Madeline's Great Escape

This is a picture of Madeline covered in dirt after her escape into the backyard on Friday afternoon. After work, I took the laptop and a cold beer, and sat on my Adirondack chair in front of the house. After 10 minutes I heard a jingle of a bell that sounded suspiciously like the bell on Maddie's collar. I looked back, and sure enough, there was Madeline, totally covered in dirt, sneaking along the rock wall on the right side of our house. I picked her up and took her inside, at which point I noticed the sliding screen door at the back of the house was open about a foot. Jason mentioned last week that he thought Madeline had figured out how to open the screen door with her paw, but I didn't believe it. Sure enough, she has figured out how to open the door, escaped into the backyard, and jumped the fence to the front of the house. To get the dirt off of her, I stuck her under water in the bath -- you can imagine how that went. She wrestled away, spraying dirt all over the walls and floor, and ran straight for the screen door, and out the back again! After a quick chase, I brought her back in, and rubbed her down with a towel -- locking the screen behind me this time! Madeline always manages to surprise us with her tricks. We have learned our lesson though, and now the screen door remains locked.

After that adventure on Friday afternoon, Jason arrived home from San Francisco and we went downtown Flagstaff for dinner. We finally tried the German restaurant, The Matterhorn. We shared a plate of various German sausages, saurkraut, and spatzle...YUM.

Switch to Jason -- I had a great time in San Francisco this past week. In between taking care of stuff for work, I had the chance to explore quite a bit. I took a long walk, stopping off in Chinatown, City Lights Bookstore (a famous beat hangout), Lombard Street (known for being one of the hilliest and curviest in the world), Coit Tower, and Fisherman's Wharf. In my continuing search for regional cuisines, I found a restaurant called Sotto Mare that had amazing cioppino, which is a San Francisco specialty consisting of a variety of seafood in a tomato based broth. One of the hospitals that I had to visit was right near wine country, so after the case was over I took a sightseeing drive by the vineyards. All in all, it was a successful trip, as everything that I had to do for work while there went extremely well.

Saturday we had a really lazy day. We slept in until about noon, went to lunch downtown, bummed around some stores, and then grilled some shrimp for dinner. Our friend Greg came over for UFC 101, and we enjoyed some homemade mojitos. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any fresh mint (we tried multiple stores!), so we had to use mint extract, but it turned out well.

Jason is traveling this week to Reno, NV, but only over Thursday night. I take the red-eye flight Wednesday night to S.C. I'll get into Charlotte Thursday morning, and join in the wedding festivities for my friend Angileigh and her fiance, Eric. I am in their wedding on Saturday, and fly back to AZ on Sunday. I'll post pictures when I get back!
XOXO

Grilled Pizza

Happy Wednesday! It is still Tuesday for me, but Wednesday to most of our east coast readers! Maddie and I are home alone this week as Jason left for a Gore trip to San Francisco yesterday morning until Friday afternoon. He went to a hospital today to help a new doctor use his product in surgery. I talked to him today, and all is going well. He has another surgery Friday morning, and then he will come home. He has been scoping out San Fran and Sonoma while on this trip; we're taking a trip over Thanksgiving this year, and we're trying to decide between a couple destinations.
This week has been really busy at work for me. I'm serving on a search committee to hire three new advisors, and we had an all day phone interview session today. I have had a lot of meetings this week to begin training on my new team's projects too. Today I also found out I will be advising students in the College of Health and Human Services, and serve as Gateway's liaison to Athletics. I am happy with these placements, especially keeping my contact with athletics.
This past weekend we lay low. Friday we watched a movie, Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais, and made a stir fry. On Saturday we went for a hike on Schultz pass, which we discovered is mostly covered with mountain bikers. The trail has a lot of pretty wild flowers growing; here are are a couple of pictures we took.




On Sunday Jason and I tried a new recipe for homemade pizza on the grill. It was one of the best things we have ever made at home. It is a Cilantro - Parsley pesto with grilled shrimp pizza. Here is a picture of the final product hot off the grill, and a second picture of Jason devouring the pizza.




