love muffins nonetheless.

This recipe is adapted from one by my old roommate Mandy, a queen among chefs. Not only is she the master of Italian cooking, but she is one stellar baker.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients:
1/2c brown sugar
1/2c margarine
1 1/2c mashed ripe bananas (3-4)
1/4c milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
chocolate chips--I use semi-sweet

Directions: cream butter and sugar. Stir in bananas, milk, vanilla, and eggs. Stir in dry ingredients, stirring till just blended. Fold in chocolate chips. Use as many as you want based on whether you want them as a treat, a snack, or a breakfast food.

Quite honestly, for me...there's not always a difference.

Bake at 375 20-25minutes

Fort + nachos + big + blankets = fantastic Monday night

Michael and I had a fantastic family home evening this week. We combined a few of our favorite things and came up with something really great. I wish the pictures could do the fort justice. Michael was the perfect fort engineer.

I mostly stood by for moral support, and gave it some "homey touches" (such as a snuggly blanket for movie watching, a serving platter for the nachos, and my step stool to hold up one side of the fort.)

Anyway... we (Michael) built a fort and then we assembled some top-notch nachos. Our method: tortilla chips, refried beans, green chiles, salsa, tomatoes (on my side) and lots and lots of cheese. Baked at 400 degrees till ooey gooey.

Our movie choice of the night was Big to represent getting in touch with our childhood selves. It was so much fun and we ate ALL of the nachos.

And hardly even felt guilty about it :)







What I love most about nights like this is how we can take some very simple tools and put together a really memorable night. Michael is so good at date-planning. I'm sometimes embarassed that despite thinking myself a romantic, I am sort of a dud with date planning. Not Michael. Plus, he makes everything come together and always reminds me how fun it is to be spontaneous (something I'm not very good at).

I most definitely have a crush on him.

Honeymoon pictures

We enjoyed our Honeymoon in lovely San Diego from December 29, 2007 to January 3, 2008. The hotel we stayed at had some random piles of rocks that caught our attention and became subject to our chiding. A favorite activity was to contemplate "what are the meaning of rocks?" as depicted in the picture. To this day, we have not come to any certain conclusions. The hotel, also had a lovely view of the bay which would make anyone want to jump for joy. This view made our stay even more tranquil and enjoyable.


An interesting discovery was also made during our Honeymoon episodes. It has become really clear that if I ever start a band that I would play the dried palm leaf. Of course the band would have to be called Hot Coals Only. And naturally I would have to pose like a holister model
We enjoyed a walk together on the first full day in San Diego. Since we didn't have any photographer with us (I forgot to pack one), there are very few pictures with both of us in them. So even though it may appear that our struggles on this walk were different, we were fully united in sitting on the bench, pondering tic-tac-toe and climbing trees.
Our travels took us to Sea World too. We loved "encountering" penguins and sharks. We learned all about the Shamu slam and endured the faith permoting show entitled "Believe." We felt a stir with in us to bond with the creatures of the sea. This led us to pose like flamingos and Emily even kissed a manatee.





Foreging for food was a rather difficult task. Room service was pricey (although rather fun the first time) and other food possiblities were hard to obtain. So, we took a cab to a grocery store and secured some rations. They were delicious. We had some New Years Eve snacks like Crunch and Munch or chips and dip. It was a great move.

This picture is designed to depict Emily's cowboy side. We went to Old Town and meandered our way through some shops. It was great fun.

This section is to illustrate the many faces of Michael Dixon. Michael "crusher" Dixon, Michael "cloud head" Dixon, and Michael "groove thang" Dixon. Sometimes you just need to look at a picture side ways.

We also went to the San Diego zoo and saw many... interesting animals. Emily invented "zoo bingo" and we had a blast with it. We both made bingo cards by drawing pictures of animals in a different box in a grid. We both got bingos at the exact same moment.

A few romantical wedding photos

Yes, ladies and gents, it's time to turn off those gag reflexes and reach down into your hearts to enjoy wedding pictures. Because, I appreciate them. And I'm a boss of this blog. So...there.


Michael is the happiest person I know. He can make any situation fun. He has a really funny laugh that I love. I also can't get enough of that boy's brown eyes. In my heart, I'm going to be sad if my babies don't have Michael's brown eyes.

This is about the most artistic picture of me ever taken. I very much struggle to feel photogenic. Thank my lucky stars, the most photogenic pictures of me ever taken were my engagement and wedding photos.

I'm hopeless.

More to come.

Beginning adventures

It's been a little chaotic trying to move into our apartment, start school, and get used to our new work schedules all at the same time this past week and a half. However, despite the stress, there have been some fun little adventures and moments.

1. Eating Chinese takeout on the floor.

We got into our apartment late on a Sunday night, and Monday had decided that we'd get takeout for dinner instead of worrying about fixing anything. We've gotten takeout once before and it was a fun memory (involving an uninvited granola person who told us stories of French girls and sleeping on park benches) so we decided to do it again. We established our first family tradition: every time we move into a new place, we're going to eat takeout (preferrably Chinese) on the floor that first night. It's a winner.

2. Not having a working stove/oven.

This one was slightly less fun, but still somewhat amusing. Tuesday night, Michael left to work on a project, so I promised him a delicious warm dinner when he returned. Two hours and three phone calls later, I had determined for certain that I was not a raving imbecile, but that the stove was--in fact--broken (with broken meaning "devoid of gas"). Our female manager (who is very nearly clueless) insisted that our pilot light was out and that there was absolutely no way that the gas wasn't working.

About this time, Michael walked in to no delicious warm dinner and a frustrated wife. He then calls said female manager, who tells him that the problem is most definitely the pilot light. He politely tells her that the pilor light is working, but she counters by proving she has no ability to pay attention to the words coming out of his mouth

"well, sometimes the pilot light gets dirty and it won't light"
"no, no, the pilot light is just fine, there's just no gas coming out."
"well, it could be that the pilot light is just out"
"The pilot light is working just fine, but there is no gas. We think the gas is off."
"sometimes the area around the pilot light gets dirty..."

You get the idea. Anyway, she says her husband will be home around 9p.m. and will come to see what's wrong. He checks the pilot light then assures us that someone will be by the next day to check out the gas situation. Meanwhile, Michael excuses me from the kitchen and prepared us a delicious dinner of Snackster grilled cheese and sliced apples served with Secret Fruit Dip (aka yogurt) complete with heart-shaped garnish. I know. He's adorable.

The oven fixers came over late the next afternoon and guess what the problem was? Yup. No gas. So they fixed that, and we celebrated with a delightful round of homemade chocolate pudding made on our newly gaseous stove.

3. Stocking our apartment at Target

This was hilarious. Michael and I, through the GREAT generosity of all those around us had quite a bit of money in Target giftcards to use, and we decided to use it to stock our apartment. We had quite an adventure. With each of us armed with a shopping cart, we set about the store, sweeping needed items in here and there. What I found most amusing however, was turning around and consistently seeing Michael's cart ridiculously full. I kept thinking he couldn't possibly fit one more thing in that blasted cart, and he'd prove it was made out of the same substances that formed Mary Poppins' carpetbag. We had great success and came out several hundred dollars short of what we thought we'd spend.

Our next adventure there was fitting all those things inside our Honda civic. After some fancy arranging, rearranging, and re-rearranging, we were able to fit it all in (provided I carry the kitchen garbage can on my lap and hold my arm behind Michael's headrest to prevent a box from crashing into the front seat).

Horray for bargains, friendly helpful salespeople, Tetris experience, and a hilarious husband.