Can you say Brilliant!

Whoever thought this up was a sheer genius. For all you edge lovers out there...I've got the perfect solution. For my birthday Ben tracked down the ultimate gift....I think it will be basically impossible to top. He bought me the Baker's Edge "Edge Brownie Pan." Listen to these descriptions and testimonials:

"A baker’s dream: deliciously chewy edges for every piece!"

"If you love the crunchy, caramelized, toasty edges of a brownie, this pan is for you. No more gooey centers—every serving has two edges, thanks to the patented interior sidewalls on this pan."

"This pan’s unique design improves baking performance by allowing heat to circulate evenly—no more undercooked middles and burned edges. You’ll bake exceptional brownies, bar cookies and breads—even lasagna will be perfectly cooked. Made of heavy gauge cast aluminum with a nonstick finish. Includes a custom spatula for serving. Use with boxed mixes or recipes that call for a 9"x13" or 9"x9" pan."

I'm telling you...if you don't own one, go buy one from Amazon immediately!

Even though the brownie pan definitely won the award for best birthday present ever...the pink blue tooth definitely came in close second place. It matches my phone PERFECTLY!

Rock Stars at Heart

For the ward talent show last week, Ben decided we should form a band! Luckily I was fortunate enough to be invited to be in the band. I'm glad I made the cut too, cause we rocked the house! I have to say that this whole experience unleashed the inner rock star in me, and it turned out to be really fun. Our band consisted of Ben on guitar and vocals for one number, our friend and EQP Greg on drums, one of the YM (Daniel) on bass, Rick, a fellow med student on vocals....and me on piano. We played two numbers; "How to Save a Life" by the Fray, and "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles. I recognize that neither of these tunes are particularly "rock" in nature, but my only concern was what the band was going to wear, and how we were going to look the part of rock stars. I'm pretty sure I win the award for "best dressed band member", no one else seemed nearly as concerned about dressing up!

We had a great time, and rumor has it there's talk of having us play again sometime in the future...!!

Triathlon Training

Ben and I officially started training for our triathlon this week, and it's basically kicking our trash! (well, I'll speak for myself, it's kicking MY trash) I've never done any type of triathlon before, so it's all a little new for me. I'm not too worried about the biking or the running, but the swimming is killing me. I frequently feel like I'm drowning, or hyperventilating, or something else really scary! It's not that I don't know how to swim, it's just that I have NO endurance for it.

Anyway....I bought Ben his birthday present today, even though his birthday isn't till June. I decided I would get him a bike, since I love biking, and we needed to start training for the triathlon anyway. The weather has been so beautiful lately that we really just wanted to get out and ride. Ben did tons of research and found a sweet deal on a mountain bike and we went and picked it up today. We went out for our first ride, and it was so fun. As it turns out, I don't think Ben and I have ever biked together. I biked tons on my mission, and then back and forth a lot to school when I got home, but since Ben didn't have a bike of his own, we never went out together.

We had a great time riding, and I'm sure there will be many more rides to come. The view of the lake with the sunset in the background was seriously spectacular.

We finished off the night with a quick stop off at McDonalds! Nothing like ending a good work out with a cheese burger right? (how gross are we!) We actually had a good excuse; one of the YW that actually just got baptized works there on Saturday nights from 4pm-2am. Can you believe that. She is so diligent, she never even misses church! Anyway, is was fun to see her, and as socially unacceptable as it is, I have to admit I do love McDonalds!

Outlet Shopping

I'm hoping someone reading this post knows who this is a picture of.....(Project Runway anyone?) Our weekend in Manchester/Bennington was a definite success. The outlets are some of the best I've ever been to. The highlights involved spending way too much time and money at Banana Republic (Ben was pretty patient. I think we were there for at least two hours. At one point one of the ladies working there asked me if my cute husband was asleep in the dressing room!), purchasing some killer shoes at BCBG, finding a sweet Burberry Golf argyle sweater for Ben, and then the obvious steal of the day, the Michael Kors winter coat that was originally $350 that I snagged for $78. It's hard to beat that kind of a deal.

We spent the majority of the day shopping, with the agreement that we would spend the evening watching the final four basketball games. Seeing as how I love basketball, and I love shopping, it was kind of a win-win situation for me! We stayed at a surprisingly nice Hampton Inn with the biggest, softest bed EVER! The drive from Burlington to Bennington was really quite beautiful. We had some serious car problems with our Explorer on the way to Manchester, but luckily we found a mechanic that was open, who was able to fix our problems. (when I got the tires rotated a week before, they hadn't tightened the lug nuts tight enough, and the wheels were basically on the verge of coming off. It was kind of unnerving to say the least.) Overall, I would highly recommend to anyone making the trip down to Manchester to visit the outlets. Manchester is such a cute town with lots of great restaurants, and enough good shopping to sufficiently break your bank account!

