The Quest Begins

Saturday evening we embarked on an epic quest to save the world with our friends Jeff and Lauren. They are a favorite couple to have dinner and game nights with, so we decided to go in together to get a copy of Pandemic Legacy. The basic Pandemic game is a co-operative game where you work together to save the world from rapidly spreading diseases. In Pandemic Legacy, you play the game twelve times, once for each month of the year. Each time you play, the events that occur permanently alter the events and characters for future games.

Our first game was a success, we were able to cure all four diseases in the first month. It was fun to start something that is going to continue building on itself as we go.

Summer Visit

We wasted no time getting down to California after school ended. The time I was able to get off work actually started during finals week, but Joshua was able to get all of his stuff done early. 

We left after I got off work on Thursday and arrived in Modesto during the night. The next morning we began our visit in style with brunch on the patio with Dave, Joy, Solace, and Amari.

We had a tour of the garden and I had tomato envy when I saw that a number of Dave's plants already have beautiful ripe tomatoes on them. They were delicious to eat while we were there. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon relaxing and visiting with Dave, including a delicious sushi lunch. Mid-afternoon we headed down to Visalia and met up with everyone at Mom and Dad's house for dinner and a sleepover. It was pretty exciting to get to see all seven of our nieces and nephews in one day. 

The next morning we had breakfast together and played games and hung out.

Heather and I are reading Moby Dick together for our classic literature book club, which is just the two of us. It's been a great book so far and fun to read through at the same time.

After church on Sunday, we had lunch at the new Blaze pizza place. Then we went over to the Nickell's house to check out their garden and the arcade console that Isaac and Evan built together. After awhile we all headed out to Mom and Dad's again for Sunday night dinner. It was Isaac and Heather's week to make dinner and they made a Mediterranean feast for dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. 

We had decided that since Dad's birthday was the next day we should have a chocolate cake recipe taste test. Heather used the Hershey's chocolate cake recipe and the next day I used Trisha Bushway's chocolate cake recipe that is a bit more work but one we have been enjoying for years. The Hershey's cake recipe was delicious and a great start to our taste test.

Dad was able to get most of Monday off for his birthday and we took a trip up to Sequoia National Park. We found a picnic area by a meadow with no one else around and enjoyed a picnic lunch together and some relaxing in the sun.

After lunch, we spent a little time exploring a patch of flowers in the field.

Next, we headed over to the General Sherman Tree, which Emery was particularly excited to hear was the largest tree in the world.

Back at Mom and Dad's house, we had ribs for birthday dinner and Trisha's chocolate cake for dessert. Both cakes were delicious and there were things we liked about each, so there really wasn't a clear winner, besides all of us who got to eat all the chocolate cake.

Wednesday morning, we returned to Modesto and spent the next couple days hanging out with Gayle, Dave, Joy, Lamar, Solace, and Amari.

On Friday, we got to see the dance show that Joy had been working on putting together at the dance studio. The theme for the week long dance camp this year was Under the Big Top and the dancers ranged in age from 4 to 10, I think. Anyway, it was a fun show and Joy and her team had a done a great job putting it together.

Saturday we spent most of the day relaxing at the house, then had a dinner with everyone to celebrate Father's Day. After Lamar and Joy left to put their kids to bed, we played cards with the new cards Gayle got during her quilting retreat at Lake Tahoe last week.

 

Sunday we made the long drive back home and discovered that even though it had been cool and cloudy most of the time we were gone, our garden had grown a lot.

And we had ripe raspberries; what a treat!

Our borage plants were huge and blooming.

We brought home lots of grapefruit, plums, and peaches from our parents' trees and promptly set to work eating and processing them. We dehydrated and made fruit leather from the plums and froze and made peach jam from the peaches. This jam was our first canning project for the year, so it was pretty exciting.

First Harvest

We had our first harvest from the garden a couple days ago. Although maybe it is a stretch to call it that because it was actually just me thinning the beets and borage. But then we had beet greens and borage leaves, so we put them to good use. The small borage leaves we ate on tuna sandwiches and I made borage chimichurri with the bigger leaves. We had it on salmon with dinner that night and it was good. It wasn't our favorite way to eat fish, but it was fun to try something new. The beet greens we added to burritos the following night. It is so exciting to be starting to enjoy the goodness growing outside.

As you can see, now that we have had some warm sunny days, the garden is doing quite well.

Four Years

We celebrated our fourth anniversary on Thursday with lunch together and sushi dinner the following evening. We have been busy lately with work and school and it was particularly nice to relax and enjoy spending time together.

