Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Merry Christmas!

I had an awesome Christmas this year! A few days before the big day, we made cookies.



A lot of cookies.



This is what lilly likes to do while we cook. Makes it kind of difficult.



We had the tree trimmed, and we received so many gifts to put "underneath" it!



My actual Christmas Day didn't start out too well. I was on call at work, so I was there from 630am Christmas Eve until 730 Christmas morning, and it was busy. In a bad way. Ick. And Chris was at work overnight too, so we missed UPS and the mailman, so we didn't receive several packages. Then we both came home and after a few hours of sleep, things started to look up. First, we made cinnamon rolls for breakfast.



Yum!



Then, Chris chose to open his big present first, that I was so excited to give him!



And he loved it!



Lilly got a stocking of her own from Bob and Fran. She knew right away that it was hers, so we had it stashed on the top shelf until Christmas day!





She definitely loved her toys.



I got a wonderful cardigan from Chris, and a flashlight from Chris's parents that you can shake up to charge and make it light up.



Later on, we made ourselves a feast of fondue. Delicious!



We also enjoyed a couple of holiday beverages.



Hope your Christmas was wonderful too!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Honeymoon, part 5 (where we eat seafood and cheese)

I know, I know, this isn't that exciting - how do I manage to drag it out for 4+ parts??

A couple of notes about things we did on the island besides lay around reading.

We were both proud new owners of ipod Touch (Touches? anyway, we had new ipods) that we had given each other as a wedding gift. They can access the internet through a wifi connection, which came in super handy on the trip. Several places had wifi, but we found one bar in particular that we ended up visiting almost every day. We would each buy a beer, and check in on our email, the NFL, facebook, and our wedding photographer's blog to see if any pictures were up yet. (A girl can dream!) The same guy was always working there, and he was very nice and spoke some English. We were usually the only people there.





While we were staying on the Canary Islands, everything was so touristy. We ate at a couple of the restaurants, but were completely underwhelmed.



There was one American themed restaurant, I can't even remember what we ate there but I definitely remember the margaritas:



(They didn't taste very good, but they sure looked cool for a few seconds!)

We also went to a little cafe that served this Swedish-style sandwich, with meatballs and cranberry stuff, along with fresh juice. That was pretty good.



We tried a pizza one night, and that is actually an egg in the center. Oddly enough, it was good!



We didn't really have enough supplies to cook much at the apartment, and we did get some snacks to keep around but we often didn't end up eating much. The kitchen was very handy, though.



The dishwasher was actually smaller than ours.



When we arrived, we asked the owner of the apartment we stayed in to give us a restaurant recommendation. He gave us a name and said it was minutes from our door. The first night we were there, we looked all over for this restaurant - he had said they served more authentic Canarian food than the other restaurants we'd find on the beach. We could not find it! We were both super disappointed, especially after trying a couple of the restaurants in the resort area. We were pretty much living on snacks and watery beer when Chris talked me into asking the guy at the bar where we frequently checked our email. He told us where to go, and we tried again - it was in a spot that we had actually walked right by the first time we looked, but I had written down the name wrong. We ate there, and it was good. It wasn't the best food I've ever had, but it did seem more authentic than the other places. The first night, we had cheese and we each had a fish filet.



Chris got upset because the guy didn't give him enough time to think about his order, and he ended up getting something that he wasn't sure he wanted.



It was ok tasting. We did go back another night, and had the same waiter, and this time we tried the ceviche for two. It was pretty tasty! Again, not the best ever, but good.





On our last night there, I talked Chris into eating at the Chinese restaurant.



I was curious to try it, because the Chinese food we ate in Peru was really, really good. Not that chinese food in Peru has anything to do with Chinese food on the Canary Islands. But that's why I wanted to check it out. Besides, our other option was chips and cheese at the apartment. I thought it was worth a try. It was pretty good. :)

Monday, December 21, 2009

We Got A Storm!

There was a huge storm on the East Coast this weekend that brought tons of rain, snow, wind, and cold. We got hit on Saturday night with several inches of snow. I had to interrupt my honeymoon tales to share the pictures of our backyard!



I tried to take a photo of my boot to show that it goes up above my ankle, but I can only bend around so much!



Lilly LOVES the snow and had a blast playing outside.







She is a pro at finding her ball, even when it lands in the middle of a big pile of snow!









So, needless to say, we had no use for these on Sunday...



That's my snow story! Believe me, by the time I took these pictures, there was nothing but dirty slush on the streets and sidewalks. Glad we had our backyard!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Honeymoon, part 4 (where we ride bikes and see more resorts)



I mentioned that we wanted to rent bikes. We had looked into it before going out there, and it sounded like there were multiple bike rental shops. Well, there weren't, at least not close to us. Tons of car rental places though. We went to one place that had a sign outside that they rented bikes as well as cars, but the woman inside looked at us like we were crazy when we said we wanted to rent bikes! She also told us that they only had men's bikes, so there wouldn't be any short enough for me. Now THAT'S crazy. As if only men ride bikes. At some point in the week, we discovered another bike rental shop, inside a hotel we hadn't even known was there. So on one of our last days there, we managed to rent actual bikes.



We cruised down the beach to another, even more resort-packed area.



Beyond the beach area you can see a bunch of sand dunes. We walked through these a bit.



We had wanted to ride through the mountains in the center of the island, but as I mentioned, we didn't know how large the island was! We also hadn't taken into account the inaccessibility to bikes. We had to ride on the edge highway for some parts of our ride, which was a little scary. So we ultimately decided to skip trying to get into the mountains to ride around. But we did manage to find a place to stop for a refreshing beverage while on our way to return the bikes.





We saw a guy come kite surfing up to the shore. It was fun seeing all the surfers.







We also saw a guy making sand shapes, which were pretty cool!







Then, to return the bikes.