Ian and I visited his brand new nephew on Friday! Declan was born 4/21/2011 at 2130. Mother and baby are both healthy and doing great. He has a displacement of 8 pounds, 11 ounces and has a length overall of 21 inches.

He opened his eyes a little while we were there, but was conked out for the most part. Looked a little angry about the possibility of waking up, as pictured above, so went back to sleep.

Anna had her baby shower last weekend. She and her friends trend toward crafty/functional showers, so we went around baby-proofing the house followed by decorating onesies.

There were some great designs! My favorite was definitely Mr. Yuck, though the dolphin Healey made out of the paint blob one of the kids squirted on a shirt was quite impressive.

E2 had her baptism today, followed by dim sum with friends and family. After cake and ice cream, E2 was ready for a jog before the long car ride home.

About a month earlier, we had a blast digging for potatoes with Zina at the potatoes and pancakes event. (That’s how we knew where all the fun stuff would be when we went with EELS.)

Sonny, Anna, and my mom came by to check out the festival and I got their puffmobile race on video:

We made our way to the signs pointing to the terminal we needed… took a shuttle that dropped us off outside some locked doors. After waiting a few minutes for someone inside to notice us, a security guard let us, and our 20 new friends, in. We followed the signs, again, to the direction of our terminal. Only to find that we were now outside the secure area and had to go through security again.

The place was a mad house. They were moving people through pretty quickly, but it was still really crowded. I went through my bag trying to find the liquids I had gotten out since the Copenhagen airport and put them back in my ziplock bag. Found the 1/2 liter bottle of water I refilled past security in Copenhagen, which I needed to be rid of. I wanted to keep the bottle, though, in case I wanted water later. So, I started chugging while taking off my shoes and digging out my laptop… Ian took pity on me and had a swig of water to help me finish it off. Made it through security and booked it over to our gate… which got moved! Fortunately, it only moved a couple gates over and the line was being held up by a big group of American teenagers.

The flight back was pretty uneventful. Each seat had a TV in front of it, so we had our pick of movies and TV shows to watch the entire flight back (watched How to Train Your Dragon, Date Night, Inglorious Bastards, and a couple episodes of the Simpsons). They kept getting interrupted by announcements though, which were incredibly difficult to understand. At one point, I realized I understood more of the French than I did the English. And when I mentioned it to Ian, he didn’t even realize they were speaking English!

Finally made it back to VA! Ian and I very diligently documented all the items we brought back on the customs form, so we would be ready when we arrived. When we got up to the customs agent, he asked us what food we brought back. Various Danish candies, crackers, and other snacks. The guy looked at us like he was trying to stifle a laugh. He waved us past and we were on our way!

Lenny was awesome enough to pick us up from the airport, so we got a chance to stop in and say hi to Steph and the nieces. E2 was so happy to see Ian! And E1 was excited to show me everything that had changed while we were gone. It was nice to see them, but we were tired and so ready to get home. Steph was nice enough to send us home with some fresh fruit though, so at least I didn’t need to worry about scrounging up snacks later.

Headed straight home, lugged all our stuff up to our apartment… and then discovered that we were locked out. While we were gone, we had Steph’s uncle in doing some contracting work for us, so we gave him one of our keys. We gave our other key to Yenny so she could water our plants. We can buzz ourselves into the building with our phones and our front door has a mechanical punch lock that doesn’t require a key, so we figured we could get home and then retrieve the keys from people later. Except that we also have a deadbolt that we don’t use… but after the last time building management locked me out of my apartment, I started carrying that key around just in case. And so that “just in case” key was used and we had no way in.

Tracked people down… The construction guy had the key, which he dropped off in the uncle’s mailbox since the uncle was out of town, and I went to pick it up from his house. And an hour later, we were finally inside our home and everything was as it should be (plus a fancy bathroom!). Until we did our first load of laundry and the washing machine flooded the kitchen again.

Home, sweet home.

Today was Ian and my 1-year anniversary!  So, it was pretty fun to be up with all the family for the banquet the night before.  We met up with relatives for dim sum takeout for breakfast and to have an early celebration for grandpa’s birthday. Then we spent the afternoon in the car with my sis coming home.  Spending the rest of the evening at home and just hanging out.  :)

From Sunday brunch:

The wedding:

Sunday brunch:

I’ve got a bunch of videos from the wedding too, but have to get permission from people to post up!

We finally had our buttercream party to clear out some freezer space! Had about 15 people stop by throughout the day. We started out with just the pre-flavored items I had leftover from cakes in the past couple months:
- Remy Martin buttercream
- Caramel
- Semi-sweet chocolate ganache
- White Chocolate cream cheese frosting
- Chocolate buttercream

We had cake, cupcakes, sugar cookies, and cardamom cookies. After the initial diabetic shock, there wasn’t much interest from anyone to try new flavors in the unflavoried frosting, but we made a decent dent in the leftovers. By the end of the day, I reclaimed 4 containers, and consolidated into 2 of our tiny snack-size containers. I might make another batch of the chocolate cookies I made a couple months ago to finish up the caramel.

