Shipping out of Boston . . .

It’s been a while since I posted – it’s been a pretty busy month!  Mario finished his finals on May 4th and we started driving May 5th.  Mario got a job working for a firm in Salt Lake City, Utah called Vial Fotheringham.  He wants to do Intellectual Property litigation after school, and at Vial Fotheringham he’s going to be doing a lot of litigation.  My oldest brother Tyler offered to let us live in his basement for the summer, and we were able to sublet our apartment, so we were pretty excited about this summer!  So we packed up our little monkey and the mountain of whatnot that he requires and started the 3,100 mile trek from Cambridge, Massachusetts to West Jordan, Utah via Longmont and Fruita Colorado.

It was a very long trip, but I must say I very much enjoyed having Mario all to myself with no internet and no homework or classes to compete with.  Josh did great, and we made really good time.  To make the trip more bearable, we decided we’d stop for meals at some restaurants featured on Food Network’s show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  Unfortunately, we happened to pass most of the ones on our route in the middle of the night, but we did happen to be in Omaha for lunch, so we stopped at a place called Dixie Quick’s.  It was a tiny little place we drove by twice without seeing, pretty funky, with some amazing food.  Mario had a steak sandwich that was pretty unimpressive, and I had a beef brisket that was mind-blowingly good.  I could cut it with a fork and it was doused in some beautiful barbeque sauce I can’t even describe. 

Most of the rest of the food on our trip was run-of-the-mill fast food, although I’m sure Josh’s first taste of a vanilla milkshake wasn’t run-of-the-mill to him!

We arrived at my grandparents’ house in Longmont, Colorado after 3 days in the car, a trip to the emergency room for Joshua in Nebraska at 2 am because of a frighteningly-high fever, and absolutely the worst sushi imaginable (also in Nebraska – guess I should have known sushi + Nebraska = not good.  I do not like Nebraska.).  We spent a few days with my grandparents, aunts, and cousins and had a really great time.  We also had the chance to see Gram perform in the Boulder Chorale on Mother’s Day, which was really impressive. 

We headed out Sunday night for Fruita, Colorado, which is near Grand Junction, to visit some good friends there.  We had a great day with the Veeks and their wild and wonderful bunch of kids.  We loved catching up with them, seeing some surprisingly beautiful scenery, and Josh especially loved being with so many nice kids! 

From there, we finished the last leg of our trip to Tyler and Susan’s house in Utah, where they promptly invited us to go camping that weekend.  We spent the weekend in Moab where we visited Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, both of which were AWESOME!  Josh got to try out his new hiking backpack, and he enjoyed it so much he actually fell asleep in it, and we all had a great time.  Ben and Kendall told us some very inventive campfire stories.  We hadn’t been camping since my family reunion the summer before we moved to Boston – I bet I hadn’t gone two whole years without a camping trip in my entire life before that!  It was really great. 

We’re doing great here.  Mario is really enjoying his work.  He’s having fun being in the thick of all kinds of lawyer stuff, and we’re both thrilled that he actually likes it! 

Mother’s Day came and went while we were on the road, so when we got to Salt Lake Mario took me out to Pat’s BBQ.  If you’re anywhere near Salt Lake and you enjoy barbecue, you must try Pat’s BBQ.  Josh loved it too.

Joshua’s hair was starting to get pretty shaggy – it pretty much covered his ears completely and it came all the way down to his eyes in the front.  So I used a comb and scissors first, which didn’t go very well since he just wanted to grab the scissors.  It also ended up pretty choppy, so the next day I got out the hair clippers and went to town.  Here’s the before and after.  I think it ended up pretty good.  

Moving to Utah!

The job search is FINALLY over!!!!!!!!! Mario will be working at Vial Fotheringham in Salt Lake City this summer. We're very excited about this for quite a few reasons. It's a great firm and we think he'll learn a lot and really enjoy his litigation work there. I also have two brothers living in Salt Lake right now, and we'll be living in my oldest brother's basement for the summer. We're excited to see my family a lot this summer as well as catch up with old friends in the area.
Since I last blogged, Joshua has cut two teeth and learned to crawl. It's getting downright crazy around here! He had been right on the verge of crawling for a week or two but never could get past the rocking stage. On Sunday, Daddy poured a big glass of Diet Coke (and yes, Joshua absolutely knows what this is - when he hears ice clinking and the hiss of the two-liter opening, he starts looking around for who to start begging), put it on the floor on the opposite side of the room, and told the little monkey he could have as much as he wanted if he would crawl over and get it. And he did!!! Crazy kid!

Since he's discovered his legs, he's been exploring the deep recesses of the living room he hasn't visited yet. We haven't totally babyproofed yet, but I am really trying to keep shoes out of the living room - one of his favorite treats is a nice slobbery make-out session with the bottom of my disgusting 3-year-old house slippers, or whatever other shoes he can get. He also really has a thing for my spices. When he's in his walker in the kitchen, he grabs every bottle and jar on the low shelves he can reach. He sucks on them, pounds them on whatever he can reach, and gets rid of them. Sometimes I have quite the hunt to find my spices when I'm trying to cook these days! Anyway, the first time he got close to the kitchen after learning to crawl, he peeked around the corner and discovered he could reach ALL of the bottles since he wasn't in his walker. He let out a squeal of absolute delight and charged right into the thick of it, attacking paprika and oregano, olive oil and chicken bullion with gleefully reckless abandon. He's very much enjoying his new-found freedom. I thought it would be a whole new game to have a mobile infant, and in some ways it is, but his mood has improved exponentially now that he's not eternally annoyed with a sore mouth combined with the frustration of wanting so badly to crawl and just not being able to do it.

