Ward Trunk or Treat

My new calling at church is RS Activities Co-Chair. And I'm in love. First activity: The ward Trunk or Treat. 

Lydia was a Beanie Baby. Easiest costume ever. A pair of winter pajamas and a little tag. She was pretty cute. 

I was a cat. There was an eight-year-old little girl who was also a cat. I tried to meow my hello, and she gave me a scratchy claw, and hissed at me. It was too funny. 

This is Lydia's little friend. She'll come stand and look at Lydia for  LONG time at church. He mom and I usually get together once a week and do something.

 The YW were in charge of decorations, and they put TONS of these spiders all over the cultural hall. Such great decorations, and easy. They could easily do it for a Wednesday night activity. 

My co-organizer, with their awesome trunk! (Her husband was a decomposer. In real life he's the Choral Director for Loyola university, and all night he carried around music, erasing notes. So funny.)

Our pumpkin patch trunk. Big thanks to Andrew for getting our trunk together. It wasn't something that was on my radar for getting done.

Andrew's Birthday Dinner

For Andrew's birthday we decided to celebrate at Woodberry Kitchen. It's one of our favorite restaurants, but we don't eat there often because of the price. There food is seasonal, and for the most part very local. The ambiance is really fun, and it's in our old neighborhood. We don't go on dates as often now that we have Lydia, so we decided to splurge. 

Andrew's old roommate, Micah, also works at Woodberry as a chef. We knew he would be there, but we had no idea how spoiled we would be! (Micah is an incredible cook! Anyone remember the seven course meal? That was all Micah.) 

We ordered one appetizer: a flatbread. We were brought five appetizers: deviled eggs, a bread and cheese board, a pear salad, and chilled tomato soup AND our flatbread. Oh, and the standard bread basket.

For the main course Andrew ordered the Pork Chop and I ordered the Braised Beef with Polenta, stewed tomatoes, okra and jimmy nardellos and beef gravy. We also were gifted the potatoes augratin, and mushrooms. (The mushrooms were the biggest surprise of the night for Andrew: something he never would have ordered, but ended up really liking!)

And then came dessert. You can't NOT have dessert on your birthday. Even if you've already eaten nine different dishes. We agreed we should just split something. I don't even remember what we ordered..Andrew ordered it. 

Our server brought out FIVE full size desserts. 

I think the biggest surprise for me was the butterscotch pudding. I'm generally a big brownie sundae fan. It's not terribly exciting, but always delicious. This time, the pudding was BY FAR my favorite dessert.  I think the tables around us probably thought we were gluttons at this point. 

The chocolate writing was so incredible to both of us! It's wasn't like a frosting, or a syrup, it was hard chocolate. 

It was such a fun night! So many surprises, and such a slow paced meal. We were gone for four hours and had a wonderful time talking and dreaming and of course, eating. (Thanks Brent, for watching Lydia-the-baby-who-refuses-bottles!)

And a BIG thank you to Micah Martin, for spoiling us rotten and really helping us celebrate in style. :)

NPR Features Andrew Coy

Andrew was interviewed for the local NPR station for a story about Teach For America, the teaching program both Andrew and I went through to start teaching. Don't worry, they interview Andrew. And the CEO of City Schools. No big deal.

Since making the front page of the Baltimore Sun, he's been featured in a few other stories, and now he's getting sound bites.

He's basically a really hard working teacher.

A few more wedding pictures can be found HERE. (thank you sweet husband for creating a link after my second failed attempt. of course i should have just typed some random code... why didn't i think of that?!.)

We're still waiting to actually see them all, but they are nice enough to keep teasing us with a few here and there.

Enjoy!

Friday Night

My computer didn't like our internet a few minutes ago. My tech husband was sitting fixing it while I was telling him how happy I was a this very moment.

When he turned to me and said, "When I fix your computer you can blog about it."

And so I am.

I'm sitting in my kitchen on a friday night with lots of things I love.

*It's Friday.

*Night. Friday nights are always the best.

*I'm reading.

*A cookbook. What a great combo.

*Just ate a yummy dinner.

*Listening to Ray LaMontagne.

*Snacking on tasty brownies.

*While my tech husband sits next to me.

*Telling me jokes.

*While fixing my computer.

It's a good day.