Soup of the week returns!

Soup of the week has been going strong around here these days and I'm loving it. For the past 5 weeks we've had soup once a week. It's been so yummy!

There are 3 contributing factors to the high rate of success over last year's attempt:
1 - Since we have a lodger who is paying us for food, I feel much more of a "motivation" (read: guilt) to cook proper meals.
2 - It is rapidly cooling off and will stay cold until March/April
3 - I found some interesting recipes and ingredients that I don't usually cook with due to the whole "living in a new country" thing

I only have pictures for the last 2 weeks but here's the list.

~Beef Stew (I don't really use a recipe, I just put stuff in a pot and let it simmer for a few hours) - It turned out really well because although I'm not a huge fan of the flavor of English beef, it was SO tender. There were no weird chewy pieces.
~English Minestrone - Pretty much the same as regular but with cabbage instead of pasta. It was really yummy. Minestrone is one of my favorite foods.
~Chicken and Pumpkin Chowder - Surprisingly good. The pumpkin didn't have tons of flavor and it was way too soft so if you're going to let it simmer on the stove for longer than the recipe says don't put the pumpkin in until 20-25 minutes before you're going to serve it. I think less cooking time will save more of the flavor too. Charlotte isn't a big fan of all things creamy so she had her portion before I added the cream, making it more of a soup than a chowder.
~Tomato Basil Bisque - (I learned a super easy way to peel tomatoes for this time. Can't believe I had been doing it the hard way for all these years!) Always a hit. Took the leftovers to a Relief Society pot luck dinner and someone asked if they could take the extra home. The night we had it at home, I also tried my hand at homemade wheat rolls. It was my very first time and they turned out quite nicely. The recipe is called "Never Fail Rolls" so I had high hopes. I'm going to keep making them every few weeks because I am hosting my very first Christmas this year (Brent's parents and youngest sister, Camille, are coming) and I want the rolls to be perfect.

~Taco Soup served with plenty of avacado, tortilla chips, and sour cream- Also always a hit. I was interested to see how it would taste because they don't sell "Taco Seasoning" here so I bought a packet of "Mexican Spices" whatever that means. It was yummy. More fajita-y than taco but I think it was better that way.

I didn't feel like typing out the other recipes so if you want them, let me know and I can email them to you.

**Guide to English cooking:
cornflour = cornstarch
courgette = zucchini
single cream = light or regular cream
bacon lardons = not compatible because bacon is totally different here, just crumble your bacon after cooking
400g tin = 16oz can (roughly)

Best. Birthday. Ever.

I turned 25 a week or so ago. Woo! 25! Maybe now I can *start* to feel like an adult?

Anyway, I've been really excited about turning 25 on the 25th since I was in high school and my friend Amanda turned 16 on the 16th. For her "golden birthday" she got 16 presents. Cool, right? So...I always thought it would be sweet to have my own golden birthday, and not just for the presents.

Poor Brent has had to put up with my relentless "reminders" that my 25th birthday was approaching for probably the last 3 years. Now, I'm much more tactful than to insist on 25 presents (because I honestly don't expect OR need that much), but I think I did get a few hints out there that I wanted him to make a big deal of it. And boy did he deliver! Must be because his family does the whole "golden birthday" thing.

He is always really great around my birthday. In fact, for the past couple of years, since he's had exams near my birthday he makes sure to tell me "Happy Birthday" everyday starting around the 10th of the month. Strange boy. This year it was on a Sunday so he took Charlotte and I out to dinner the night before.

On Sunday, after he finally got home from church (he was gone for like 8 hours) he cooked dinner.

While dinner was in the oven we carved pumpkins which sadly got rained on that night and turned to mush with in a matter of days. Brent's is the big one with the giant smile. He free handed it and was finished in less than 5 minutes. Charlotte and I took a bit more time drawing and planning. Mine is the one in the middle. By the time I got the pictures taken, she was kind of mushy so you can't see her tiny vampire teeth anymore but she is cute nonetheless. Charlotte's makes me laugh. It's so goofy. It looks like it's saying something dumb.