Many of our guests were also kind enough to take goody bags home with them, including people willing to take a container of unflavored buttercream to experiment on their own! I have 2 containers left in the freezer, so enough for a cake that I can bring in to work or something.

This was also the first time Ian and I have had guests under the age of 17. Our place? Definitely not child-proof. Our low shelf with plant fertilizer, glass tables, electronics out everywhere, remote controls for everything… They seemed to have fun exploring though. And no injuries or broken items. One spilled drink, but that wasn’t even a kid. ;) And we did get a notification that the item we requested was available for our Chumby. Guess they’ll have to wait until next time to see it!

I’m also just now realizing how few pictures I have of her where she’s smiling. She has this huge, happy smile where she can’t even keep her eyes open, but I haven’t been able to capture it.

Ian and I stopped by my parents’ yesterday for our weekly Saturday lunch. After lunch, we all went outside to have a snowball fight with my niece, but the snow was so perfect for packing we decided to make a snowman instead:

When the first snowball got to be Eliana’s height, we tried to convince Ian that the snowman was going to be too big. We all had to concede in the end though that he was right all along.

Eliana spent much of the building process as Supervisor and telling us, “Bigger!”

Ian finally agreed that the snowball had reached a sufficient size, but had to roll it back across the yard (and snow) so we could build on flatter ground.

Then Ian helped me maneuver the second snowball over to the first. And, fortunately, he and Yenny were strong enough to lift it onto the base.

Eliana tried to help me push the head over, but did what she saw me doing… which was push toward her.

After a little convincing, she agreed to come over to my side of the snowball. And we were able to push the head over together.

Eliana needed a boost, but she was plenty helpful getting the torso shaped and ready for the head. We all helped fill in the joints and round out some spots.

After a while, it started to get a little windy, so Eliana used the snowman to protect her from the cold.

As we were getting the head onto the snowman, Ian suggested we make it taller — a 4-ball snowman! So we decided he needed a tophat!

My mom let us use a real carrot for the nose, found us some branches for arms, my dad found us some nice pieces of mulch for the face, and even grandma came out to give us a scarf to use. And after some more shaping and sculpting, we had our very own Snowman Mao!

This took us probably a little over half an hour to build. For scale, Ian is uphill from the snowman, so with the hat, they’re just about the same height — 6’6″. The snow really was the perfect condition to roll around and make huge snowballs; the best I can remember in at least 10 years. Then we went in for traditional post-snow hot chocolate!

Special thanks to my dad for the photo-documentation!

UPDATE:

And that is to say, he ran 26.2 miles; he wasn’t participating in an organized marathon.

In the original plan, Anna was going to bike behind him for the duration. She ended up having to work though, so she met him at mile 14 to refill his water, etc..

Ian and I had been planning to go out and cheer for him, but hadn’t really worked out the details. We were going to meet up at my parents’ house because that was one of his pit stops, but he passed by early and we missed him. I had also considered running a few miles with him (I figured if he had run 10-20 miles first, I might be able to keep up.), but woke up feeling a cold coming on that morning and figured I better not.

Anna told us what Sonny was wearing and we just drove around until we found him [mile 18]. His water belt was depleted at that point, so Ian and I went in search of a grocery store to get more water. As we got back on the road, Sonny had already caught up to us [mile 20]. I passed a water bottle out the car window to him, while Ian got us turned around to catch up.

We pulled over, swapped another water bottle for the empties on Sonny’s belt, and headed a few blocks ahead to get the filled bottles back to him. Unfortunately, we didn’t know the route, so Sonny took a turn and we missed him [mile 20.5]. When we got back in the car to look for him, he had taken another turn off the main stretch [mile 22], so we didn’t see him.

We finally caught up as he was approaching the intersection with 66, but we couldn’t pull over until almost mile 23. At that point, he didn’t need all the water we had filled up for him, but he took 2 just to be safe.

Ian and I then headed over to the Giant shopping center and had a bagel picnic while we waited. Cheered for Sonny one last time as he circled around the shopping center. We then went into stealth mode and followed him by car along the access road. It was around this time when Anna and a friend of theirs called asking if we had seen Sonny recently. He was running behind schedule (haha! Get it? Running.) and they were getting worried.

He was fine. Just a little tired. After Sonny rounded mile 25, Ian and I headed back for home base. Their friend had just left before we got there and met up with Sonny to join him for the last mile. He was also smart enough to know what kind of snacks to bring — banana and power bar.

So, crazy as his plan was, Sonny successfully completed his marathon (under 5 hours!). Congrats!

Baked up some strawberry cupcakes yesterday to celebrate my mother’s birthday early (next week). They were a bit sweet, so I didn’t put any frosting on them, but they probably would’ve been good with some unsweetened whipped cream.

