What a Weekend!

Steven's birthday weekend was packed with fun events, though very few of them were birthday related.

 

Our weekend started on Thursday with a ceremony in the Tower Club to recognize the top racers and fundraisers of the 2013 Scott Firefighter Stairclimb and Big Climb. We felt so privileged to be there. This is Steven's second year in a row as both a top racer and a top fundraiser and, as I've mentioned before, I am the most proud of him. Look how handsome he is!! It was a beautiful night to be out on such a special date and we had a wonderful time!

Of course the view was amazing, as it always is, and this was the first time that Steven was able to enjoy the view without having to climb the stairs first. The elevator is quite a bit faster : )

We had the opportunity to visit with someone who is on the Leukemia Lymphoma Society board. She was very curious about Steven's job and his efforts in the stairclimb. We also met the oldest participant in the Big Climb. He is 88 years old and he climbed all 69 flights in just 22 minutes!! He is adorable. And there was a doctor there who talked all about blood cancer research and the progress that has been made. It is truly amazing. They have made very rapid progress in a short time and have come a long way. It was so motivating! Made us both super excited to start fundraising for next year.

On Friday night we had dinner at Chipotle and went to see Jersey Boys at the 5th Avenue -- our Christmas present from Papa and Grammi. I love that show!!! Franki Valli and the Four Seasons have such great music anyway but I think their story is pretty interesting too. I was glad to finally get to share this show with Steven.

The next morning we were off to spend the weekend in Lynden. Neither of us had ever been there before but we liked the idea of a two hour drive for our getaway as opposed to the eight hours we had driven to MT earlier in the month. We stopped in Bellingham before driving into Lynden and, thanks to Hilde for the suggestion, stopped at the Boundary Bay Brewery for lunch. They were packed! But it was well worth the wait. I had maybe my favorite beer ever, a Scotch Ale, and Steven and I both had enchiladas. His were chicken and mine were yam with cheddar cheese and caramelized onions and mole sauce. They were fantastic! I don't know who ever thought to put yams in an enchilada but it was a brilliant idea.

From Bellingham, it was just a short drive out to Lynden. This place is really nice! It is definitely a newer building. Everything was nice and clean and the shower was tall enough. No fireplace this time and the hot tub was a ways away but we enjoyed our cribbage board and the TV, which sounds ridiculous, but we don't have cable so it's totally a vacation thing for us. We watched a few episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives -- loved it!! I want his job! Not only does he get to travel around and eat all of that amazing food, but he actually gets to go into the kitchens with the chefs and learn how to make the food. What a great idea.

The condos are right on a golf course. I wasn't super excited about that part but it turned out to be gorgeous! The sunset the first night was definitely the best.

Tim and Annika came up to spend Sunday with us and it's a good thing they did because apparently Lynden is completely shut down on Sundays and there was almost nothing to do or see. It was so fun to have friends with us and we wished we had thought to invite them earlier! It would have been fun to have them there all weekend. We went wine tasting at a winery called Samson. We must have tried 10 or 12 different wines! Most of what they had were fruit wines. I particularly liked the black currant dessert wine, but the all around favorite was the hazelnut wine. Wow. So tasty. We definitely came home with a bottle. Tim and Annika came back to the condo with us for dinner, games, and ice cream before heading back to Seattle and Steven and I left for home in the morning.



We stopped at Red Robin for his birthday burger and then came home to unpack (well, actually I think Steven and Chad were probably playing Halo at least part of the afternoon). Our next door neighbors came over for dinner last night and we had one of Steven's favorite meals: flank steak, fettuccine, and strawberry rhubarb pie. He's at work tonight, so I don't get to spend his actual birthday with him but I think we did a pretty good job celebrating already.

Our First "Sideways" Road Trip.

A couple of weeks ago Steven and I went on a little spring break trip. We didn't go to Mexico, or Hawaii, or Southern California, or Florida (like all of my students did...). We went on a road trip to Whitefish, Montana. How adventurous are we?!? The most, actually. We knew we didn't want to pay to fly anywhere, and we also knew that we didn't feel like driving far enough for warm sunshine (though I desperately wanted warm sunshine!!!). We originally planned to go to Tahoe (I've still never been there) but our timeshare resort in Whitefish was only an 8 hour drive as opposed to the 13 hours it would have taken us to get to Tahoe. And what a beautiful drive it was!!!