Here is the recipe:

1 whole wheat Boboli pizza crust
1/2 lb. fresh raw jumbo shrimp, peeled and devined
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
3/4 cup cilantro
2 big cloves of garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
6-8 oz. of fresh buffalo mozzarella, sliced


Mix the parsley, cilantro, garlic and olive oil in a food processor to make the pesto. Heat 1 grill burner on medium heat, and place Bobolli pizza crust, lightly brushed with olive oil, on the unlit side of the grill, with the top closed, for about 1-2 minutes. Place the shrimp on the grill on the direct heat for about 2-3 minutes on each side, or until shrimp is cooked through. Cut the shrimp into smaller pieces once off the grill. Take the crust off of the grill, spread with the pesto, add shrimp, and top off with mozzarella slices. Place the pizza back on the grill on indirect heat, with the top close for 3-4 minutes, or until the cheese melts. Keep an eye on the crust so it doesn't burn. ENJOY!!

Art Walk downtown on Friday, and getting ready for more travel next week - post more later this weekend!
XOXO

Rock Lobster!

Last Thursday we headed down to Phoenix (in 115 degree weather) to stay over night, and catch a flight early Friday morning to Providence, RI to visit family & friends in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We arrived at SkyHarbor Airport Friday morning all packed, ready to go, with smiles on our faces, until that is we go to check-in and realized we were the last people to check in, and had been booted from our flight! We have never flown Southwest before, an airline who apparently overbook every flight, and you must check-in the night before to guarantee #1. a seat and #2. a seat with your party. Silver lining was we were re-routed through Philadelphia, comped for all of our tickets, and in the air within minutes. The drama was over (or so we thought!). Storms in Phili kept us in a holding pattern for and hour and a half, and on the ground in Philidelphia until 10:40 pm. We finally landed in Providence around 11:45 pm, about 6 hours after we were supposed to arrive. Here is a picture Jason took of me in the Philadelphia airport after waiting for a few hours, wrapped in my pashmeena to keep warm; you can see how thrilled I was to be there!


When we got up Saturday it was a beautiful sunny day in Massachusetts. After a quick lunch of greek pizza and salad (and of course a cannoli!) with Jason's parents, we headed to North Deerfield, Massachusetts for Matt Daelhousen's and Meredith Mascia's wedding. Matt is a friend of Jason's from college, and we usually see Matt and Meredith on our trips to Boston. They also came to our wedding last year. The wedding was beautiful, and we had a great time chatting with friends we do not typically get to see. Below is a picture of Jason and his college buddies with the groom.


Sunday was a good family day; we went to lunch at the Mon Kou, one of our favorite Chinese restaurants. Here we got to meet up with Emelie, our almost 14 month old neice, Jason's brother Erik, and sister-in-law Cindy. Emelie seemed a little overwhelmed at first by the new people she hadn't seen in awhile, but soon started running wild in the restaurant. We found out later that she had a temperature of about 102 degrees, so Jason and I are hopeful it was the virus and not scary Auntie Helen and Uncle Jason! Sunday night we ate at Friendly's; for anyone not from the Northeast, Friendly's is a regional chain that serves diner food and great ice cream. It was a favorite eatery of mine and Jason's during our high school years.

Monday we ate at the Grist Mill, an old mill built in 1745, converted into a restaurant that serves traditional New England fare. Jason and I got our lobsters; Jason even had two as you can see in the photo at the top of the blog. Afterwards we drove to Bristol, RI, one of the most quintesentially American towns in the whole country. It is right on the ocean, with a lot of original and preserved architecture, more American flags than I have ever seen, flowerboxes everywhere, and even street lines painted red, white, and blue. If you are ever in Rhode Island, I highly recommend it. Jason and I have been probably 3 or 4 times now. We took a walk along the beach and through downtown, and had a couple of drinks with Jason's folks at our favorite spot right on the water. I made a slideshow of this part of the trip below so you can see how amazing the views are.


That night we spent some more time with Emelie, this time at her house, where she ran around, danced, did some tricks for us, and threw toys...it was a blast! She is growing so fast, and she is a very confident and outgoing baby. I tell Jason she'll be strong willed just like her Auntie Helen:) Here is a great picture of her toothy grin.


Monday we arrived back in Phoenix without a hitch, and made it back home to Madeline by 7:30pm. Thankfully, my friend Heather and her 3 yr. old son Max took great care of Maddie while we were away. She was happy for us to be home, but no accidents or mess! For the next couple of weeks, I think we will be laying low; I fly back east again in two weeks for a friend's wedding in S.C., and Jason is going to be traveling again soon for work.