Brent inhaled his dinner and then ran upstairs while Charlotte and I finished eating. About 10 minutes later, he called me upstairs to help him with something. I walked into the bedroom to find 25 individually wrapped presents on the ground that he needed help carrying downstairs. I was totally surprised because I didn't expect it and he'd been so busy with work and studying I didn't think he'd even have time to get me a card. All of the boxes could have been filled with socks for all I care because the best part was that Brent was so excited about it and proud of himself for being so sneaky. He put so much thought into it.

There were all kinds of gifts. Here's a small sample: chapstick, hair rubberbands, chocolate, cookies, travel guides, tickets to Les Miserables, and about 1/3 of the gifts were pictures of things he either didn't have time to buy or didn't know what to buy like boots, a dress, a winter coat, an external hard drive to backup all of our pictures, a coupon for a bookstore so I can get a proper English cookbook, and lots of other things. The funniest part was that the picture gifts were all wrapped in random containers from around the house. One was wrapped in a cup, one was in the box for my tripod, one was in the cell phone pouch Brent detattached from his backpack...

Charlotte got me chocolate and The Pursuit of Happyness. And throughout the week before and the week after I got presents and cards in the mail from various family members (Thank you!!). Brent's family sent me a package with all of the materials and patterns to make a cute stuffed animal and this wall hanging.

After the presents we talked to family on Skype and one of my very favorite things from the whole day (possibly the whole month...year?) is when the Gordon girls sang me the birthday song. It was SO cute! Man, I love family!!

So to sum up: I'm *finally* 25 and I had the best birthday ever. Seriously, I haven't had that much fun on a birthday since my mom threw me awesome themed parties when I was little.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

*There are lots of collages in this post. Click to see them larger.*

So here it is, the long awaited post about our trip to Northern Ireland in August. I promised Brent's grandma that if she looked at the blog on Friday, she'd be able to read about it. Here I am, squeaking it in at the last minute...

I'm going to shamelessly plug our favorite travel guides now. Our friends Calvin & Carike introduced us to the AA (UK's AAA) travel guides. They are brilliant! They have guides for whole countries, geographical areas, cities, counties, pretty much anywhere you can think of or need. For this trip, we bought the Essential Ireland guide. We planned the whole trip based off of the suggestions in this book, and a few more I picked up on the Northern Ireland tourist website. I love the the layout and the way they are color coded and they are so much less wordy than Lonely Planet and Rick Steve's guides. Don't get me wrong, those are great guides too but AA's are much better for the ADD inside of everyone that just wants pictures and basic facts. Anyway, AA Essential Ireland travel guide = fabulous holiday. Plus, since it's for the whole of Ireland, we can use it again next year when we plan the trip to the Republic with my parents. Go AA!

On Friday morning (28 August) we flew into Belfast. We picked up our rental car and drove into the city. It was raining off an on and we soon realized this would be the constant throughout our trip. While we were in Belfast we:

-Checked out St. Malachy's Church, The Gaslamp District, St George's Farmer's Market, the new theater on the river, saw a few old police stations that made it VERY obvious there were some serious political troubles in the past, the Queens Bridge and the giant sculpture/statue at the end of the bridge

-Brent led us on a self guided tour of the Titanic Quarter since we had missed the times for the professional ones. We followed the signs down to where the ship was built.

-Found our way back to the center of town and saw some interesting modern art, Prince Albert Clock Tower, City Hall, the Belfast Eye, and had the most scrumptious dinner at a little cafe tucked into the back corner of an alley (it was SOOO good!)

