Draco floats!

This weekend I was determined to see if Draco can swim or not. I figured part of the requirements to being a "real" dog is being able to swim. Yesterday after church, we took off for a nearby lake.



We had to keep him on a leash, so we decided to just walk him out into the water into it was deep enough for him to float. So far so good! He didn't mind being in the water at all. But as soon as he had to start swimming, he turned around and headed straight for the shore. He knew how to swim alright! We felt a little bad forcing him to swim, when he was clearly distressed out there. We didn't get it on film until about the 3rd time. By then, he knew what we were trying to do to him! So he resisted at first, but eventually went out to sea. Enjoy the video!

Julia Child

About 6 months ago, a movie came out called Julie & Julia which tells the true story of a young American lady's quest to cook her way through Julia Child's prolific cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Heather and I both loved the movie! It motivated us to seek out some original Julia Child materials. We went to the library and found a DVD of her cooking show The French Chef and enjoyed it very much! She was a very wonderful, fun teacher and many of her recipes are quite practical...and delicious looking! We also found her cookbook at the library and thought it would be fun to look through it and make a few things!!

This long weekend proved a good time for trying some new things!
Heather made this beautiful apple custard tart. Just think Mom and Dad, Heather's awesome apple pie but cranked up a couple notches! Didn't think it could get there? Add a homemade crust to die for, and a rich, hand-whipped custard and here it is.



After a little dusting of powdered sugar, this thing was beautiful...and delicious!

This morning for brunch, I made something called Rapee Morv Andelle which is a Gratin of potato, ham, and onion.



We still have a few recipes to attempt, including: Mussels, Fondue, Ratatouille, Chocolate Mousse, hollandaise & bernaise sauces, lady fingers, and steak with a red wine sauce. YUM YUM!!! While no Julia Child, we are really enjoying trying some new recipes, and expanding our repertoire!

So much fun in Nashville!

Hey y'all! Here we are with yet another blog entry. I know, we could almost make this a regular thing! We can dream right? So what's new in Nashville...

We survived the great flood of May 2010. In a span of 2 days, Nashville received somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 inches of rain. It is one thing to imagine a blanket of 15 inches of water falling all across middle Tennessee, but then to realize that water runs to low areas and ends up as 10 feet of water here and there is an entirely different concept that very very quickly became our reality. Fortunately for us, our apartment is on relatively high ground so we were spared from the quickly gathering water. While all of our windows leaked (to the tune of using ALL of our towels to mop up water!) and we had some wet carpet in the coat closet, and losing power about half way through the weekend, we were spared any major damage. Without power, we were no longer able to monitor the storm and its devastating effects. The true scope of the damage would become clear to us in the next few days. Catching glimpses of the devastation in the news and driving around town was eye-opening to say the least. Several neighborhoods just 1/2 a mile from our apartment were essentially destroyed. Houses, while still standing, needed to be completely gutted. Now there are gigantic piles of debris, sheetrock, and cabinets in front of each house. Clean up has begun, but will take a great deal of time to complete. In all of this, two things have been made very clear. First, the grace of God is with us always and we thank Him for sparing our home. And secondly, the Nashville community is wonderfully resilient! Community outreach has been extensive and fundraisers are everywhere. I'm sure in a short while, all of Nashville will be back to full strength and better than ever! One last thing to give some scope on the amount of rain, the previous 2-day record for rain fall was a little over 6 inches. Yes, this more than DOUBLED the previous record!! Needless to say, this is easily the wettest month in Nashville history, by far.

Well, I see that this is already getting pretty long, so I think I will try a "Nicole", and break this up into several smaller posts! Up next, cooking with Julia Child, and Draco takes a swim!

See Draco on Youtube!

Hey everyone! We put up our first video on Youtube yesterday of Draco watching other dogs on our laptop. It was just too funny to keep to ourselves! Hope you enjoy!

LONG TIME, NO BLOG!

This is our first blog of the year as a certain sister recently pointed out. Time has gotten away from us for sure. There has been a lot going on in the past few months, here are a few highlights!

Christmas (yeah, it's true, we haven't even blogged about Christmas!):
As you all know we did not go home to Washington for Christmas, but we did have some special visitors for the holiday! Thanks Mom and Dad for making the trip! We had a great time doing all kinds of Tennessee things including the Grand Ole Opry, Gaylord Opry Land Hotel, Andrew Jackson's home (Old Hickory) and of course Christmas dinner!




And some Guitar Hero! So much fun!!!



Superbowl:
This year the party was at our apartment. We invited Tim's classmates (10 people) and I was already worried about having that many people in our tiny apartment. Then more people were invited! We ended up having 17 people in all!!! Oh my goodness, there were like 7 people in our 2 bum kitchen. It turned out to be an awesome time! Although, I don't know if we will have it at our place next year. We'll just have to wait and see!



