kinda funny to remember what it was like to be 5. in my world, that meant lots of princesses..
below says:
lots of bows..
and then, a shocking discovery.. our 6th family member: hole.
weird, right?
jeff and i were in tears laughing. 
let me preface this by saying i've been on a chai mission for quite some time now. becca's mother in law has a "recipe" for chai.. but it has no real measurements. bec just gets a little jar of spices from her once in a while. not easy to recreate. but i've tried all kinds of internet recipes over the last year. 
the boxed tazo wins for ease and overall taste. it tastes justttt like the chai at my favorite DC coffee shop, tryst. wouldn't be surprised at all if that's the mix they use when you order it. a cup there is $3.72. a box of the mix at HEB is $4.99.. and you can make something like 10-12 cups with it.
the website recipe was pretty similar tasting to the tazo brand.. but it just didn't look as nice. and i didn't have ground cloves, so i just threw whole cloves and whole peppercorns in and i fish them out when i make the tea.
it's cheaper, especially if you don't have to buy any of the spices. condensed milk was $2. and it will probably end up making the same amount.
the end :)
jeff after duck tail removal (thanks to his lovely and talented big sister/haircutter extraordinarre.)
these pictures are from the other day when i made a delicious fritata. 3 eggs, a splash of milk, a big spoon of flour, and then you can add whatever the heck you want. 350 for 45 minutes or so. it is so easy/delicious/has become one of the things i make when i have nothing in the house to make a real meal out of, but still want something substantial.
tonight i went to dinner at my friends zach and jill's house. they got married a couple of years ago and now they're having a baby girl (we think) in february. they're two of my very favorite people. i met jill in college and we had the besttt time cooking and going out to eat and being silly and irreverently talking about everything there is.
anyway i had the best time at dinner. they are hilarious and no topic is off limits. they're only in austin for a year, but i hope i see them often. especiallyyy once they have a little teeny baby to cuddle with.
it rained in austin today for a little bit. nice to sit in a comfy chair and read while it's raining. and i went to central market before i went to jill's and picked up stuff for dessert for dinner but they also had figs that were really yummy, and i found cardamom powder for cookies/tea and fleur de sel to experiment with while baking.
so now i'm all hyped up on friends, organic grocery stores and a rainy day.
kristen and i made strawberry jam today! last time i did it, i used serto.. which was 1 pint of strawberries, 4 cups of sugar. today we used.. i don't know what it was. but it was 4 lbs of strawberries, 1 cup of apple juice, no sugar (although we ended up adding about 1/2 of honey).
kristen is from north carolina and her accent is so cute. i love her. on her first day at camp, she sat down beside me and said 'so what's going on with you and guillermo?' and i was shocked and amazed because a) nothing was going on at that point and b) we were being super stealthy. 
dinner party tomorrow. i need to think of a dessert to bring that involves strawberry jam. chocolate cake with a layer of jam? strawberry tart? biscuits with whipped cream? 
we had the best time at schlitterbahn two days ago. it's in new braunfels which is a little german town about an hour and a half south of austin. schlitterbahn is consistently voted america's #1 waterpark on whatever that show is that rates those things. it has three parts, and all of them run on river water from the san marcos river that runs along side the park.
the only downfall to being at one of the most popular waterparks in the country is that the lines are very, very long. we waited in about 5 lines that each took over an hour to get through. but lines are a lot more fun when you're with 7 of your closest friends. we laid down, we named every state capital, we chatted and chatted. 
some crowds loved it, some could do without us.
now almost everyone has flown back to their respective states. but a few loved austin soo much that they're moving down. ryann, geoff and guillermo are all from northern states and they decided austin is more their style.
sad that it's over, but looking forward to whatever's next.. which in my case is [hopefully] subbing for a couple months, visiting relatives and heading to china in late september when the boy is finished with his military skills training clinic stuff. we haven't bought tickets or anything yet, but that's the plan. then i can come back in late october, hang out for a bit and start teacher certification in the spring. 
a week or so after we had been working together, i saw that he was taking the golf cart down to the maintenance yard and i asked if i could go along for the ride. we had kind of been flirting all week but i wasn't sure if it would go anywhere. so we get down to the maintenance yard and he gets out of the golf cart and sits in his car while he gets stuff out of it. i stayed in the golf cart.. feeling kinda awkward. on the way back, i was sure i had been imagining all of the flirting i thought we had done the previous week. but finally as we got closer to camp, he asked what i was doing on saturday (which we both had off) and if i wanted to get a drink.
so we worked it out so we had the same day off every week and went on secret dates every weekend, sent secret texts, avoided each other around camp. that went on for the wholeee two months until two days before camp ended and then we started telling people a little at a time. first i told the girls i lived with, who completely freaked out. 
it's been a fun week because of that. i'm horrible at keeping secrets, so i'm proud of myself for keeping it. and it feels a lot less sketchy not to be keeping something from so many people we're close to. and it's been fun to be able to hang out around each other in front of everyone. 
Posts
All Comments