On Saturday morning, we had a huge traditional Irish breakfast, buffet style (go Holiday Inn!) then checked out and hit the road:

-Our first stop was Carrickfergus Castle, my mom's favorite castle and also a tiny little harbor town where some of my ancestors are from. The castle was itty bitty and very cute

-Then we took the coastal road up the east coast and stopped in at Glenariff, the most famous of the 9 Glens of Antrim. We took the 3km waterfall trail through the glen. It was so gorgeous. It felt very much like a rainforest but the air was cool and crisp. Everything was so green and the waterfalls were beautiful. The water had the most strange brown color to it. It wasn't mucky and thick brown like you would expect, it was clear and fresh looking, just a rusty color. We stopped in at the cafe afterwards and had yummy scones with butter. The views from the top of the glen, down into the valley and out to the ocean were indescribable. Seriously, I can't think of a word to describe how amazing the whole experience was. And to top it all off, as we were driving back to the coastal road, we saw the hugest rainbow in the history of the world. We drove for 5 minutes before we couldn't see it anymore. We practically drove right into it. Then when that one was gone, another one appeared. No pot of gold though. Bummer.

-Back in the car, we drove further up the coast to the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge which spans a chasm 23m deep and 20m wide. It goes out to a tiny fishing island. It was was the one thing Brent really wanted to do from the travel book. It was SO scary! I'm not afraid of heights but I am VERY afraid of falling. On the walk out to it and even while we were standing in line it didn't seem that bad but as soon as I set foot on it, I swear the thing doubled in length. I was going to stop and take some awesome pictures but it was all I could do to take one hand off the rail to take a picture without looking. Because of the rain, most of the island was roped off so we headed back. It was a little less nerve wracking but still scary. Gorgeous, but scary.

-Next we checked into our B&B for the night and got back in the car and drove the 3 miles to the Giant's Causeway. It's hard to pick one favorite thing from our trip but this is definitely in the top 3. I was really surprised at how open the whole place is. First of all I expected it to be smaller but even more surprising is that you can just go climb all over it. They have signs to warn you that you are probably headed out too close to the waves but no ropes, no safety gear, no workers telling you to come back. So we explored as close as we could and still feel safe. It was raining a bit and SO windy but we were careful and got some really great pictures and Brent even got some video.

-After that, we headed into the nearest town, Bushmills, to find some dinner and a grocery store to buy food for Sunday. As we were walking down the street, this parade appeared. We're not sure what it was but the first flag said something about Protestant Boys and the banner carried at the back said something about William Johnston Memorial.

On Sunday morning we had a most delicious breakfast cooked by the B&B owner. Seriously the best sausage we've ever had. The soda bread and potato bread were pretty great too. Then we packed up and got ready for church and headed out for the day.

-The first stop was to see the (almost completely disappearing) ruins of Dunseverick Castle. It has no important historical context behind it but it was cool looking nonetheless.

-We found the nearest meetinghouse to where we were staying, the Coleraine Branch. It was the nicest, cleanest, smallest church building we've ever seen. The ward members were so funny and SO very Irish. We hadn't noticed a difference in Irish and Norther Irish accents until we got to church. Their accents were hilarious. We just sat there and smiled for 3 hours. And since it's such a small branch, they all laugh and joke as f they are family. So. Fun. And they were really really welcoming to us. And as a side note, the Irish really do use the word "wee" a lot. Especially in conversation.

-After church, we set off to find the Dark Hedges which I had come across in my trip research. I couldn't find any solid info anywhere as to the exact location or even if it was more than a street with cool trees but we wanted to find it and luckily whoever had our rental car before us had left us a map. It was worth the time and the road detour to get there. It was really cool and could be really spooky if it were dark or foggy.

-Next we went to Dunluce Castle, C.S. Lewis' inspiration for Cair Paravel in the Narnia series. It was truly amazing. Because it was Sunday and because you could pretty much see the whole thing from outside of the paid gate, we didn't go inside. The best part was the view from the road a little way off.

