Welcome Spring!

I just got back from Buffalo, NY and am really enjoying this awesome Spring weather we have been having.  Hope it sticks around for awhile! Morgan loves it too, she loves to lay down right in the middle of the daffodils! Oh well, she looks cute doing it.

Here is a little Spring love from our yard:

And from inside:

And the whole mantle.  I guess I got into a bird kick this year, which is surprising since I really don't care for birds much.  I have been shit on by birds 3 times in my 28 years so I just don't have good luck with them!  I recently started trying to bring more nature inspired things inside, since we both love the outdoors, so maybe that explains the birds and random branches from the yard sticking out of the vases.  But it's something different to celebrate the season at least.  Come on Spring! I am so ready for cool mornings, open windows, fresh fruits and veggies, blooming buds, and ironically enough, birds chirping.

Germany Trip- 2008

Oftentimes, I will catch myself thinking about what I was doing at this same time last year, or 5 years ago... where was I living, what was going on in the world, etc and I often wonder the same about the future, where will I be in 5 years, what will technology be like, who will be president, what will be the latest food craze?  Well,

at this time 2 years ago, I was on my way to Frankfurt, Germany.  John had to go over there for work and had the ability to take a few days after for vacation while he was there, so I decided to go meet him and we were going to head down to Munich for a long weekend.  Now, this was about 2 1/2 weeks before our wedding, so I had a few things on my mind, but it turned out to be a great trip and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to visit and take a bit of a honeymoon before the wedding too.  I flew into Frankfurt and took a train to Cologne where John's meeting was. 

The first night, we stayed at the Schloss Auel which was a beautiful property about 20 min from Cologne. John still had meetings the afternoon I arrived, so Beth and I ventured out to explore Cologne a bit.

 

   Cologne Square

 

The famous Cologne Cathedral  

Lindt Chocolate Museum, yum!

The next day, we boarded a train bound for Munich! 

We started out by walking around the town a bit, the first thing we saw was a store that caught John's eye:

 

Then we made it to the Marienplatz and saw the gorgeous gothic architecture and the Glockenspiel show.  

 

View of Marienplatz from tower

We hiked a tower, and got some great shots of the city:

 

  

We also visited BMW and the Olympic village:

 

Corporate Offices at BMW- loved the building design

 

Olympic Village

 

Of course, no trip to Munich would be complete without a trip to the Hofbrauhaus.  In true fashion, we found a table and before long a few locals came and sat with us and before long we were sharing beer drinking games.  

 

One of my favorite things about Munich though would have to be the Viktualienmarkt.  It is like one huge farmers market, except it had everything and anything you could possibly want to eat or drink.  

 

Eating area

 

  

John loved that they had so many different deli's and meats available.  He bought some ham and mystery meat to bring back home, but it got taken away at customs.  Apparenlty you can't bring packaged meats into the US.  I wasnt too disappointed to see the meat go....

It was a great trip all in all, after we got back home, I remember trying to convince John to apply for jobs in the Germany office so we could move here, but that wore off after a few months :)

February....

Where did February go?  Hard to believe it's almost Spring here, I noticed my daffodils starting to bloom already and we are really ready for it.  Nothing really huge or blogworthy happened last month.  It started out snowy, we got snow for almost 3 weeks (weekends) in a row.  Always seemed to start snowing on Friday around 4:30 pm, just in time for the weekend, sigh.  Which gave us John plenty more time to play with Morgan in the snow...

 

We had a nice, quiet valentines. Traditionally, we like to make a special dinner at home instead of going out, so we did that this year.  John made a pork tenderloin and I was responsible for dessert, so I made homemade butterscotch pudding with a whisky whipped cream.  I wanted to do some kind of red and chocolate dessert like choc covered strawberries but he has been hinting around about butterscotch, so I went with something non-traditional.  We were not supposed to buy each other presents this year, but John surprised me with this (click link below) when I got home from a business trip after getting stuck in the Northeast when they had that big storm (a whole other story):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hcFCP0edwQ

I will have to figure out how to get videos on here, but that's for another time :)

He had the video on our computer desktop, and since we don't have a video camera, I knew he must have gotten me a Flip since I had been wanting one. I am looking forward to making some videos, I think we will use it alot on our trip this spring.

John went to Pinehurst for a guys weekend, and I decided to visit the new modern art museum in Charotte with a few girls.  No pics were allowed inside, but it was a gorgeous building and I am excited that Charlotte is getting more cultural venues like this.


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Afterwords, we went to Basil Thai which was delish!  We did not realize Black Eyed Peas were playing that night, so uptown was really busy and we were lucky to get in without a reservation, but I will definiately return there.  Two amazing new restaurants just opened up in our neighborhood, Loco Lime and Cuban Pete's.  It's nice to be able to walk to dinner down the street and have such great places nearby, definitely a plus to our neighborhood.  We went to Cuban Pete's on Friday night and they have a great selection of sangria's, I had one called the Floridian with grapefruit, oranges, and white wine.  My favorite thing about Loco Lime is this green salsa that they make, I would love the recipe, but I can't figure out all the flavors: avocados, lime cilantro & tomatillos but there is also something really spicy that has a bite at the end (jalapenos??) and the texture is creamy instead of chunky like most red salsa's.. it's really good! 

The main reason I did not blog much last month was the Olympics! I love the Olympics and I watched as many events as I could.  There was so much drama this year! Vonn and Mancuso, Ohno getting DQ'd,  quadruple jump in men's figure skating, and the Aboriginal ice skating costumes are the first one's I can think of.  Of course it got off to a somber start with the Georgian luger, but I thought it was a great Olympics all in all.  I know I am in the minority here, but I like the winter ones better than the summer.  Now what to do with myself every night at 8 pm....