Now, chew on these…

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein

The secret lies in respecting the pupil. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

And we hope you have a wonderful New Year in 2009.

God bless you!

Love,
Brent, Michelle & Cadence
(cadiespore.com -  brentspore.com - splendidlittleblog.com)

- J. R. R. Tolkien

West Coast Tour

Brent, Cadie and I just returned from a 5-day trip that actually turned into 12 days. Holy cow!

We had lots of fun doing our ‘West Coast Tour’, I’ll call it. We started up in Seattle for Thanksgiving and stayed a few days afterwords hanging out with family and friends. We ate at this cool diner that Brent’s cousins saw on the FoodNetwork’s Diners, Dives & Drive-In’s. Way good. We saw Brent’s old high school buddy & wife, and I got to go to my FAVORITE coffee shop in Seattle: Vivace!! (What-up Vivace homies!!) Vivace actually had to move locals… some sort of “emanate domain” issue. The word on the street is that the city was going to build their light rail right through the old shop. It was a great old place, very “coffee house”-esque, but their new place is so beautiful. You have to check them out when in Seattle up in the Capitol Hill dist. A bonus- we got to meet Brent’s friend (and mine now!) Derek Punsalan for coffee and we also hung out with Chris Pirillo then too. They were both gracious enough to talk tech talk with Brent for a few hours while Brent’s & my friend (Fred) and I talked seminary talk. We concluded our long stay with seeing friends from Maple Valley & we chilled at the SouthCenter mall - that’s what you do when you’ve got 4 kids under the age of four tagging along. Yep, we had a blast up in WA. And I even saw the sun the afternoon we had coffee with the fellas.

So we’re at the SeaTac airport about to head back to Phoenix, and Brent’s like, “I don’t want to go back to Phoenix yet.” So what do we do? We jump online (while sitting in the airport parking lot) & re-route to the Oakland airport. That’s right, OakTown baby. After buying some Crocs at the airport (not the ugly kind), we fly to the Bay Area - that’s where I’m from. That means I’ve got family and friends there too, whom we saw. That was great! After driving past Emeryville where Pixar lives (and watching Brent cry his sorry eyes out for not being able to visit them), we drove to the north bay. Brent, Cadie & I stayed a few nights at the Union Hotel in Benicia (the town where I graduated high school BTW). It was kinda nice acting like a tourist in my old home town. It’s a rather cute water-front artsy type of town that I totally recommend you vising one day. So we completely surprised my mom at her work. She was totally shocked to see us. It was worth it all to see the look on her face! We concluded our little Bay Area trip by driving up to Napa to see the beautiful vineyards and landscape there. We ate at Napa Style, Michael Chiarello’s restaurant (he’s on the Food Network) and it was so good! And guess what, Micahel Chiarello totally showed up. I sort of freaked out. Brent was like, “Are you gonna go & meet him?” Nah, I was having too much fun eating his food & feeding Cadie some of their yummy bread. We took some great pics of Cadie up there & I’m pretty sure Brent streamed a little bit of our time there too.

We finally booked our “return” flight to Phoenix on Friday… which actually included a stop in OC. So on Sunday we left Oakland for …. you guessed it… Disneyland!! We met up with Justine and were able to be her “tour guides” to Disneyland and California Adventure since it was her first time there. Gosh, we ran around everywhere in those two theme parks. Cadie was such a trooper. So was Justine. I totally have a blister on my toe from it all (dumb Crocs). We had a midnight dinner at IHOP, where Brent captured the funniest video of Justine making Cadence laugh. (As of right now, close to 17,000 people have viewed it on YouTube.) You’ll have to check it out! We concluded our Southern California adventure with hanging out with one of my best friends Kelli & her daughter at the Gypsy Den in Santa Ana. Brent says that he felt like such a hippy eating there, but I totally love it & the food/coffee.

Then, we came back to Phoenix where it’s in the 70’s. Bet you’re jealous!

Have a Merry, Merry Christmas everyone!

Well I was doing so well there, posting daily here on my blog. That is until last Wednesday rolled around. I had received a whopping 3 hours of sleep the night before, thanks to my cute little daughter. She seemed to have a really crappy rest of the week when it came to sleeping too. That’s when I decided on Wednesday, November 19th at 9:17 pm that I would NOT blog. You’d think it would have been a difficult decision. After all I took the NABLOPOMO challenge and was 18 days into it! However, I really wasn’t thinking straight at all. And I didn’t want to subject anyone to my insanity. So, I quickly (and I mean all of 2 seconds) thought it over and said to myself, “Nah, I’m not blogging!”

So no, nothing major went wrong. I just was a sleep-deprived mom of a 9 month old. (BTW, she’ll be 10 months tomorrow. Woo!)

I don’t feel like a failure. I’m excited to try again next month. Hopefully they’ll kick out a meaningful topic for the month in December. That may help me. November’s topic was a free-for-all.

Happy Thanksgiving! And we’ll see you in Seattle this week/weekend if you’re up there reading this.

I forgot to blog today. Boo-hoo. I was going to Rick Roll you by including a silly link here. But that’s just mean at this time of night. So instead, read up on it here on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling

Sorry! I’m just tired tonight. ]]> http://splendidlittleblog.com/2008/11/19/i-forgot/feed/ http://splendidlittleblog.com/2008/11/19/i-forgot/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SplendidLittleBlog/~3/458017268/ http://splendidlittleblog.com/2008/11/18/where-to-move/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:40:58 +0000 Michelle http://splendidlittleblog.com/?p=165 Business Week put out a list of the top places to live in the USA in 2009. Did they take the recession into account? I would say, sort of. The places were judged based on school performance, safety, air quality… among other things, with affordability being somewhere later on down the list. But hey, if you’re interested in seeing the results check out the article. (I would think anywhere in Hawaii should be on the list…)

We’re shooting for a January 2009 start-up for this “show.” We’re trying to get some nice (but small) equipment for this. And I figure if we start around or after the holidays, we’ll be set. Wish us ‘God-speed’ with this endeavor!

Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons)
2 (14.5-ounce) cans of no-salt-added diced tomatoes, with their juices
1/4 cup finely minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon finely minced fresh dill
1 1/4 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2/3 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 3 ounces)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.Heat the oil in an oven proof skillet over a medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes, then add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let simmer for about 5 minutes, until the tomato juices thicken.

Remove from the heat. Stir in the parsley, dill, and shrimp and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the feta over the top. Bake until the shrimp are cooked through and cheese melts, about 12 minutes.

(By Ellie Krieger)