-We continued on the scenic coastal drive that we had started the day before and stopped at the Mussenden Temple. I thought it was going to just be the building, on the edge of a cliff. It turns out it's a national park with ruins of the old mansion (Downhill House) and pretty much the whole original estate. It was gorgeous. Rolling green hills, a giant house right on the ocean...

-Back on the road, we drove to the city of Londonderry, the largest city on the north coast and the closest large city to the border with the Republic. We weren't sure what we were there to see other than the wall surrounding the city that is still standing from the 1600's. We couldn't find the wall because the city has gotten bigger (obviously) so we just drove around a bit and found a nice view from the top of the hill in the cemetery.

-By then it was getting late so we drove off to find our B&B for the next night. It was in Cookstown which is back towards the Belfast side so there was a couple of hours of driving but it was through the gorgeous Sperrin Mountains. I didn't get any pictures because it was foggy and the road was really winding and there were no shoulders so it wasn't safe to pull over but trust us, it was pretty. It had a very different feeling to it than the coastal mountains. They were more rolling than steep and they were covered in wild bushes with dark red and purple flowers.

On Monday we woke up and quickly got ready to leave (the lodging that night wasn't so great), had breakfast and got back in the car for more driving.

-The main stop for the day was the Ulster-American Folk Park which is a mostly outdoor museum that tells the story of emigration from Ireland to America. It was really cool. They had bought original homes and churches and stores, etc from the 17-1800's and relocated them to this 64 acre park. The first half was the "Old World" showing what life was like in Ireland and why they wanted to leave, then we got to the "town" and inside one of the buildings they had recreated a dock scene and we boarded the boat and exited on the other side which was the "New World". The town there was set up like Boston and then the path continued around going past original log cabins that they actually paid to have brought from Pennsylvania. The whole thing was really cool, especially since both Brent and I have ancestors who emigrated from that area of Ireland around that time.

-After the Folk Park, we had planned to drive to the southern part of N. Ireland to a town called Enniskillen to go to a cave there but since it had been raining so much the cave tour was cut down from 75 minutes to 20 and that was not worth the 1.5 hour drive to get there. Sad, but it meant that we now had the rest of the day to go on a Family History hunt. We had the names of some towns of Brent's ancestors and a few of mine so we used the GPS on our phones and got down to business.
-Brent's family (the Blackburn's) came from a town called Loughgall which is where we went first. It is still a small village centered around apple farming. The town was so adorable with potted plants hanging from the street lamps and apples adorning many of the signs. We found the 3 cemeteries in town. One was locked but we were able to explore the other 2. We didn't have any luck though because all of the headstones that were old enough to be his ancestors' were either unreadable or broken or both but we were able to find more recent headstone with other family names on them, really really distant relatives I would imagine. It was cool to be able to drive around and see the area. We were even able to find 2 of the roads mentioned on birth certificates. It is an incredible feeling to be in the spot where someone 200+ years ago stood who would later blaze the trail for our family's life and opportunities in America. It's a sort of reverence but also with joy and excitement. We felt like if we closed our eyes and held really still, we could jump back in time.

-Then it was off to Lisburn to see what we could find of my heritage. We know that one of my great (x 5) grandfathers, William Black, was one of the founders of Methodism in that part of Ireland and my mom and dad have told me about how when they went to Ireland in the 80's, they found the church. I wasn't ever able to get the specifics so we googled it and found the oldest Methodist church in the town (which was conveniently located in "old town") and hoped that was it. William Black's son, William Black and his wife Jane Johnston Black are the first members of the church from that side of my family and I am proud and a little intimidated to be one of their posterity. Those are big shoes to fill.

-After dinner in Lisburn, we headed off to our last B&B. We had seen on their website that there was some kind of ancient celtic stone nearby and thought we would check it out since we had like 15 more minutes of daylight. The B&B owner gave us a map and off we went. We found the little one lane country road and the sign but had a hard time finding the Holestone itself. The sign seemed to point to a cow pasture but there was a small trail on the other side of the road. I took to explore the trail and Brent looked in the field but neither of us found it. So we checked the field again, and there it was, tucked around the corner, on top of a hill. It was very silly but we decided to take part in the centuries old ritual and held hands through the hole in the stone to pledge our eternal love.