I typically use 3-oz boxes of jello when mixing into a recipe, but the only strawberry jello I had was in a 6-oz box. And for some reason, I really wanted these to be strawberry cupcakes. I guess I was baking too early in the morning or something because I was most of the way through the mixing process when I realized that I should’ve just made a double batch and had more cupcakes. Oops…

Strawberry Cupcakes (modified from here)

INGREDIENTS
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 3-oz box, strawberry gelatin
3/4 cup milk

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners (makes 18 cupcakes).

In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

I only got 1 plate of food, so sampled about half the options, had a snow cone, drank root beer for the better part of 6 hours, and then had 2 pieces of tasty, tasty cake. So I mostly had sugar today. :)

I’ll post up more stuff when people start sending it to us. I know someone took a video of the ceremony, so I’ll hold off on posting the text of Sonny’s ceremony for us until I get that. Here’s us just after the ceremony with Best Man & Best Woman.

After Anna’s months of test cakes for us and the last week(s?) of prep… The final cake came out beautifully. And delicious too! The top and bottom tiers were nutella frangelico cakes and the middle tier was amaretto with almond pralines.

Then, the other confection that was a far second in comparison, but also a huge hit: Snow cones! I thought it’d be a good idea since it’s July and we were going to be outside in the heat… but the demand was pleasantly higher than I had expected. My sis even tried to start a snowball fight, but it seemed that people really were much more interested in eating the snow cones.

And last picture that I’m swiping from my cousin (thanks, Katie!) is of the back of my head. I’m just fascinated. I had my friend’s hair person come do my hair and I have some action shots that might better explain my fascination. But my hair is held in place by ~50 bobby pins and ~half a can of hairspray. And when she started, she teased my hair into a big ‘fro and it ended up all neat and wrapped up like this. I physically do not understand how she did that.

In any case, the day turned out fantastically. The weather was great — hot, but with frequent breezes. And the rain didn’t start until most of the guests were heading out anyway. We have so many people to thank for how smoothly everything went… but mostly, I’m glad so many of our friends and relatives were able to come out and celebrate with us. :)

Alright, so I’m a little late to the game on this one… But my bro & his wife got their upgrade a couple weeks ago.

I’m still waiting to make my judgment. The original is still reliably cute and entertaining, but shows signs of the terrible twos coming on. The new baby doesn’t do much, but is surprisingly agile and I’m not as scared of her head falling off as I was with the previous model.

In any case, all is well. Mother and baby were home just hours after delivery. Hope to have more pictures soon!

Thursday afternoon was with Ian’s extended family. The big differences from previous years was the musical extravaganza and birthday cake for dessert. We sang happy birthday to Jesus. It was a fun day.

Did Christmas with my family on Boxing Day. There was dancing, more snorking, and bingo! Plus, Anna had a chance to enjoy the activity book I received the day before.

Mac & Cheese (I made this for Thanksgiving too, but forgot to link the recipe. Thanks to Anna for sending this to me!)

INGREDIENTS
For topping
1/2 stick unsalted butter
2 cups panko (coarse Japanese bread crumbs) or 3 cups coarse fresh bread crumbs (from 6 slices firm white sandwich bread)
1/4 pound coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (1 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

For macaroni and sauce
1 stick unsalted butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 cups whole milk
1 pound coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (6 cups)
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 pound elbow macaroni

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle.

Make topping:
Melt butter, then stir together with panko and topping cheeses in a bowl until combined well.

Make sauce:
Melt butter in a heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat and stir in flour. Cook roux, stirring, 3 minutes, then whisk in milk. Bring sauce to a boil, whisking constantly, then simmer, whisking occasionally, 3 minutes. Stir in cheeses, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper until smooth. Remove from heat and cover surface of sauce with wax paper.

Make Macaroni:
Cook macaroni in a pasta pot of boiling salted water (2 tablespoons salt for 4 quarts water) until al dente. Reserve 1 cup cooking water and drain macaroni in a colander. Stir together macaroni, reserved cooking water, and sauce in a large bowl. Transfer to 2 buttered 2-quart shallow baking dishes.

Sprinkle topping evenly over macaroni and bake until golden and bubbling, 20 to 25 minutes.

NOTES: Add a tablespoon of mustard to the roux. I’ve been using progressively more pasta each time and I think for my taste, about a pound and a half of pasta with some ham mixed in was a good cheese ratio (can reduce final baking time to ~15 mins). I mixed whole wheat with regular rotinis and started that when I started the sauce and let it sit in the water to overcook the noodles until the sauce was ready.

Anna made General Tso’s chicken from scratch. We were all thoroughly impressed with her cooking skillz. Sooo good!

And a belated happy birthday to Crit!

And an update on yesterday’s post — Apparently I paid my taxes where I live, but Fairfax County thinks they get a cut too. So now I have to prove I don’t live in Fairfax County, even though my legal residence that they have on file isn’t in Fairfax. Good work, guys.