Tenth Anniversary Date

Ten happy years and here we are!

Admiring the clouds in the sideview mirror.

Aaron and I tried something new and fun!  We'd heard of Stir Crazy several times but this was the first time we gave it a try.  So very glad we did!

The decor is pretty awesome, with dragons and giant woks all over the place.

But the food was worth the rave!!  We started out with some crab rangoon and spring rolls.  Most marvelous!  Aaron and I savored both delicious dishes, loathe to finish them and move on to creating our 'wok your way' dishes.

Finish them we did, and filled our wok bowls with all kinds of yummy veggies to make an awesome stir fry!  Aaron chose to have his with all the meats - chicken, beef and shrimp - while I stayed simple with a chicken stir fry.

My favorite part was watching the show-off men at the woks stir up our meats and vegetables with flare and fire.

I just want to eat it all over again!

After fun discussion and much delicious food, we were so happy with our dessert.  These are wowser!!  Banana wontons.  I can't say enough good about these bits of heaven!  

I want to come back and fill in bits about our lives over the last ten years, but this was mostly a picture update.  More to come later.

Hot Date!

Aaron and I got to go out for a few hours!  We did something we haven't done in years: went shooting together!  We both enjoy it; it's how we met on our first group date a little over ten years ago.  It was really fun to get out and shoot again.  The only difference was that, last decade we shot empty bottles with a rifle and this time we were shooting various handguns.

 

It is very obvious to me that I'm not as skilled as I once was - that happens when you ignore a task for a decade.  In the picture of me shooting, my shirt is pulled back in an awkward way.  This was because the casings were ejecting back at me and a couple of them went down my shirt - painful! I have (the day after the incident) a noticeable burn right between my breasts because I couldn't get one of them off fast enough.  Startling, painful and embarrassing!

Aaron was complete concentration and really ended up perfecting his shots!  His goal was to get at least one bull's eye with one of the guns, and he was able to get more than that!  This was particularly exciting for him because one of the guns we shot was one he bought last week, a kind of belated birthday present.  He was really excited to get familiar with his new gun!

 

After the gun range, we went to Outback Steak House and chatted while eating yummy steak!

Sledding with Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma and Grandpa B invited the kids over for a few hours to go sledding and play in the snow!  We looked at options like sledding down the long hill to the pond or on the small hill by the vineyard, and finally decided to go ahead and make a sled hill from Grandpa's snow plow dumping - he used a big machine and made a grand slope and Grandma took the shovel and made a set of snow stairs up the side.  It was really a great setup!

While we waited for Grandpa to finish working out the man-made hill, the kids played on the play set with less-than-awesome results.  Lizzie was very frustrated because she couldn't get the swing to move through the high snow.

Evie made the best of the slide.

Carson used the play house at the top to play peek-a-boo with me.

Finally, the hill was ready to be used!

We had lots of fun, and were so excited when Uncle Brian and Jessica came to join the fun!

Evie, Aaron and I had fun finding that the ice on the pond was really thick and slid around some.  It was hard, though, because the ice wasn't smooth and flat, it was bubbly and rippled - hard on the knees when we tried.

Evie's bright pink outfit stands out pretty much anywhere, but in all this white and light, it was a beacon!

Evie tried sliding across the ice like a penguin.  I guess penguins are made for it or something, because she barely made it two feet!

I handed the camera off to Evelyn for a few pictures of me with my honey.

Jess was super helpful - she wanted to pull Carson back to the top of the hill but hit a spot she couldn't get over and deserted her endeavor.

It was warm enough that we started getting a puddle at the bottom of the hill, on the driveway.  Lizzie loved splashing through it and then Grandpa and Uncle Brian brought extra snow and filled it in.

Aaron and Grandpa also spent a little time making a mini snow cave.  It was barely big enough for the kids to squirm into one at a time, but they thought it was pretty cool.

Another sweet Jess moment - she wanted to check on Grandpa and make sure he was okay at the bottom of the hill.

It should be noted that there are no pictures of Cole in this fun - because he SLEPT through it all!  He fell asleep on the way over and stayed that way two more hours!

In a winter that seems to be endless like this one, it's been great to take advantage of family time and the fun that can be had in the snow.  It may be the end of February, but the snow shows no signs of melting away and giving over to spring - curse that groundhog...