We are still enjoying our vacation, so I will not be doing a meal plan for this week. Hope everyone had a great 4th and has a great rest of the week.

Happy eating!

Tuesday evening we had our first BBQ in our new house. We fired up our never used grill and got to cooking. I was a little nervous becuase I had never had lamb chops. The closest I have had to them was in our meatballs. Turns out they were delicious. I am so excited about the summer season, now. Last summer we wanted to grill all the time and we couldn’t so now we are going to try to get outside more.

I also made lemon thyme rice to go with it and it was so good. I don't know what I ever had against rice but I could eat it every meal now. I used white rice but if you have some extra time or want to do minute rice this could be an extremely healthy side dish or lunch.

Lemon thyme rice
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 cups white rice
1 carton chicken broth
4-5 sprigs fresh thyme
zest of 1 lemon
salt and pepper

Pour the oil into a pot set on medium high heat. When the oil is hot, add the rice and cook for about 2 minutes to toast the rice. Add in half the carton of chicken broth and the thyme and reduce the heat to medium. Cook until the rice absorbs the liquid and is soft. Add more chicken broth during cooking if needed.
Pour the rice into a serving dish and stir in the lemon zest. Salt and pepper to taste.

So we finally did it. We moved out of our apartment and into our very own house. Jace and I have been looking at houses for sale for a long time and we got very close to getting a couple of houses but nothing felt right. I can’t really explain it, but I just new when we walked into those other houses that they weren’t MY house. So about eight months ago the opportunity came up to get a house built by Mark Payne Homes and we jumped on it. The great thing was we were able to watch our house being built. I loved getting to see where everything was going to be and the process of picking out the colors and designs. The entire process was smooth as silk and it is exactly what we were looking for and more.

We are now in the process of moving in. Thanks to my family and our very good friends, Chad and Jamie we are officially moved in. Now, I’m trying to get all of our stuff unpacked and in a designated spot. I never dreamed we had so much stuff. I was sure that I would have no trouble getting everything into this house and now as I’m putting it up, I’m not sure if it’s all going to fit! Be on the look out for a MAJOR garage sale, because I’m getting rid of lots of stuff we don’t need.

I think my favorite part of the house is the kitchen. I love the counters we chose and they look beautiful with the cabinets. We set it up first because I hated the idea of eating fast food all week when all of our cooking equipment was right there in boxes.

While I was working on the kitchen, Jace put together our TV and all the little boxes that comes with it. All I know is it comes on when I push power so I’d say that was a success.

After I got the kitchen together, I put together the living room, bedroom and our bathroom. I know, my priorities are a little screwed up. The unpacking process is coming along quicker than I thought it would, and all I have to do now is work on the office and guest room. I am planning to have an open house in the next month or so so you all can come and see our new house. We love to show it off!

I took TONS of photos. Too many to fit on here so you can find all the rest of the photos here on Flickr.

So, I know I should have done this at the beginning of the year but honestly I really wasn’t thinking about it then. I have lots of goals I want to reach by the end of the year and I have come to the realization that if I don’t tell someone about them, I won’t get them done. I have already conquered one goal but the rest I haven’t even thought about yet. So here is a list of my goals for this year.

Read more books
Learn to drive a standard transmission
Bake more breads
Learn to shoot (and look like Angelina Jolie doing it)
Learn photoshop
Climb the alpine tower at Lone Tree
Eat more candlelit dinners
Find a piece of seafood that I can stand to eat

I’ll post my achievements as I get them done through out the year. I’d love to know what your goals are, and if you don’t have them I encourage you to get a piece of paper out and write some down. You never know what you can do until you try and the pride that comes with conquering your goals is priceless.

I hate to admit this but I hate thunderstorms. I don’t know why but the mere mention of a thunderstorm in the area makes me nauseous. I think I’ve figured out what makes them so scary. Tornadoes. I am terrified of tornadoes. The funny thing is I remember exactly what started my fear. When I was in 2nd grade my teacher thought it would be a fabulous idea to call in a local weatherman to talk about tornadoes. He showed us this horrifying video that showed all the damage they cause. He gave death statistics and all, TO 2ND GRADERS! From then on I have these visions of little me getting carried off by a huge tornado and being thrown into another county or I see a photo of me with my beautiful Louboutins sticking out of my head (at least the red sole would match the blood). If I could just remember who the weatherman was I swear they would be getting a nasty letter from me.

So, Friday I went home for lunch and happily turned on the Private Practice episode that was on the DVR and ate lunch. All of a sudden the clouds opened up and God said “I hate you, Alfalfa”. Not really, I just had to throw that in there; I looked on Facebook and saw people talking about tornadoes in the area. Trying to be calm I turned on the TV and saw, lo and behold, they were heading straight for me, and I was alone. Panic hit and I immediately called Jace at work, balling and squealing. He told me to go in our downstairs bathroom and wait it out. SURE! I’ll do that! Just go have a seat and wait, cause that’s doable. I grab every pillow on the couch and our duvet and run into the bathroom. After a couple of seconds just sitting there I decide that maybe I should have some other things in there, you know, JUST IN CASE I DIE.

So, a normal person would grab a flash light, water, food, or even a radio. Not me, of all things the only thing I could think of was the Mac and my iPhone. Apparently my subconscious wants everyone to know that I’m a Mac and not a pc. Oh and the cat, I tried to get her in there but she was preoccupied and couldn’t care less if I died or not. Anyway, after sitting there for a while I emerge from the bathroom and see that everything was OK. After the scare, I had my brother come get me and I sat at mom’s house until the flood of the century was over. Turns out that Midland still doesn’t have good drainage. Huh. Maybe we should do something a couple of years ago to prevent cars floating away in Scarborough draw? Nah, that’s too much work.

Needless to say I’m alive and breathing. I’m sure if there was an actual tornado I would die of a heart attack before the tornado gets me. For the out of towners, here are some of the photos of the flood.