When friends come to town..

You grind bean in rocks....

and play with butterflies...

and make pies....

and sew up cute things...
see told you cute!
And then you eat at In and Out cause your friend has never been there...

Yep that pretty much sums it up! OK, well except the part where we also HAD to have Mafa Chicken (aka cold chicken... um most of you probably have no clue so moving on).... and we HAD to eat at Rosas (sensing a food theme here?) ... Oh and HAD to go to a girly move - Julie and Julia (again with the food theme, what the heck? Is that all we do!... Come to think of it, even the picture Adam made us take at the Botanical gardens was of us grinding beans.... good grief!) At least we managed to get a run in Saturday morning. Thanks for a fun "food filled" weekend Mary!

Sushi!

This fun night actually happened a few weeks ago, but I thought it was still worth posting. After seeing several shows on the Foodnetwork about sushi, we decided it would be fun to have our own Sushi night. Alisa and Matt as well as our Friends Brittany and Tiatia came over and we had a great time rolling and eat our homemade sushi. Mostly they were just California rolls because we live in AZ and I thought buying raw sushi quality fish here would be a little sketchy. But we had lots of variety and everything was great!

Adam demonstrating the proper rolling technique. Make sure you have lots of water handy!

Some of our fillings... we had smoked salmon, crab, avocado, mango, green onions, carrots, tempura shrimp, wasabi, pickled ginger. Pretty much everything you could want in a sushi roll! The cooks!

Adam & Tiatia showing off their creations!

I was pretty excited that day when I realized I had the perfect dishes for the night. Plates and bowls from our wedding reception. Yes they were bright pink and green but they were square with delicate flowers and I thought they looked very Asian (except the color). I was also happy to have found another use for them.

I think my nephew Brycen had the most fun with the Sushi. If you cant tell he (and the floor) are speckled with sticky rice. It was my first attempt with sticky rice and boy was it sticky! But Brycen LOVED it! Every time he was anywhere close to the big bowl of rice he would just stick his hand in and it would come out covered.

Vegas Vacation

This past weekend Adam and I spent the weekend in Las Vegas. Adam won the trip through a contest at work so we got treated in STYLE! The pictures below are from the amazing suite at the Palazzo (part of the Venetian). It was absolutely gorgeous and it was amazing the attention to detail was in the rooms. This is a view from up near the bed. The room had a recessed "living" room with a flat screen TV, a work table, dining table and big plush couch. The curtains were even controlled with a remote!

This is looking from the "living room" up to the rest of the room. The Bedroom area also had a flat screen TV. There were lights everywhere so you could adjust the amount of lighting.

This was the nice big bed. I loved the headboard and the clean white bedding.

I decided I wanted this bathroom in my house. It was loaded with mirrors and all sorts of lights everywhere. It even had another flat screen so you could watch TV while you got ready. Oh and it had big double doors opening into it. This was probably my favorite part of the bathroom. A little vanity area with a plush little seat. It was perfect for putting on makeup!These next pictures are from the Bellagio. On Friday night we went to the O Show and had dinner with Adam's best Friend Dave and his wife Flor. The Bellagio has this sweet Atrium with fresh flowers that they change out regularly. That night it was covered in Tulips - my favorites! There were also plenty of lilacs for a lovely fragrance.

Dave and Flor Adam and I

Lots of flowers!

Saturday afternoon we drove over to the Vegas Temple. It was beautiful. This was our attempt at taking our picture.. yeah, it never does work to well does it?

While we were there we of course saw lots of Brides, but we also ran across this craziness:

We couldn't believe this dress. It was HUGE. We are pretty sure it was a prom or quinceanera dress because they looked REALLY young. It was pretty entertaining watching the mom yell at the Photographer. It was pretty amazing all the details that go into the hotels in Vegas. There is no way I could take enough pictures to show them all, but here was one of my favorite things from the Palazzo - UMBRELLAS! These were hanging in a few different places and were just colorful and fun.

Nutcracker

Ever since I've moved to Boise I have wanted to go to the Nutcracker and finally this year I made it!

If you haven't ever been to a ballet or seen the Nutcracker, I highly recommend it, it was a great way to bring in the holidays. The music is great and there is some incredible dancing!

It was the first time that Mary, Adam or I had ever been to the ballet so that made it extra special and fun!