Thanks to a few storms, our vegetables have grown even more in our absence. There are 14 tomatoes growing on one plant, and 18 on another, and it looks like we'll have tons of veggies soon. We actually pulled and ate our first tomatoe before we left; it was fantastic! We took this picture of it below:


There will probably be more of those pictures to come soon. Enjoy (what is left of) your week.

XOXO H, J, & M

Summer is Here!

It was SO nice and warm in Flagstaff this week; it finally feels like summer around here! I put some pictures up of the front of the house I took this weekend. Here is one of some flowers I potted a couple weeks ago -- pretty proud of it!

This past week, besides doing the work thing, we went out on Thursday with our friends Heather and Greg to watch Bruno. Although the consensus is that Borat is a better movie, it was fun and we laughed A LOT. If you have a craving for crude humor, it is your movie. Earlier in the evening, I also went out with some people after work for a glass of wine at the Wine Loft to celebrate a co-worker's birthday. Things are picking up at work, and I am beginning to feel more a part of the office. There are some very fun people at Gateway, and I'm looking forward to working with them more this year.

Also, I found out this week which "team" I am going to be working on; the Student Success team, which facilitates probation & suspension, and a grade progress tracking system; basically any program that works with at-risk students on campus. It seems like it is going to be a good match for me. On Tuesday, Jason attended the quarterly meeting for his business unit, and gave a brief presentation on his product; he is getting a lot of positive feedback from co-workers, and is getting more involved with different projects.

Our vegetable garden is exploding! I put some pictures below for you to see what a difference a couple months makes. We have one tomato that is almost ready to be picked, and 5-10 others growing. Our zucchini plant is HUGE, and has tons of veggies growing, and we have one jalapeno that is going to be ready soon. We'll have a tomato, zucchini, jalapeno salad! Here are some pictures...

A good shot of the HUGE zucchini plant and eggplant

Can you see the jalapeno hiding behind the leaves?

Lots of baby tomatoes!

Our first tomato is almost ready to be picked.

We've been relaxing a lot this weekend; Jason took a long bike ride on Saturday with a friend from work -- they were gone for 2.5 hours. Overall, it was uneventful, but apparently they took a wrong turn on the trails and ended up in the middle of an equestrian event. They didn't realize this bad move until they rode up on a group of on-lookers who (not so kindly) informed them to get off the trail--at this point Jason looked back and saw a teenager quickly approaching them on a horse...quite an adventure! I ran errands on Saturday, and then went to a Mary Kay party at a friend's house. Saturday night we went to a downtown restaurant called Diablo Burger; Jason had a burger with green chilies and cream cheese, and I had a salad and frites. Everything is local, fresh, and delicious -- a really good, casual meal.

It is Sunday today; we've just been bumming around, and after lunch we're going to take a walk and do a little shopping. This morning we had home-made scones with raspberry jam and fresh cream. It was my first attempt at home-made scones, and they came out really well. Here is a picture... of course, we had them with tea!

On Thursday, Jason and I are heading to Phoenix, and flying to Massachusetts on Friday. We're staying with Jason's parents on Friday, and Saturday driving to our friend's wedding in Western Massachusetts. Sunday - Tuesday we'll be back with Jason's parents, and are looking forward to spending time the family. We are also hoping to do some serious seafood binging. As you may imagine, we don't get too much fresh seafood on top of a mountain in the middle of a desert. We'll post some pictures and give an update when we get back -- have a great week!

XOXO
Helen & Jason

Relaxing Weekend in Flagstaff

It is finally starting to feel like summer in Flagstaff! This week it was consistently in the 80's during the day and sunny, and we experienced our first "monsoon" rainfall. In July and August in Flagstaff it is typically dry and sunny, but most days around 5 or 6 o'clock the sky drops HUGE raindrops (and sometimes hail) for about 15 minutes, and then the sky is clear again. It took us by surprise this Saturday, but was pretty cool to watch.

Our week was pretty routine, and Friday we took Madeline to her new vet (who was wonderful!) for her annual exam, and to run a few tests. Maddie is getting older, and has demonstrated a few weird behaviors lately, but the vet thinks she is doing ok -- we'll know for sure early next week. After that we just hung out around the house and cooked a delicious dinner - it was a new recipe for fettucini with pancetta -- delicious!