What a great Weekend

Can I just say it was so nice to be with Ben for the whole weekend! We get busy during the week, and time seems to fly when we're apart, but man was it fun to be together. We had a really fun weekend at home, with just the right mix of good friends, good food, and relaxation! On Friday night we got together to hang out with our good friends Jake and Erica. Actually, the real reason we went over to hang out with them was so we could play with Gavin...basically the coolest kid ever. If I could guarantee that my kid would be as cute and cool as Gavin, I might actually consider having a kid, but because I just can't guarantee that, I'll stick to hanging out with Gav on the weekends! I thought it would be a fun idea for Gavin to play with my camera, and boy was I right. He had so much fun taking self portraits of himself, I wasn't sure I was ever going to get the camera back. He got a little mixed up with the direction the camera needed to be facing, and I'll be honest, I was a little worried he was going to blind himself with the flash, but it ended up being ok! In addition to playing with the camera, we had some serious running races, we took a nap on the floor together, and Gav got a big kick out of repeatedly waking Benny up! (so Gav calls Ben "Benny", and for some ridiculous reason it's totally stuck with us, so I'm always calling Ben "Benny" now, it's kinda funny)







Saturday morning we slept in....of course (another reason why I can't consider having kids any time soon!). Then we had breakfast at our favorite little place downtown. We have a tradition that every conference weekend we go to Penny Cluse for breakfast before the first session on Saturday, but since I'm going to Bennington over conference weekend, we decided to go this past weekend. For those of you who are local....you have to check this place out. I promise it's worth the wait!

After breakfast, we of course had to do a little shopping on Church Street. (Just as a side not, this past week I worked 12 hours at BR, sold $6000 worth of clothes for them, and probably didn't even break even after I made a few necessary weekly purchases. Too bad we don't work on commission. At what point do I need to cut my losses and quit??)
Saturday afternoon we spent relaxing and catching up on some Friday Night Lights episodes. Such a great show btw.
Then we enjoyed a lovely evening at the church for the YW broadcast. I love my calling in the Young Womens. We have the best girls ever.

Sunday was full of church, games and naps. It doesn't get much better than that. I'm pretty sure I killed Ben at St. Petersburg, but we ran out of time to really seal the deal. (Thanks Mike and Kristin for introducing us to that game. If anyone is looking for a good two player game, we totally recommend it! And btw...don't judge it by the box, I know it looks weird, but it's tons of fun!)

I'm so glad that I'm down to only 5 more sleeps alone! I'm looking forward to spending the weekend in Bennington, enjoying General Conference together, and shopping at the outlets in Manchester!

Easter in Lake Placid

For Easter Ben and I decided to go to Lake Placid for a nice relaxing weekend away from home. Ben had been in Bennington all week, where he is complete a one month rotation in outpatient internal medicine. I was feeling really sad, and pretty sorry for myself that he had to be away for the whole month...so I decided to plan some fun weekend trips for us to take! Somehow I was able to justify "needing" the trips since it was going to be so hard having him be gone! (I know, faulty logic, but any excuse to get away)

Thanks to our good friends Rick and Vanessa, who had already been to Lake Placid, we had plenty of ideas of things we wanted to do, and a great Bed and Breakfast we wanted to stay at.

We thoroughly enjoyed out time there....although we are planning a return trip, sometime next December or January when more of the Olympic venues will be open.

We had tickets to the NCAA Hockey Championships which ended up being so fun. Three of the four teams in the finals were from either Vermont or NY, so there were tons of fans, and we felt a loyalty to the local teams.

We had planned on taking a tour of the Ski Jumping track and the Bobsled track, but were told it wasn't really worth our time since there were no athletes training at the time. We also brought our skates and planned on skating on the Olympic Oval rink, but it was shut down for the season.

We stayed at an awesome little B&B only a couple of miles from downtown Main Street. It was called the Winterberry, and we would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Lake Placid.

Sunday we attended the local branch, and enjoyed some great Easter talks. To end a great trip, we enjoyed some beautiful snow and sunshine, and went snowshoeing! Neither Ben or I had ever been before, and lets just say, I'm hooked! I've already been shopping online for my own gear!

Overall, we had a wonderful weekend. I'm really looking forward to April 9th when Ben will finally be done in Bennington. We're both totally fine on our own....but it is so much more fun to be together. I guess being apart makes us appreciate one another even more than we already do!

Why was this possibly a good idea??

With all the blogging of healthy recipes and diets that everyone is on these days...I thought it important to share with you my dieting strategy....a straight diet of Cadbury Mini Eggs.
Why I thought it was a good idea to buy 5 19oz bags, I'm not exactly sure, but here are some of my thoughts on the subject:
I am basically obsessed with this candy, and I wait all year for Easter to come around so I can eat them. When Valentines day is finally over, I anxiously await the arrival of the Mini Eggs to the grocery store. I then proceed to eat a concentrated diet of mini eggs for close to a month straight, trying to over dose on them so that I can stand to wait a whole year before eating them again.
It finally dawned on me this year that instead of eating them non stop for a month....why not stock up for the whole year, and enjoy their chocolaty goodness all year round. With a helpful tip from my friend Erica who opened my mind to the beauty of FREEZING mini eggs, I then proceeded to go from store to store, trying to locate sufficient mini egg storage for the year.
(Let us also discuss the fact that if you are planning on adopting this strategy....make sure you wait until AFTER Easter to stock up. All grocery stores sell their Easter candy at 50% off the day after Easter.)
So now that my freezer is completely packed full with mini eggs, I feel confident that I will not have to face any serious mini egg withdrawal for hopefully quite some time.
And did I ever mention Ben's food storage idea?? He thought it would be most beneficial to stock up on boxes and boxes of cookies since they are loaded with calories, and don't go bad for a long time. So along the same thought process...I'm really just padding our food storage. You never know when it might come in handy!
Bottom line...it's a good thing I have a gym membership and that I love to work out.
Happy Easter!