The daily stuff

Blogging about Europe will take some time and unfortunately, I don't seem to have much of that these days. I'm behind on everything!! The hair balls or dust bunnies or whatever will attest to that! Why you ask?

For one, we flew to NYC for a wedding this past weekend - yes, less than a week after we got back from Europe. We only took two photos and they were of our lunch before the wedding. Oh well. The lunch was really good - check out Cafe Habana if you're ever there. We had fish tacos and grilled corn Cuban style (with mayo, cheese, cayenne pepper sprinkled with fresh lime juice) and both were amazing.

We've also been quite busy trying to maintain our ridiculous tomato garden. The rest of the garden has been pretty low maintenance which I'll update about later. But we've had a new pest problem with the tomatoes - leaf footed bugs (a lot like stink bugs). Every day after work we have to go to the garden and look for the baby and adult bugs and kill them. They are seriously a pain in the rear.

Regardless of the pest issue, we have TONS of tomatoes. We've given away at least a couple of pounds,

and we've eaten a couple of pounds too.

Plain tomatoes and caprese salad.

And pizza (with pesto made with basil from the garden).

We got a wine shipment from our wine club and enjoyed it with our pizza.

OH and then there are the ones in the fridge right now (I know that tomatoes lose flavor in the fridge but home grown tomatoes in the fridge still taste a heck of a lot better than store bought ones and this way we can eat them before they go bad).

Good thing we love some home grown tomatoes!! :)

Year 2!

While we were in Europe we celebrated our second anniversary. We had big plans of going to a vineyard overlooking Vienna, Austria, but weather got a bit in the way. We did make it to a few vineyards, tasting food and wine along the way. It was a really nice way to spend our anniversary.

 

Along our short tour of a few vineyards we discussed getting married, you know, the thing you do on your anniversary. I asked the husband when he knew he wanted to marry me. He said very early, within the first year of dating. I NEVER KNEW THIS. Yes, can you believe that?!? In the 6 years we dated before we got engaged I never knew that he wanted to marry me since early in our relationship!

I read over my post from last year and I realize a lot of things have changed in the last year. Living in Texas has improved quite a bit. I am still working on professional goals and living away from family and friends is still hard but things here are getting easier.

As I did last year, here are 10 things I learned this year!

1. We don't always recognize our own stress and this is ALWAYS when we are the least agreeable.
2. I really enjoy the time we have in the car together during our commute (as long as I have some coffee before any talking occurs in the morning) - its a great time to talk and when we don't commute together I realize how much I miss that quiet time together.
3. I like to talk out everything and the husband likes to spend time pondering ideas before talking about them - we are learning to adjust (somewhat) to this difference in communication styles.
4. I really dislike making decisions for two people - making them for myself is difficult enough sometimes.
5. Money stuff is hard even when you both have the same approach to money.
6. The husband is a hard core worrier about some stuff, and other stuff, not at all - it is taking some getting use to on my part. In my counseling education I've worked really hard on my own worrying and to now "share" someone else's is challenging for me.
7. It is hard work to create meaningful time for one another and I know it will only get harder.
8. The husband has had some awesome successes this year and it is awesome to share these with him and see his happiness with his achievements (both small and large). There is nothing quite like sharing in moments of happiness with those whom you love.
9. The husband makes piles of things around the house - clothes, mail, socks, shoes, candy bars from Europe (I could go on) and it drives me CRAZY. We are working on this (very very slowly) (and when I say we, it is mostly me trying not to be bothered by said piles which is NOT going well).
10. I really enjoy cooking together. It is one of the few things we both enjoy and make time for on a regular basis.

I'm increasingly aware of how lucky I am in life but especially with the husband. He is a great man and I look forward to many more years to come!

Being back from vacation

Coming back from vacation is always hard - going back to work, getting up early, etc. But I'm finding that I miss the little things from our vacation including this:

Cappuccino - our morning routine (and occasionally midday routine too!).

And this:

Nothing quite like relaxing in beautiful gardens while drinking beer!

We're back!

We are back from Europe! It was a truly wonderful trip of which I will surely write several posts in the coming days (or weeks as things seem to go pretty slowly around here).

And now, a quick happy birthday to my best bud since 6th grade. I had big plans of finding terrible middle school pictures and posting them on the blog but alas, I ran out of time! (I'm sure she's grateful for that)

Each of our friends brings unique gifts into our lives. Over the many years we've known each other, I've grown so much as a result of Jenny's friendship. I'm truly lucky to have her as a friend (even if she wore manatee t-shirts in middle school and never told me that my wolf t-shirt wasn't cool). :)