 

As we passed through Idaho, I was struck by how strange it was that we were on a "sideways" road trip. I've never gone on a road trip that required me to cross a time zone before. I've driven up and down the west coast more than a few times but there was just something totally different about the west-east drive. Montana has a lot to offer when it comes to a scenic drive: rivers, fields, lakes, wildlife, mountains, farms, old broken down barns and other buildings, etc. I loved it.

Our condo in Whitefish was pretty nice. It was an older building, which I was a little uncertain about when we first arrived, but it was very specious and they had a well equipped kitchen! Of course, I cooked ahead of time to minimize my time in the kitchen but it was still nice to know I could have done some real cooking if I wanted to. The hot tub was right outside our door and we had a wood burning fireplace with a free tub of fire wood! These are the two features we enjoyed the most. Our one complaint was that the shower was really short. Like ridiculously, hilariously short. It was a very relaxing vacation with lots of board games, hot tubbing, and listening to Harry Potter while sitting in front of the fireplace.

Whitefish is about a 45 minute drive from Glacier National Park so we drove over there on our first day. We weren't really sure what to expect. We knew we wouldn't be able to drive very far on the the Going to Sun Road (it isn't completely plowed until sometime in June or even July) but we kind of thought we would be able to go for a hike. No such luck. Well, not for this fair-weather hiker anyway. It was cold and the weather wasn't very nice. Plus, we were told that most of the trails were all pretty muddy if not still covered in snow.

We decided just to drive as much of the road as we could and get out and walk around a bit here and there. We stopped at Lake McDonald first and had our lunch at the end of the dock. The water was impossibly clear and it was very, very quiet out there. A beautiful spot for a picnic.

Note the rain clouds slowly approaching...

We're so cute.

Steven said our heads couldn't touch in this photo because he wanted to try to get the mountains behind us a little bit. It only kind of worked. The clouds did an excellent job of thwarting our plan.

Crystal clear lake and a perfect reflection. The lake was so still and peaceful.

Down at the dock by the Lake McDonald Lodge. It isn't open at this time of year but that's as far as the road was open for us to drive on (about 10 miles from where we started at the other end of Lake McDonald).

Skipping rocks. Of course. Can't waste an opportunity with a lake so smooth and about a zillion little flat rocks around.

And here comes the rain. SO glad we weren't on a hike at this point!

I've always wanted to take a raindrop picture!

Much more impressive splash from the huge rocks Steven was throwing into the water.

Aaaaaand a feather. Check out the color of these rocks though. Aren't they cool? They seemed really bright in person.

At this point in the day Steven and I were more than ready to head back and jump right into the hot tub.

The next day we took some time to go into town and do a little birthday shopping and grab lunch. And on the last day of our trip it was sunny and beautiful! But cold cold cold! I really wanted to see Glacier in the sunshine and Steven was kind enough to agree to drive back there... just for a few beautiful photos.

I was so glad we had gone a couple of days before as well because this day was really windy and the lake itself was so much more beautiful when it was still.

However, the snow capped mountains are much prettier without clouds covering them. We went back to the condo for a little hot tubbing that afternoon -- it was so sunny we even got a little tan! It was 39 degrees out and we were in a hot tub and we got tan. Pretty cool.

And then it was on to the next adventure. Being the amazing wife that I am, I decided to surprise Steven with a little rock climbing trip as an early birthday gift. He's really gotten into climbing during his months working at Stone Gardens this past winter and I figured he would think it was pretty cool to do some outdoor rock climbing in Montana. I sort of thought I was going to get laughed at when I e-mailed the guy asking if he was doing any climbs so early in the season but he was excited about it and we ended up being his first rock climbing group this year (one day after the ski season closed).

Surprisingly, at this stage of the game I wasn't even nervous. Just feeling a little silly after wiggling into that crazy tight little harness.

Steven was pretty stoked and Link, our rock climbing expert, was glad to have a trustworthy person to belay him.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture but the top is way up there. At least, it seemed pretty high to me. Also take note of the portions of the climb where it looks like the rock is just flat. As in, nothing to grab onto to pull yourself up.

I really didn't want to take my turn. It was difficult right off the bat. I didn't understand how you could just grab or step onto a tiny little ridge in the rock and have it hold you. I just kept feeling like there was nothing to reach for.

Here's my view from part way up! There were a few times throughout the climb when I was really really nervous.

I even asked to come down, more than once, and they wouldn't let me. I got a little panicky but I didn't cry. It wasn't that I was afraid I would actually fall all of the way down but I definitely felt responsible for keeping myself on the rock and there were moments when I didn't think I could possible do it any longer. I did finally make it to the top though, where I promptly shouted, "Okay, I did it! Can I come down now?" They had to remind me to take a moment to look around.

