Quick Update

I've been extremely behind in my blogging duties lately, but not without good excuse! The husband and I very spontaneously decided to take a trip to Tampa over President's Day weekend and go to Busch Gardens. It was an awesome time and we REALLY needed the time alone together doing something fun!

The hubby and me on the safari train ride.

It had been probably four or five years since I'd been on a roller coaster, I'd forgotten how much I love them! They had some great ones! We were able to get pretty up close and personal with some animals. We went on a train ride through "the Serengeti" and came across a rhino standing about 25 feet from us, without a fence or glass or any type of barrier. Thank God when it decided to run it ran AWAY from the train.

This photo was taken without any zoom and was not cropped!

Immediately after returning on Sunday evening from our impromptu mini vacation I had to begin shopping, cleaning, and otherwise prepping for my parents and little brother's arrival on Tuesday. We spent the week with them and they left early this morning. That's what I've been up to instead of keeping up my blog! The next few weeks will be a little chaotic as well. We have four friends coming down to visit for their spring break. Hopefully I will find some inspiration and time in there somewhere to write a few posts! Have a good week!

An overdue post about resolutions.

The husband and I aren't the type of people who typically make New Year's Resolutions. My cynical mind says that they're just made to make ourselves feel better, and abandoned before long. So under the guise of a "lifestyle change, not a resolution" we decided to renew our commitment to health and fitness. We watched a documentary called 'Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead' (I highly recommend it!) and became aware of just how beneficial a diet high in good ol' fruits and veggies really is. With that we decided to supplement our goal of gyming it at least four days each week with a vegetarian diet five days a week. So far we're on week three and it's going really well! Better for the husband as he's lost about ten pounds and I...well, we'll just say I haven't. Regardless consuming more veggies and less meat is a trend I definitely want to keep up.

So today being Valentine's Day and with Jon having to work and study all day and all evening I knew we would be staying in tonight. I wracked my brain and scoured the Internet for something vegetarian and resembling any one of Jon's favorite meals. When I saw this recipe for 'spiriballs' (from Macheesmo) I knew I'd found a winner! Jon loves spaghetti and meatballs and, for reasons probably to be blamed on 'Lady and the Tramp', I've always thought it was a pretty romantic meal. So I trekked out to the store to gather the ingredients and made this delicious meal for our Valentine's Day dinner!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup fresh spinach, chopped
• 1 1/2 - 2 cups Italian breadcrumbs (plus some extra)
• 4 eggs
• 1 Tbsp fresh oregano
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Chop the spinach and oregano and put it in a medium size bowl. Add the ricotta and Parmesan cheeses.

Stir together and add the eggs and 1 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs. Add more if you need to, but don't add too much. You want just enough to hold the mixture together. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir it all together making sure the mixture stays light, but well combined.

Grease a cookie sheet, and make sure it's really greased! Mine could have used a little more cooking spray as the spiriballs stuck a little. Form a table spoon of the mixture into a ball and roll in some extra breadcrumbs so that they're crispy on the outside when they're finished (I forgot this step. Oops!). Place it on the cookie sheet. Repeat until all of the mixture has been used and drizzle a little olive oil over the tops so they get nice and golden-brown in the oven. I had about 35 spiriballs, but obviously the amount will vary depending on the size of the balls.

Pop them into the oven for 30 - 40 minutes or until nicely browned. Remove from the oven and devour! I wasn't ambitious enough to make my owns sauce. That's probably the only thing that could have made these better!

These were so delicious, the husband gobbled them right up! They went great with whole wheat spaghetti, tomato basil sauce and garlic bread. Definitely a keeper. Spiriballs would be super easy to freeze for a quick dinner too, and I'm all about quick cooking! I hope everyone had a great, love-filled Valentine's Day!

Our Valentine's Day dinner spread. Yummy!

Valentine's Guest Blogger Post!

I'm slowly....very slowly...becoming a more legit blogger! Even though I'm pretty sure she's the only one who even follows my blog, I'll do a shout out anyway. My long time best friend asked me to write a post to feature on her blog in lieu of Valentine's Day about love and having a happy marriage. So while I've only been married just over a year I accepted the challenge. You can read my post at

Enjoy!

