Who Are You and What Have You Done with My Husband?

Sunday morning I went into the city to meet my high-school friend Erika for brunch. She was in town for the film festival with her step-dad and were able to meet up before their flight out. I tasked Marc with the weekly food shopping since I had to come home and work on a project for work. I got home and Marc was prepping dinner for me. I was shocked. He made an absolutely delicious dinner. He marinated shrimp in bbq sauce and grilled them on our counter-top grill. He also bought a beef tenderloin and grilled that up. And for our veggie he sauteed green beans in olive oil and garlic. As an appetizer he bought a fresh baquette and hummus. I was completely shocked. Here are some pictures of the dinner extravaganza:

Marc's Birthday

My darling had one heck of a birthday. We attempted to sleep in but someone called at 7:30 to be the first to wish Marc a happy birthday and ended up waking us and Homer up, we were able to fall back asleep but Homer, not so much. And when Homer is up, that means we are up. Marc started the day off with a nice breakfast – eggs, coffee, and some Hebrew National breakfast sausage (they are new and delicious). After breakfast Marc got himself into a few shenanigans and then we headed up to Jill and Edwin’s with Homer for a birthday bbq.

Morty, Jill and Edwin greeted us with birthday hats on (at least it wasn’t their birthday suit). We all put on our hats to help celebrate, Homer was really excited about his Dada's birthday, he even posed for the picture! Before Edwin started cooking Marc opened his presents from Jill and Edwin. He got a shirt that reads “I am McLovin,” he was way too excited about it for a 31 year old man. Jill found the original version of Tiddly Winks on eBay that they used to play with their grandparents growing up. We listened to some tunes, grilled up some hot dogs and hamburgers. It was a gorgeous day but super hot out so after we ate we headed inside to cool off. We enjoyed lunch outside, well the humans enjoyed it, the dogs were a little hot. I even got some color.

Marc's really excited about his game of Tiddly Winks:

Edwin cooking up our lunch:

We played a few game of Tiddly Winks, I lost but I got one of my chips in the 50 point spot. Then we had cake that Jill made. We headed home after cake to rest for a bit and drop Homer off at home before heading into the city for the Giants versus Reds game. I found really good tickets on Stub Hub and they were a really good deal, which made Marc like them even more. We sat in the fourth row in left field. The weather in the city was absolutely beautiful; we stopped at Gordon Biersch for a couple of beers and a nosh and then headed to the ballgame. Our seats were really good, the Giants lost (what's new) but I got a fun new pink Giants shirt and Marc enjoyed the game.

Marc's Birthday Cake:

Marc blowing out his candles (apparently he is McLovin):

The yummy cake the Jill made:

Marc having some fun at Gordon Beirsch:

Me at Gordon Biersch:

The view from our seats at the ball game:

Our trademark game pic:

Happy Birthday Darling!

Happy Birthday Darling! Today is Marc's 31st birthday!

So far Marc's scored a Giants jersey from me and a Screwpull Wine Pump (to match his new opener) from my parents.

Stay tuned, we're going to a BBQ and a Giants game to celebrate, more to come later!

Happy Birthday baby I love you!

Out of Order

I am writing this posting out of order but last weekend Marc, Jill, Edwin, and I headed down to San Diego to celebrate Passover with my family. Our flight was late getting into San Diego because of mechanical issues, fortunately they were able to locate another plane and we were only about an hour late getting into San Diego. I would just like to add that the new Southwest number boarding process is quite confusing, I get it in concept but it's still confusing having to line up in numerical order. It's also quite amusing to see how many people clearly can't count. But I digress. My mom was the brave soldier who picked us up at like midnight. We dropped Jill and Edwin at their hotel and then headed home to my parents. Normally we hang out and chat for a while but we were so exhausted from all of the traveling we have been doing so we went straight to sleep.

Saturday we woke up and headed to Marc's Aunt and Uncle's house for a while to catch up and meet Ben's (Marc's cousin) girlfriend. Then back to my parent's for a huge Passover dinner. My mom cooked an amazing spread for like over 20 people. As usual her brisket was delish! (As was everything else, but her brisket is awesome!) As usual our trip to San Diego was super short because Sunday morning it was back home.

Now you may ask, what did Homer do while we were having fun down in San Diego? Well Homer was at our friends' Greg and Lyndsay's house being very naughty and bringing out the naughtiness in their dog Kelsey. Let's just say Homer is not a good house guest and will likely not be invited back ever! We owe Greg and Lyndsay big time, dirty diapers, dog sitting, whatever they want we owe them! We knew when we walked in he was bad too by the look on his face, Greg and Lyndsay were so polite about it too, they finally broke and told us Homer cried and peed...a lot. Poor Greg and Lyndsay! Here's a picture of Homer and Kelsey at the dog park (when Homer wasn't being naughty).