My view from the top!

I couldn't turn around and look straight down, that was too much for me, so I just took a photo.

I made it! I guess I'm glad I reached the top but I do not ever want to go rock climbing again. We can go horseback riding, or white water rafting, or scuba diving, but no thank you on the rock climbing.

Steven loved it. He took a few turns and I got to belay him once.

Apparently my helmet was crooked the whole time but Steven never told me because he thought it was cute.

They talked me into trying again. It was a little easier the second time, at least this beginning part, but I chose to come down before I reached the panicky part again. I wanted to end on a good note. Plus, the sun was starting to go down and it became more and more difficult for me to hang on as it got colder.

I love my husband.

Oh my goodness! Look at those hands! Oiy. I couldn't believe how dirty the rope was. What I should have taken a picture of was my knees! Being the inexperienced climber that I am, I might have used my knees more than once to try to get up on a ledge or steady myself or whatever. I knew that probably wasn't the way I was supposed to do it but at the time, I was just committed to not falling. I still have bruises on my knees! I couldn't wear skirts or dresses the first week back to school and when I wore one this week one of my students asked, with great concern, "Mrs. Lentz! What happened to your knees?!?" Oh dear.

On our way home we stopped in Medical Lake and had dinner with some of my dad's family. We had planned to stay the night but once we were that close to home, we decided we would rather just keep driving and sleep in our own bed that night. We were so glad we did! Steven was awesome and drove the whole way. We got back around 1am and it was nice to have the whole next day to just clean up and unpack and get ready to go back to work. Fortunately, I still had the weekend before having to go back to school. We had a lovely little trip. It was just nice to get away together for a few days and relax. I'm voting for someplace tropical on our next vacation though : )

I Believe in Butter.

How gorgeous is that?!? I love butter. It's amazing how much better things taste with butter. This pile of butter was used to make a shrimp dish. I have determined that that is fish in it's intended environment -- swimming not in salt water, but in butter. Wow.

My friend Caitlin and I took a cooking class together last month at Marcela's Creole Cookery in downtown Seattle. It was so fun! We decided to go for the full experience. We shared a bottle of wine, we each purchased the bags of housemade creole seasoning and bottles of crab boil, and we ordered the extra dessert when it was offered at the end of the meal. It was more of a cooking demonstration than a class. For the most part we just sat and watched and ate but it was very relaxing and the food was wonderful and I found the chef to be very entertaining. We had shrimp gumbo, barbeque shrimp (nothing barbeque about it -- the shrimp was swimming in a garlic, creole, butter sauce and served over crostinis), smothered chicken with potatoes and broccoli, and, my personal favorite, pecan pie. I would love to do more things like this. It was such a great outing!

Caitlin with the Chef Anthony...

... helping to serve up some food.

Just stirring and drinking. When I got up to stir, I left my wineglass on our table but Chef Anthony informed me that I would be stirring for a while and made sure that my glass was full again before bringing it over to me.
Here are a few random photos from my kitchen experiences in the last few months.

Sweet potato muffins -- these recipe did not turn out how I wanted it to. I love sweet potatoes and the look of the cinnamon crunch topping on these muffins was particularly enticing but I made the mistake of following the recipe, against my better judgement, which resulted in a flavor combo that I was not a fan of. There was a lot of orange zest in the muffins as well as some chopped nuts. I should have leaned more on the brown sugar and cinnamon flavors, omitted the orange entirely, and saved the chopped nuts only for a streusel type of topping. But sweet potatoes are so darn pretty, I had to include the picture anyway.

Chicken tortilla soup! I was very proud of this meal and can't wait to make it again! I made a jalapeno roasted chicken earlier in the week (my first roast chicken!) and then made a stock out of the carcass. I felt so gourmet! I loved the whole process of boiling the carcass and then skimming off the fat and using the homemade stock to make a soup. The tortilla chips and feta cheese on top made it particularly tasty.

I am loving this quick (and cute!) little dessert right now. It started by accident when I had some left over pie crust dough  a while ago. I rolled out a piece of it and baked it for Steven (he really likes just plain crust) and then I made a little pocked pie for myself. I put a scoop of  my homemade apple butter inside with a few little slivers of butter and then sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on the top. These are so tasty and I particularly love that it's all homemade but the apple filling is pre-made so it's less of a chore to put them together.

And our current favorite vegetable -- roasted Brussel's sprouts. Well, I don't know if it's Steven's favorite but it is certainly my favorite. Especially with salmon! Yum. Such a perfect dinner.

And there's the food update for now. It had been a little too long since my last food post :)