-Then back to the B&B for a few hours of sleep. We woke up really early in the morning and returned our rental car and flew home.

It was a really amazing holiday and I can't believe how much we were able to pack into 4 short days. It's been really fun to relive the whole experience while writing this post and I think this is going to be one of the top holidays we will ever go on. Please excuse my over use of the words gorgeous, really, cool, amazing, etc. I don't apologize because it was all of those things. And more, but I didn't want to sound like I wrote this post using a thesaurus. It was truly incredible.

Stats:
2 people
4 days
1 rental car
1 hotel
3 B&B's
340 miles of ground covered (including many winding, sometimes 1 lane roads)
11 hours of driving
2 GPS maps
1 printed google map
1 atlas
1 travel guide
3 castles
2 cameras
1,200+ pictures
4 days of rain
4 waterfalls (2 of them spotted randomly from the car whilst driving)
2 giant rainbows
green as far as the eye could see

Awesome.

*I'll post a link sometime in the near future to the online photo album in case any of you are interested in seeing the original pictures, not in collage form.*

Poor Choice of Words

I had been planning to blog on Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday. Not sure why I chose that day. Probably because it's not Monday and it's still early enough in the week that I might get a post in before one or more of my sisters sent my weekly "reminder" that I was neglecting my blogger duties. I had begun writing it in my head and per my usual process came up with my witty title first. It was going to be "Back From the Dead" and would chronicle what we've been doing since I last blogged. Then on Monday afternoon I found out that my grandpa had passed away. Sooooo, I will not be using that title, as you've already noticed.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this posting. Let's see...I haven't blogged since 10 August...What the heck? I really almost went 2 months without blogging?! No wonder Melissa and Cami keep nagging me about it. :P

Here's what we've been up to the last 2 months:

- I did 8 sessions of acupuncture. It was weird at first then by the end I totally loved it and even cried a couple of times because I felt so good/relaxed/calm. The jury is still out on whether it did anything other than help me relax and sleep better.
-Brent got back into hard core studying. We are currently 27 days and 10 hours away from exam day (as calculated by the countdown in the sidebar). Yikes! I'm not sure if that feels soon or far away.
-We went to Northern Ireland for the Late Summer Holiday weekend. I'll blog about that next. No promises but I'm thinking Saturday or Monday? Who knows, maybe I"ll feel extra ambitious and just do it tomorrow.

-I got really motivated and energized and deep cleaned the house in 3 days. I now remember why we HAD to live in this house. It's adorable.
-Finally finished hanging pictures on the walls downstairs and got most of upstairs done too. Maybe soon the house will finally be ready for it's video tour. Again, no promises.
-Did several sewing projects both for other people and myself and the house. Here's my favorite one. They are wall hangings (which have yet to be hung) to go in the Grandma Room, which is our spare room and dedicated to our grandmas. The quilt B's G'ma made for him as a boy is on the bed, and some trinkets from my late g'ma are on the mantle and the room is just light and airy and has an adorable fireplace and makes me feel like I'm back in time. So, I wanted something on the wall that was both reminiscent of simpler days, but also up to date. Don't know if I accomplished both of those, but I like them. A lot. And I'm proud of my quilting skills.

My other favorite project is the bag I found a pattern for on the internet and then copied/tweaked/enlarged to my own liking. I've made a few different versions, this one is my favorite. It is made from fabric someone gave me that they had leftover from a sewing class I taught at church.