One Year Down, A Lifetime to Go

I can hardly believe it but Monday marked our One Year Wedding Anniversary. While I must say that our wedding day seems so long ago, these 12 months really have flown by. Since the last few weeks have been crazy and Marc and I are pretty run down we decided to have a low key one year anniversary, after all this is the first of many, right!?! Marc stayed home sick on Monday because he wasn't feeling well. I on the other hand, headed to the office since rumor had it, layoffs were going to take place on Monday. After Marc slept in for a bit he tricked me and told me he had just woken up but he was really on his way with a dozen red roses. We still have a little romantic streak in us. I went home to have lunch with Marc and to put my beautiful roses in a vase (Marc staged it nicely for the photo):

For dinner, I made Marc's favorite: Chicken with Mushroom and White Wine Sauce. It's a dish I make frequently but it is alway a hit with my husband's stomach. Before dinner we exchanged gifts. Marc gave me a gift certificate to take some cooking lessons at the Viking Cooking School. Now to some this could be misconstrued as him hinting I am a bad cook, but I am very excited about my cooking classes. The only problem I am having is which classes to take! I am thinking a baking and an Italian class. Marc has been coveting the Screwpull lever wine opener at Williams-Sonoma for a while so I gave him that as a gift. He was so excited and we even got to test it out on the bottle of wine I used to cook dinner with. It was a very nice, relaxing evening home with my darling.

While we were in San Diego we picked up our anniversary cake from our wedding cake baker. He gives a one year anniversary cake with his wedding package because frozen cake doesn't taste very good. So after a yummy dinner we enjoyed extra-yummy chocolate mousse cake. Ok, I forgot to take a picture before we dug in, but you get the point:

So that's it, our one year anniversary. I can't believe it's been a year! To think a year ago we were in Hawaii.

Jersey

I had every intention of doing this blog earlier last week but my work trip to Boise, yes folks, that's Idaho, set me back a few days, and then we were off to San Diego. I must postpone my Jersey recap to talk about another state, Idaho, for a minute. Red-Dawg and I were emailing back and forth this week while I was in Boise and it has come to our attention that no matter how old your are the good old joke, "Idaho?, no You da ho" is still pretty funny, ah I am chuckling as I type this.

On with Jersey:

Marc wanted to tack a few days onto the back of our trip out to Jersey for some fun stuff, to help make the trip a little more positive. I, on the other hand, wanted to get back since I knew I had to go to Boise and then we had plans to go to San Diego this past weekend. Marc won which was fine because I ended up having a good time in Jersey but I am so exhausted from all of the traveling!

So the day after the funeral we started to head south (at least that's the direction I believe we were going) to Manalapan where my in-laws live (the Zimmerman side). Along the way we stopped at a diner for some lunch, which I must say was my doing. See I am completely obsessed with "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" on the Food Network and had just seen him visit some New Jersey diners. I wanted to see what these things were all about. So we stopped at a diner between Iselin and Manalapan. I kind of wondered how you know what diners are good, right? Because in California some places are just sketchy and nasty. Anyway, I guess all diners are decent. Who would have thunk it? So we stopped at this one and feasted. I had one the famous lunch specials (which they are constantly highlighting on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" which included a soup (matzo ball of course), a beverage (Diet Pepsi - Jersey seems to be a Pepsi state), an entrée (my choice was The Happy Waitress - grilled cheese with bacon and fries - though our waitress was a bit surly), and dessert (rice pudding). The food was awesome, I was stuffed. Jill taught me about gravy fries which were amazing, I think I am still a ranch girl but these were delish! My lunch:

Matzo Ball Soup:

My "Happy Waitress" (we ate really healthy in Jersey and our waitress wasn't really happy):

Dessert:

After our very hearty meal, we got back into the car and headed down to the Zimmerman house. The weather was so nice we put the top down on Jill's rental convertible. Kind of ironic we had the top down in Jersey. Anyway, it was a quick ride from the diner to the Zimmerman's. When we got there Terri was waiting for us, Dean wasn't home from work yet. We said hello and got situated and then it was time for some work. Boo! After a couple hours of work, Greg, Marc's half-brother got home, and we all went outside and played basketball for a while until Dean came home with Jaclyn and her boyfriend Marc. Terri cooked a huge dinner for everyone that night so we ate, chatted, drank, and then went to sleep.

Friday, Marc and I had the day to kill before Jenn picked us up, so we all ended up going shopping together. Ok, love Jersey, no sales tax on clothes! Awesome! I got a new pair of running shoes that were not only on sale but I saved close to $5 because of no taxes! (I know cheap bastard - but I have a mortgage now). For lunch we had Nathan's hotdogs (I know, bad Allie since they compete with Hebrew National but when in Rome…). Jenn picked us up around 4, while we were saying goodbye to everyone the Ice Cream Truck came through the neighborhood…who can resist the ice cream truck?