Birthday:
Thanks to my hubby and best friends, I had just about the best birthday ever! The Saturday before my birthday, Tim had to go to school to study, so I was at home in my pj's relaxing. I was on the phone with my Mom when all of a sudden Emily walks through the door. I started yelling and screaming and jumping around!!!! Tim had gone to the airport instead of school and picked up Seth and Emily. I still can't believe they pulled it off! We spent a great week hanging out with our best friends doing what best friends do: The boys toured the Corvette assembly factory and the Maker's Mark distillery in Kentucky. Meanwhile the girls got our toes done up and shopped till we dropped!





5K Run:
Some of my co-workers convinced me to run with them as a corporate team in a 5K run on April 10th. I have always hated running, why I said yes, we'll never know!

Go team, go!


We did great, scored 4th in our division! And for some crazy reason we have two others planned for this summer which I also plan to run. So running is my new thing, I have a goal to run the entire 5K without stopping, Ive got a ways to go, but having fun and feeling great!

San Diego:
A couple weeks ago, Tim and all of his classmates flew out to San Diego for the American Academy of Audiology convention. He spent 4 days in the sun having a great time checking out the impressive exhibits and all the sunny sights of southern California! Some of the highlights included going to a Padres baseball game, a Beach Boys concert on the deck of the USS Midway (aircraft carrier!!), AND BEST OF ALL...Cami drove down one afternoon and met up with Tim for lunch. They both had the best time catching up on everything!

Things to come:
Tim is making his way through finals this week and next, and is gearing up to working full time on his research project for the next two months. Heather is still working at Zander Insurance and is really enjoying her coworkers. She is going through the process of training for her next 5K...who would have thought?! In June Heather will be flying to Seattle for her friend Jamie's wedding. She will be meeting her parents there for a few days of fun in the Emerald City as well!

So that concludes our first update of 2010! Haha! Sorry Cami and everyone else for slacking sooo badly. Here's hoping that we stay up to date at least for a while. Love you all!

A post wouldn't be complete without a cute picture of Draco!

Thanksgiving and Pre-Christmas

Hey ya'll! It's been a month since our last post and quite a lot has gone on since then! We had a great Thanksgiving meal, have started decorating for Christmas, and Tim is nearing the end of his first semester at Vandy.



Heather was not able to get much time off from work for Thanksgiving so we decided to stay in Nashville and cook our own meal for the first time. We, Heather especially, were a bit nervous about cooking a turkey unsupervised. In true Tim and Heather fashion, we sought the advice of professionals weeks in advance. Translation, called both moms and took notes on Thanksgiving specials on the Food Network. Fortunately our planning paid off and we ended up with a simple to cook, delicious turkey! We also spread out the cooking over a couple days which decreased our stress levels at any given time. Thursday morning was surprisingly calm. We spent half the morning sitting on the couch and watching the parade while the turkey was in the oven. Our menu also included: dressings with homemade bread, Heather's garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, deviled eggs,cranberry relish, and a pumpkin pie!. We ended up with enough food to feed 6-8 people! After stuffing ourselves, we felt like we had just as much food as we started with! A week or so later we had finally finished off the leftovers. A definitely successful first Thanksgiving!



Leftovers!





With Christmas rapidly approaching, we (Heather) have been thinking more and more about decorating the apartment. Last year we had a tiny, pathetic, fiber-optic tree. Needless to say that it didn't make the trip with us to Nashville. So, a few days ago we went out and got our first real tree! Tim ended up setting up quite the learning experience when it came to securing the tree to the roof of our car. He rolled down the windows and ran rope over the tree and through the windows (one rope through the front windows, and one through the back). As soon as he finished tightening the last knot, he realized "oh great. I tied the doors shut!" We decided instead of doing the ropes all over again, we would just crawl in through the windows NASCAR style. It was pretty comical to see us both laughing hysterically while crawling into the car through the windows in the busy Walmart parking lot. I'm sure we got a few looks from passersby. One thing is for sure, we'll never do that again! Tim blamed the situation on always having a pickup to throw the tree into. We resolved to have our next vehicle be a pickup of some kind.



With Christmas just 19 days away, we are eagerly looking forward to having Tim's parents join us in Nashville for the holiday. We have a long list of things to do with them in the few short days they will be here, and we couldn't be more excited to show them around!

Happy Halloween!

We are loving the fall season! The weather has been cool and the leaves are turning beautiful colors. We went to a pumpkin farm to pick out pumpkins a few weeks ago. We met a group of Tim's classmates and all took part in the fun activities at the farm. We successfully competed a corn maze, took a fun hay ride, oh yeah, and picked out pumpkins! We had a great time!




We both have a lot of fun carving pumpkins, I'm not sure we will ever grow out of it! Draco liked smelling the pumpkins, he was very curious about the whole event!



We even dressed up and went out to a Halloween party! Tim dressed as Lieutenant Dangle from Reno 911 and I was a beauty queen. We had a fantastic time!

These past few weeks of fall activities has been a great start to the holiday season! Thanksgiving will be here before we know it!