Thursday, January 28, 2010

Oh No...The Big 3-0!

Yes, it's official...I have an old man for a husband! Happy 30th Birthday Rico!!

I can't go into grande detail about his birthday present yet, but I promise to fill you in afterward since he gets this email too and I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise ;) I will tell you we are going out to The Keg tonight for dinner since he gets a free steak dinner for his birthday every year from them and we all know, this southern girl will never pass up a free steak! Wow, that makes me sound like a cheapskate, lol!

This week is the last of my payroll duties. Holly comes back from maternity leave on February 8th to start the new pay cycle. I'm kind of sad. Not sad she's coming back - she makes the accounting department more exciting, lol. But I am sad to lose the extra job duties. I actually liked Payroll and it definitely kept me busy. The good news is that I can add the experience to my resume, which should help when we start looking for new jobs in Colorado.

On that note, I'm looking at getting a 2nd job, part time, in order to help us pay down our credit cards a little faster and put more towards our savings. So far, no nibbles but I kind of expected that with the way the economy is. But I will keep looking and get more serious about it after Florida - it wouldn't exactly look great to a new employer to say, "I know I just started but can I have the next week off??"

I had a data entry project at work this past week, which made it for a pretty hectic week (a double payroll week and the extra project). As most of you know, I don't like the fact that during the winter, my job slows down to the point that the work day is dragging by. So when this project presented itself, I volunteered eagerly. We were taking leads out of the Puget Sound Business Journal's annual Best Businesses of the Year report and converting it to an excel. This report detailed which businesses were the most profitable overall, and in each specific field, as well as the best businesses to work for based on employer paid insurance/benefits/paid time off/diversity, in both public and private sectors. I found it really interesting to review for this area but it also gave me the idea to look for the same publication in Colorado Springs. I think it will help Rico and I look for jobs at companies that may or may not advertise openings in the places we normally would look.

Rico figured out exactly how many classes he has left. After this quarter (ends in March), he has 4 classes remaining to take (two each quarter). That means....wait for it... He will be finished by the end of Summer! He is applying for Graduation this quarter!! So exciting! I am so proud of him!

Other good news, we are getting double the amount of $$ we expected on our tax return. I expected to get back the same amount we got last year when we filed separately but apparently, the magic of our wedding bands makes our tax return double! Whoohoo!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Gooood Morning!

I went to work a little bit early this morning and boy, was I glad...this was my drive to work!!
Mt. Rainier in the distance...We had an absolutely gorgeous day yesterday... highs into the 60's if you can believe that! It's supposed to be another beautiful day today and go back to normal tomorrow.

The ribs didn't turn out great...they were just ok. Rico said they tasted like pot roast which I guess isn't bad but not what we were going for. We wanted bbq ribs, but we've been lazy and haven't gotten the propane tank refilled for the grill so everything is being cooked inside now.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Fun weekend

Saturday morning we got up early and met up with two other couples to head up to Snoqualmie Summit to go tubing. We went to the 9am session because Saturdays tend to be super busy and the later you wait, the more people you have to deal with and less times you get to go down the hill. We spent 2 hours sliding down the hill on inner tubes and trudging up the hill afterward (ok we only hoofed it up once and that was enough for us - the rest of the trips up we hopped a ride on the tube lift!).

After freezing our butts off, we warmed up at the Pancake House where Shane and Amanda treated us to breakfast. Then we all headed back home for a nap. Later that night, we met up with Shane & Amanda and John & Stacy again to go to Karaoke. Now neither of us are really into karaoke but that's what they wanted to do so we joined. And Rico did actually get up and do quite a few numbers (of course that could have been the Patron shots that the bar had on special, which also happens to be his drink of choice after Corona). He is actually a pretty decent singer (which is why he did so well in his middle & high school choir).

We had grand intentions of having a romantic steak dinner at the Keg for our 1 year anniversary on Sunday...yeah that didn't happen. We were both so sore from tubing on Saturday, that all we did on Sunday was lounge around and watch movies after sleeping in late. I never thought tubing was that physical but apparently it is. Our whole bodies hurt and our throats were raw from breathing all the cold air (I blame mine on the cold, Rico can blame his on the singing the night before). We did dig into the top layer of our wedding cake though...it was a little dry but it was still really good for being in the freezer for a year.

So a pretty good weekend, I say. Tonight we're doing bbq ribs in the crockpot. I'll let you know how they turn out!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Cooking adventures...

A success!

One of my e-friends mentioned she was going to make Kalua pork in the crock pot and I decided that since we love Kalua Pork I would attempt to make it at home. I got the recipe from this site and it turned out delicious! I sauteed cabbage to go along with it. It turned out to be one of my most favorite recipes so far. We didn't add rice so it wasn't exact this picture below but pretty darn close.

Because we had a ton of leftover pork, I also did the Pork Lo Mein from the same site. I was kind of hesitant to make this because I've never been very good at spaghetti recipes (other than traditional spaghetti). I added spinach and red, yellow and orange bellpeppers in an attempt to make it a little healthier. It looked something similar to this, with no snow peas.

Apparently, Rico loved it! He inhaled it! He said it was even better than the Mongolian Grill we go to. That's the best compliment I could have ever gotten!!

Rico now has his CPAP machine. His sleeping has definitely improved. They said it would probably take about a month for him to get used to wearing it so he hasn't worn it for a full night quite yet but he's working up to it. But Mom and Bucky will definitely notice a difference in the noise level when we visit them in February :) Speaking of which, only one month to go! Time to start tanning!

I had to spend $400 today to get my car fixed, blah! Rico's sure I got ripped off but who knows, but I probably was. I had the 36,00 mile check, my rotors were warped so they had to resurface them, oil change, tire rotation, break fluid was flushed and replaced and they checked my air bag light because it randomly came on while we were driving home from Seattle one night. The one good thing about going to my dealer for this is they are replacing my tires for free. Because I purchased my car with them and continue to get my oil changed with them, they'll replace my tires free for life. So Tuesday, I get new tires.