Garden Update 5/22

  I haven't had a garden update for awhile because there's not much to report. We have had a lot of cool, cloudy days this month, so a number of my little sprouts are only slightly larger than when I transplanted them to the garden over a month ago. I have also planted more seeds than ever before because we'll have a few warm sunny days and I'll plant a bunch of seeds, but then it cools off and gets cloudy and lots of the seeds never sprout. Or pop up briefly, but then disappear. It has been discouraging. That being said, I do have lots of new little plants still hanging in there and working hard to grow. My green beans and sugar peas managed to sprout during a brief period of sun and grew like crazy for a couple days. There are a few things that seem to be doing really well, like the borage above. And my little Black Prince tomato sprout has grown quite a bit too. We also have raspberries on our two bushes.

Fish Tacos

One of my coworkers gave me some of her favorite tortillas that she brought back from a recent trip to Arizona. So I cooked up some tilapia and made a strawberry pineapple salsa to go with it and we had delicious fish tacos. The tortillas were really good and it was a tasty way to remind ourselves that summer is coming.

April Activites

April, as is often the case at the beginning of a new term, was a month of social activities. Every weekend we had one or two, usually two, things going on from birthday parties to dinner and game nights to a lovely visit from Ben and Rachel with their three girls. It is always a lot of fun to hang out with everyone and catch up with our friends from school. Usually by about week five, which is halfway through classes for the term, everyone gets so busy with school that we don't see anyone until it is over.

Second year philosophy graduate students: Sarah, Claire, Devin, Martina, Joshua, and Bonnie (not pictured)

We finally got a picture of most of Joshua's cohort; the above was taken at the beginning of the month at Sweet Cheeks winery where we were celebrating Martina's birthday. Last weekend we hosted a second year dinner at our house. All of the above pictured people came, plus Shelley, Martina's partner. We enjoyed soup and salad for dinner and a nice evening relaxing and visiting together.

This weekend was the end of week five, so we didn't have any social events for the first time since the term started and it was nice to have a more relaxing weekend. Next weekend breaks the trend with a birthday party for Shelley on Friday night.

Garden Beginnings

We have been busy out in our yard recently. A couple weekends ago, we rented a rototiller and Joshua turned over the soil in our garden plots and we mixed in some manure. That was a big project. We have two garden beds, the above we are planning to turn into a bed for permanent plants, so we planted raspberries, blueberries, and rhubarb. Our second bed will be for a summer garden.

Last weekend, I shaped the summer garden bed into rows and planted some seeds.

This weekend we got to transplant some of our sprouts into the garden bed. It is so exciting to be planning and preparing our garden and seeing the plants sprout and start to grow.

Easter

Happy Easter! Christ has risen, alleluia, alleluia!

Dinner with Friends

We had dinner last night with some of our friends at their house and we got to take dessert. Since I had some fresh lemons from the Kerrs' trees, I decided to make lemon curd tarts. That was a fun project and they turned out quite tasty. We enjoyed eating them together, along with a delicious dinner and an edge-of-our-seats game of Pandemic where we were just barely able to cure all the diseases to pull off a win.

Meeting Amari

 We finally got a chance to get down to California to meet our new nephew, Amari. It was a short visit, but we got to spend a lot of time holding the baby and visiting with Joy and Solace. He is a sweet little guy and such a cutie. 

Uncle Joshua holding him for the first time.

Friday afternoon we met up with my side of the family in Fresno to go ice skating. It had been a number of years since I had ice skated, so it was a lot of fun to do it again and the kids all loved it. Emery was pretty hesitant at first, but once she got out there with some help she loved it. Most of the following pictures from the day are from Heather.

 Notice that Natalie and I are wearing matching jeans. Apparently, she dug hers out of the closet so we could match and they were exactly the color of the jeans I happened to be wearing that day.

Can't get enough of these beautiful ladies!

Here's the ice skating group. The session at the ice rink was from 3-6pm, so after we got done skating we met up with Dad and Isaac at a restaurant that served Chinese and Thai food. It was great to get to visit with everyone while we skated and than at dinner. I think we all felt the time was too brief because we lingered in the parking lot after dinner for awhile. Nevertheless, it was a good visit and nice to see everyone. I was really thankful that we were able to work out a way to all meet up during our brief time in California.

Back in Modesto, we enjoyed more time with baby Amari. We had a second family dinner with the Kerrs on Saturday and enjoyed a more relaxed day around the house. Gayle pulled out a number of the quilts that she has, including some of her first quilts and some made by her grandmother, and we had fun admiring all of them and taking pictures.

More pictures with the baby! These ones were taken by Lamar.

After everyone else left, we settled down to a game of Hearts with Dave and Gayle; a good way to end a great visit. The next morning we hit the road and came home. Although it would have been wonderful to have more time to spend with everyone, I kind of liked the short visit. It just felt more normal because we were there for a few days and saw everyone, then said see you again soon.