Our Love Story

It's been entirely too long since I've visited my blog. I actually have quite a bit of inspiration at the moment and really need to dedicate more time to writing. Anyway, in the spirit of Valentine's Day I figured I'd so some mushy love stuff and tell our love story via From Mrs. to Mama.

1. How long have you and your significant other been together? Jon and I have been together since we were 18! Five years and counting!

2. How did you meet? {What's your "love" story?} When I was 14 we met at a Christian music festival in upstate New York. My cousin had met him about a year before through a mutual friend and we just happened to run into him that year and she introduced us. It was a little awkward because the year before she had actually told me she met this cute guy my age and gave me his screen name and told me to talk to him. So Jon and I had chatted a few times without having ever met. We talked A LOT and got pretty close, but because of many complications never dated. When we were 16 he just kind of dropped off the face of the earth and I didn't hear from him again. When we were 18 we randomly ran into each other at the same music festival we first met at. We both had significant others, but when he broke up with his girlfriend he stalked me on MySpace until he saw I was single. He apologized for being a jerk two years ago (which I was well over)...and then asked me on a date!

The day we met, about 10 years ago. He's on the far left in some weird pose and I'm the first girl on the left...yes the punk-rock wannabe.

3. If married, how long have you been married? We have been married for one year, three months and 14 days. :)

4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding? We had the ceremony at the church I grew up in. My dad is a minister and he did our ceremony. We had the reception at an amazing country club. We had somewhere around 150 people there.

5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share! He calls me the typical 'babe', 'baby', 'honey', etc. And for the week of our honeymoon, shark bait...long story there. I never really got into calling him pet names, it just seems weird to refer to him that way. I do, however, call him 'silly', 'stinky' and 'weird' on a regular basis. Out of love of course. ;)

6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey. He's driven, whatever he sets his mind to he will do. He's goofy, we can act like five year olds together and have fun. I feel safe with him, no matter where we are I feel like nothing bad could happen to me when he's with me.

7. Tell us how he proposed? The day before Valentine's Day he got leave to come visit me. He took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant, which was no red flag because he'd been asking for months to go out somewhere nice so he could wear his new dress blues. When we got back to my apartment, which was all dark inside, there was a dozen roses sitting on out porch with a candle that had my name on it. (At this point I was a tad suspicious.) We walked into my living room which had been cleaned and the furniture removed. It was covered top to bottom with candles, balloons, and flowers. Flowers were EVERYWHERE. On the TV there was a slideshow playing of a bunch of pictures of us to Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World'. The very last slide was a picture of a conversation heart that said 'Marry Me?' on it and when I looked over at him he was on his knee with a ring. After I accepted (I'm not sure I actually spoke...my heart was beating to hard and I was too shaky!) all of our friends came down the stairs with champagne, cigars, and a cake. We then proceeded to have one heck of a celebration!

The night we got engaged!

8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals? Typically flowers and a card. He's given me quite a few teddy bears too. Neither is really us though.

9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch? I like both! I get bored if we do the same thing too often.

10. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere? This is tough one, there's so much we haven't done and want to do together. We want to raise a family together for sure. But we really want to travel a lot before any babies! Neither of us have had the opportunity to see very much of the world. Our list is HUGE! Ireland, England, France, Germany, Australia, Hawaii, Egypt...just to name a few.

11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day. On the actual day, tomorrow, he'll probably work until 5 or 6 pm and then I'll whip up a quick dinner. We'll eat. I'll go to bible study and he'll study until 10 or so and then go to bed. Exciting right? The Marine Corps doesn't recognize Valentine's Day as a national holiday. Lame. We'll probably try to get something together for the weekend though. We're just honestly not too big into the holiday.

12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day? Just some extra lovin'! :) I don't really see it as a holiday to ask for stuff. It's a day to focus on letting your significant other know you love them. There a lot more meaningful and sincere ways of doing that besides buying stuff.

13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love. Be committed to being the best partner you can be, regardless of the mistakes they make. And of course, be ready and willing to forgive and be forgiven.

14.  Show us a picture of what love means to you. 

'Grow old along with me The best is yet to be' - John Lennon