Rants, Recipes, and Running

Living in North Dakota my whole life, and Ryan for a good portion of his life--we both grew a STRONG hate for one thing. It is the thing that causes escalating energy bills, ruins your morning, makes you late for class/work/whatever you need to get to, makes your day miserable, doesn't let you wear cute shoes, and turns VERY ugly from the polution of the city.....SNOW. However, for some reason--our minds became quite tainted when we moved to Arizona, for we both found ourselves saying "Man, I miss snow..." In all reality, we know that the SECOND we move back to the midwest, and had to deal with it interfering in our daily lives--we would find ourselves bitching and complaining at the exhausting winter weather. However, I found a great beauty this winter. I wake up to a cool morning where i get to wear sweaters, it stays in the 50-60 degree range (sometimes making peaks into the 70's), and we look up into the mountains and see the snowy caps in the air. Being lovers of...

Our first Christmas together was definitely an enjoyable one :) Although some family and friends were definitely missed--we found the days to be quite merry. Christmas Eve started it off. Ryan had to be up early at 4:30 for Guard, and I was up that early as well baking bread for Christmas Eve dinner, and chocolate pie for Xmas day :) We had Ryan's Christmas party that afternoon at his shop for guard, and it was great for me to see where he works (one weekend a month, anyways), and I finally got to see what an F16 looks like. It was a warm sunny day that day, so after the party we went to a park and enjoyed the beautiful day accompanied by some fresh air. We then went to Chris and Lora's house (his dad and step-mom) and enjoyed some hor'd oeuvres, and went to Christmas Eve mass. The meal was amazing. We did a tradition which is an Italian one where we enjoy 7 different fish on Christmas eve. The fish we savored on were: a wonderful crab dip, shrimp cocktail, broiled shimp, f...