-I taught a sewing class at church. The Relief Society President saw my Michelle bag (that I learned to make from the sewing class my good friend Michelle taught back in LA last year) and asked if I would please teach our ward. It went pretty well (despite how 3 of the 7 sewing machines stopped working halfway through causing us to stay until 10:30 because people REALLY wanted to finish their bags). We had a good turnout and everyone was very pleased with their final products. One lady wanted to know if I had a pattern for a smaller, children's version so I scaled down my pattern and she made one for her daughter. I love it so much, I made a permanent pattern for it and am going to start to making them for little people too. Why didn't I think of that?
-Brent finally got counselors for his Elders Quorum Presidency. Life is much easier with counselors, even though they haven't had to do much yet.
-We had friends from LA come and visit. Michele and Dessin celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary earlier in the summer and decided to see Europe. Dessin served his mission in London 30+ years ago and we have a free room so it just made sense. We had fun hosting them and I'm pretty sure they must have slept for a week once they got home because they certainly didn't sleep much in the 10 days they were here!
-Brent worked on a special project at work. He enjoyed the break from his normal routine, got to work with a friend who is on a different team and it was a good learning experience. He helped audit/assess one of Zurich's subsidiaries.
-I started teaching cello lessons to an 8 year old boy at church. He has been playing the violin for 2 years and recently decided he wanted to learn cello too, so his mum asked me if I'd be willing to teach him lessons. I was a cello teacher when I was in high school but that was awhile ago so I was a bit nervous. Luckily, he already knows the basic concepts of string instruments so that makes it so much easier. Seriously. He wants to learn via the Suzuki method (because that's what he's doing in violin) which I have my beef with but it does have some really good points to it. I just made sure Sam understands we will also be learning note names and doing scales and warm-ups, not just learning finger positions and playing song after song.
-Teaching cello has re-excited me about my own playing and I think I need to devote time, at least once a week, to get my cello out and play. I'm sure at first I'll be quite rusty and will spend most of my time doing scales and essentials but hope to work my way back up to some of the solo pieces I was playing 7-8 years ago. I've set a goal to be able to play the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 sometime in the future (in maybe like 2 years? how about before we move from London?). We'll see how that goes. I do know that I miss playing music. I'm not much for solo pieces because I'm more of a full orchestra kind of girl but maybe I'll get good again and can try out for a local symphony or something someday.
-Brent and I have outlined our travel plans through the end of the year and we are really excited about what's waiting for us after his exam is over. For a little sneak peek, see the other countdown on the side bar.
-A Portuguese woman moved into our ward and because Brent is the EQ Pres and one of the only people in our ward that speaks Portuguese, he has been spending a lot of time getting her moved into council housing (free/charity housing available through the government) and arranging for ward members to paint her flat and finding a cooker, fridge/freezer and washing machine from various people in the stake. It's been an interesting experience but she and her son are settling more now and their free flat isn't quite as run-down. We are hoping she learns quickly in her English classes so that she can get a job and move to a better area soon.
-3 new American families moved into the ward and they all have children and there are also several families investigating the church so our Primary has gone from 15-18 kids (total) on a good day to 19 in Junior Primary alone. Sharing Time has been fun and I'm kind of glad I'm in the Presidency and not a teacher. We may need to call some assistant teachers because the classes are getting quite full. It's exciting.
-We had a lodger move in with us. Her name is Charlotte, she is 18 and from Bath. She recently started at university and wasn't able to find housing before the semester started so she called our RS Pres who in turn asked if we could house her. She moved in the day Michele & Dessin went home and will be living with us until her semester ends on Dec 18th, the same day my in-laws come from UT so there will be some tight scheduling but it's not a problem. She reminds us a lot of Brent's sister, Molly, and she's very easy to get along with. It was a little strange the first week but we are all getting used to each other now and it is nice to have someone else around, especially since Brent's turning into Study Brent for the next few weeks. She also pays room and board, so that sure doesn't hurt.
-And because I love you all, I'll share something that always makes me laugh:

Ok, so I think that's about it. I'm sure there are more little things but I bet you're all tired of reading at this point anyway. Where are all the pictures, you say? Well, there will be plenty when I post about N. Ireland so just hold your horses.