On Saturday I took a walk through Thorpe Park with my friends Heather, Amy, Heather's son Max, and Amy's dog Luna. It was a beautiful day! We also walked through downtown to check out the traveling Vietnam wall that was in Wheeler Park, and got Max some ice cream. Jason took a long bike ride through some trails by our house. He says "It was Awesome" and he "Put his new mountain bike through the paces" -- those are in fact direct quotes. Afterward, our friends Heather and Greg came over to have a few beers and do some people watching on our front walk, and then Jason, Greg, and I went to a restaurant to watch UFC with our friends Josh and Mary Hampton and a few other Flagstaff folks. If you aren't a UFC fan, it was UFC 100, which is a big milestone. I started watching somewhere around UFC 50, and Jason remembers watching the 1st UFC with his dad when he was younger. The restaurant, Jackson's Grill, was a good place to watch the fight, and the food was "ok"...it does have a great outdoor patio though, which would be great for happy hour sometime this summer.

Today we cleaned the house, ran errands, and drove out to Lake Mary to take a walk. Living in the desert has its advantages, but a disadvantage is that we don't have close access to many bodies of water. Jason and I increasingly miss the water:( So, we got our fix today walking around Lake Mary. It is a bit crowded with boats because it is the only lake within an hour, but it was pretty and an easy walk. Above is a picture of the lake that I found online. Unfortunately, our camera broke a couple weeks ago, so as you can see, we don't have any personal pictures of our fun weekend. But, we bought a new camera online, and it should arrive sometime this week, so hopefully we'll have pictures soon!
Here is a great picture we got this week though from our sister-in-law Cindy of our niece Emelie. It was finally warm enough in Massachusetts for Emelie to wear the dress Jason and I sent her for her 1st birthday -- isn't it too cute!

We are heading to Massachusetts in July for a short trip, and can not wait to spend time with her (and the rest of the family!)
Not much going on this week, but looking forward to next weekend when we can hang around town more and enjoy the great weather!

CONGRATULATIONS!

To Richard, who was offered and accepted his first "real" job today at Enterprise Rent-A-Car! Welcome to grown up world; now you'll be overworked, underpaid, and miserable like the rest of us;) Congrats!

Happy Fourth of July!!

To celebrate the 4th we grilled some brats, and here you can see my homemade English trifle (iiiiirony), complete with authentic Bird's custard...yummy. Richard is still in town until tomorrow; this morning we got breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast places in town, LaBellevia, walked around downtown, and visited the Flagstaff Arboretum. There we walked through the desert gardens, and saw a "raptor" show. The hawks and falcons were flying over our heads across the audience, from post to post, and came within about one inch of Richard's head -- he was not impressed. One of the birds was an Eurasian Eagle Owl that looked about 3 times the size of Madeline -- frighteningly huge.

We had off of work on Friday, so Thursday we went out in downtown Flagstaff with Richard and some friends. I don't think Jason and I have ever had that much fun downtown before Richard visited! A lot of Friday we spend hanging around the house, shopped for July 4th, and went for pizza at our favorite pizza shop, New Jersey Pizza, who make their dough, sauce, and mozzarella cheese with fresh, local, organic ingredients. Richard agreed that it brings pizza to a whole new level.

Earlier in the week, we took Richard out to lunch at our favorite taco place, Tacos Los Altos, and went to dinner for sushi at the best sushi place in town, that serves HUGE rolls of sushi. We couldn't nearly finish everything we ordered, but went to see the Hangover afterwords (HILARIOUS!!) and stuffed ourselves with Red Vines and popcorn. If you haven't had Red Vines before, they are the West coast version of Twizzlers, but better...definitely try them if you have the chance. We have done tons of fun things while Richard has been here, but mostly, just hanging out like we used to in Clemson.

Unfortunately, Richard goes home tomorrow. Jason and I have loved having him around, and we will really miss him when he leaves. Luckily, I get to see he and my parents again in August for Angileigh's wedding.
We hope everyone had a nice 4th of July...all I have to say is...
USA!USA!USA! ;)
XOXO
Helen, Jason, Richard, and Maddie