Joshua pics

Here are a few of our favorite recent photos of Josh.  You can see more on my facebook account at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=159300&id=571718027&l=c1c7b51399

Spring Break Part 2

After our maple sugar expedition, we headed to Washington, D.C. for a few days.  Mario and I had never been there, so we thought we'd take advantage of its proximity.  The weather could not have been better - it was in the 60s or 70s and perfectly sunny every day we were there.  We stayed in Arlington and took the Metro to the Mall (the main area with the Smithsonian museums and a lot of the memorials and stuff) every day.  It was really amazing.  There was a very special feel to all of it. 

The little monkey also had his first experience with a swimming pool, which he loved even though it was a little on the chilly side.

Spring Break Part 1

We've had an exciting few weeks! My mom came out to visit during Mario's spring break. We had a great time with her! The weather here in Boston was pretty terrible her first weekend here, so we spent some time letting Mario study and letting Grandma get reacquainted with Joshua. On Saturday, there was a slight break in the rain and we took advantage of the opportunity to do a quintessential New England spring activity - maple sugaring. There are "sugar shacks" scattered all over New England where maple sugar farmers tap their maple trees in the spring to harvest the sap, which they then boil down into pure maple syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of maple sap (which looks and tastes just like water when it comes out of the tree) to make one gallon of maple syrup. The sugar shack we went to is called Parkers Maple Barn and has won award after award for the food served at their on-site restaurant. Their sugar shack (and it was an actual shack) was pretty awesome, and surprisingly small. Unlike a lot of local maple sugaring farms, they boil their sugar over a wood fire. When we walked in, we were hit by a huge cloud of steam made of the sweet fumes of boiling maple sugar mixed with the warm, homey smell of a super-hot wood stove. It was absolutely divine. In true New England style, the man tending the fire saw me trying to capture the place on "film" and let me through the safety cords to take these shots. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's their super-high-tech bottling apparatus. That would be a traditional truck stop-style coffee dispenser.




After our maple sugar steam bath, we visited the restaurant for some fresh maple sugar donuts, maple-glazed ribs, maple walnut pancakes, and a maple hamburger with Virginia ham. We weren't disappointed.

On the way home, we saw these sap collection buckets just off the road. This is one of my favorite shots of the day.

I found some New York sirloin on sale the week before Mom got here.  We called on Tyler's Ultimate again for some inspiration and came up with this.  We had pan-seared steak with oven-roasted Russet potatoes tossed with parsley, olive oil, and fresh parmesan.  After we seared the steak, we cooked some mushrooms in the drippings and then made a pan sauce with reduced red wine and heavy cream.
 

More stuff that's not Joshua!

In my desire to write about something besides just Joshua, I've stumbled upon something I love to do, take pictures of, and partake - FOOD!!  For Mario's birthday, we got him a Tyler's Ultimate cookbook by Tyler Florence and the Simply Ming cookbook by Ming Tsai, two of our favorite chefs.  We've been trying some fun new recipes and taking pictures of them - we sure enjoy it and think you might too.

Mario's first foray into Tyler's Ultimate recipes was this:  Creamy cauliflower soup with a toasted topping of crunchy bread, pine nuts, roasted cauliflower and fresh parsley.  Definitely going to make this again!  It was really a great dish.  Mario also made an awesome garlic bread where he stuffed the insides of a baguette with a paste of parsley, parmesan, garlic, and olive oil.

We also made a dish of root vegetables - parsnip, carrot, turnip, shallot, and beet - roasted with balsamic vinegar and honey, topped with goat cheese.  It was, as our Chinese students would say, not delicious.  But, we did get to try a few new vegetables we hadn't had before, which was fun.

Something besides Joshua!!! :)

I actually have something to write about besides my kid! I don't know why, but I'm not terribly motivated to have a blog just about my kid. I could of course go on for hours and hours about him, what he does, how much we love him, etc, but I don't really want to.
That's why I'm excited to finally have something else to blog about! We had a Chinese New Year party a few weeks ago with some friends. I was planning on taking photos of each part of it, but I only remembered to photograph the prep for the meal. I wish I had taken some shots of our rather small living room with 16 people plus three kids or some of the cooking, but this is all I have. We love to cook! We especially love cooking recipes from China.


Here is our prep for the party.
This is enough garlic for exactly 3 dishes. I think it was 18 or 19 cloves. Yum!

I forgot to post pics of Josh in his Beavers outfit that Mike and Christine sent us. College football season was over, but he did get to wear it to the Superbowl party we went to!

And Joshua LOVES to go visit Mario downstairs in his man-cave to "help" him study.