After our goodbyes we headed down to Cherry Hill where Jenn and Alex (and Elway) live. When we got to Jenn's house Alex was walking Elway so we got a huge hello from Elway as he approached the house. He is so super sweet and so well-behaved, and quite the sweetie. He definitely took to Marc, he was fun! He was proof that labs don't have to be unruly maniacs like Espresso used to be. (But we loved Espresso anyway). That night we went to a neighboring town and had an awesome Italian dinner. There was a guy sitting at the next table, that kid you not looked like a guy from the Sopranos who was out on the town with his mistress. Ah Jersey! After dinner we went for dessert at this place called the Pop Shop, it's like a 50s style diner with awesome ice cream sundaes. We all felt slightly ill after our ice cream.

Saturday poor Alex had class in NYC (he's doing his MBA - I feel his pain) so Jenn, Marc and I were going to go into Philly and do some site seeing. We were all tired and the weather was off an on so we decided to go shopping instead - still no sales tax on clothes! So we went to a shopping center near their house and had pizza - Marc was finally in heaven and then shopped for most of the afternoon. I love Jersey, I found some really good deals, including hot pink flats for $12. Then we went to Rita's - which is know in Jersey for their water ice (?). I had never heard of water ice but it's basically Italian Ice. Jenn and I had Mango with Custard, it was really good!!! Then we headed back to Jenn and Alex's to relax before dinner. Jenn got me addicted to John and Kate plus 8. It's basically a show about this couple who had twin girls. Kate (the mom) decided she wanted to know what it was like to be pregnant with just one baby so they had fertility treatment and ended up with sextuplets. Thus the plus 8. It is a very cute show, the sextuplets are about 3 in the show and they are cute as can be, 3 boys, 3 girls. I now have like 5 episodes DVR'd at home. For dinner we went across the street from their place to a restaurant called Swanky Bubbles, it was quite possibly one of the coolest restaurants ever. It's a champagne restaurant that serves Asian fusion tapas. It was really good, I had a fun champagne cocktail and we all shared some tapas. Then it was off to bed for our early, early flight out of Newark. I forgot to mention that Jenn and Alex's neighborhood is awesome, they are across the street from a shopping center with a pizza place, Starbucks, Chinese place, and of course Swanky Bubbles, among other places. And of course their house is beautiful. Jenn and Alex were super nice and woke up well before the crack of dawn to bring us to the train which we took to Newark. We got up at 3 AM which was depressing especially since it was midnight back home and some people were just getting home or going to bed. Time zones are funny things! The train ride up to Newark was super easy and uneventful. Our first flight left Newark on time (very rare for Newark) and was uneventful (especially since it was the first day American was flying after grounding all of their MD80s) until we landed in Chicago and there was a plane blocking our gate because the "tug" broke. So we sat on the runway for about 45 minutes and nearly missed our connection. Of course American's customer service about the whole thing was spectacular (notice the sarcasm there). I pretty much will never fly American again. Good thing I used all of my mileage for the trip!

So that was our Jersey trip in a nutshell, we got back Sunday afternoon, picked up Homer, who was ecstatic to see us, unpacked, did laundry and then I re-packed for my 2 day business trip to Boise (Idaho - youdaho - had to get it in one more time, how often does Idaho enter your vocabulary). I got back from Boise late Wednesday, unpacked, skipped laundry, re-packed for our Passover trip to San Diego. And we're off again tonight. Homer's staying with Greg, Lyndsay, Xavier and Kelsey this weekend. More on how that goes after the weekend.

Here are some more pictures from Jersey:

Jill & Edwin at the Diner:

Marc & I at the Diner:

Jill & her diner cookie:

Marc and his cookie:

Jill getting ready to cruise in the convertible:

Edwin was afraid his hair would get messed up:

"What should we get?" - Jill & Edwin at the Ice Cream Truck:

Jenn & I:

A Tribute to "The Nana"

This post is dedicated to Marc's Nana, Rita Grad, who sadly passed last Sunday. We made a trip to New Jersey for her funeral and to spend time with Marc's family.

The thing I loved most about Nana was the way she made Marc be a little boy again, everytime he called her up he would say "Is this the Nana?" in a boyish, playful voice and his face would light up when talking to her. I have loved it ever since we started dating. Since my Nanna passed when I was seven, it was nice to have a Nana again in the last year and we are so grateful she was able to make it out to our wedding last April.

She was a much loved woman with lots of love and happiness that she spread to everyone. She will be missed by everyone who knew her but her spirit will definitely live on for many generations.

Here's a photo of Marc and the Nana in November when we visited with them: