We love "Love Month"

We hope that everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day. One of Emily's visiting teachers from church said that it is "Love Month" and that we should celebrate all month. Well, I don't know if we have been celebrating all month, but we definitely celebrated all week! 

It all started on Monday where we made some cute little brownie balls dipped in white chocolate with pink sprinkles on top. I'm not going to lie, they didn't look as pretty as I would have liked them to, but they were incredibly delicious! We then turned it into somewhat of a service night and took them to some friends (we also kept some for ourselves... We can be so selfish at times...). Here are some pictures from the week to help your imagination.

To start the process, we baked the brownies first and then mixed it all together.

Then we sacrificed our hands by molding the hot brownie into balls and placing them off to the side.

Then we melted some white dipping chocolate and rolled the brownie balls in the chocolate. 

Then we sprinkled them with some pink sprinkles.

And wallah!

We didn't seem to catch too many pictures of our actual Valentine's Day experience. We ended up going out to this place called Cafe Seoul for Korean food. Then we went to the dollar theater to watch Parental Guidance. The movie was super funny and comes strongly recommended for people who like humorous family movies.

We ordered some teriyaki chicken, udon noodles (which is actually Japanese), and some  bibimbap. I think when we walked into the restaurant, looked around, and realized that we were the only white people, we could count the place as authentic. I have never been to Korea before (aside from the airport) so I can't actually tell you if the food was authentic or not, but it sure tasted good!

This was the bibimbap before Emily mixed it all together. After she had mixed it a little and added her sauces, one of the workers brought us our teriyaki chicken and he said "you need to mix more... more sauce!" or something like that. It was pretty funny.

On Saturday we decided to go down to Medford and spend some time at the LDS temple there. It was really beautiful and just nice to be there. The weather was also awesome! The only complaint was that we had to drive about 5 hours (2.5 hours there and 2.5 hours back) to spend 2 hours there, but we survived and enjoyed ourselves.

We are so glad that tomorrow is President's Day. We aren't quite sure what we are going to do yet. Emily still has class (only 2 hours) but neither one of us has work. Does anyone have any fun ideas? Hope you all get to enjoy the holiday tomorrow as well. Much love from Eugene, Oregon! 

Roses are red; Blueberries are blue...

Just a quickie this week...school is threatening to take over our lives. We have officially passed the halfway mark for this semester though, so I (Emily) am super happy about that. AND Valentine's Day is coming up this week! I love any excuse to celebrate...National Corn Dog Day, MLK Jr. Day, you name it. Any excuse to do something out of the ordinary, something other than writing papers...

James and I are looking for a fun and inexpensive place to go out to eat for Valentine's Day. If any of our Eugene friends have suggestions, let us know.

So when my parents were here last weekend, we took a trip to Costco and bought some amazingly fresh blueberries that made me want to cry with happiness every time I ate them. We had blueberry parfaits, blueberry pancakes, blueberries and cereal. Oh yum. And now they are gone...and I have kind of become obsessed with the idea of growing our own blueberry plant on our porch. How awesome would that be, to have fresh blueberries everyday for a couple months? Ah, my mouth is watering just thinking about it...

Soooo....if anyone has any expertise in growing blueberries, let me know. We could quickly become very good friends. I'll even offer cookies in exchange for your secrets to blueberry-growing :)

My Mother-in-Law Is...

I (James) could never understand why people didn't like their in-laws. Well, this last weekend we had Emily's parents over. I think you can all see where this is going (and maybe some of you don't)... We have had an absolutely grand time (seriously, they are grandparents now)! I love them so much and am so thankful for all the awesome memories that we were able to create this weekend. Here are some pictures to highlight some of the the fun times!

Thursday night we went out for Teppanyaki at Kabukis for my father-in-law's birthday.

As you can see, we had a great time!

On Friday, we went out to the coast to Florence. This is my awesome mother-in-law (the Grandbobs) and my amazing father-in-law (the Grandpops) waiting for food at Mo's Seafood.

We had all sorts of yummy food... Like fish tacos!

And clam strips! and some other things like clam chowder, chili, and hot shrimp artichoke dip that we didn't get pictures of this time. But it was all delicious!

We also walked up and down Old Town Florence and looked at a bunch of shops. Like the hats?

We made it to sand...

And took some artistic pictures!

We walked out to the ocean.

Had fun taking pictures.

That's a beautiful flower created by the wonderful Grandbobs!

Emily and Grandbobs having fun jumping at the beach. It was just so exciting!

I really have no comment here.

Had a jumping contest... 

Looking at these two pictures, you can guess who won.

On Saturday, we went and ran at the Roaring River Run. The Grandbobs and Emily ran a half marathon while the Grandpops and I ran the 10km.

Emily tells me they had lots of fun.

And took plenty of time to take pictures at the 10 mile mark and other fun activities.

One of the cool things of the race... They had door prizes at each mile marker. I won't go into too many details, but we all got extra shirts which was just fun.

The weather was as perfect as one could hope for in February  in Oregon. Not too cold, no rain, light fog. We had beautiful scenery out in the countryside.

After the run, we decided to let our bodies rest and stayed home to play Settlers of Catan and watch Groundhog Day.

 Today, we are celebrating my father-in-law's birthday eating brownies, beef stew, chicken ole, and other yummy stuff. It has been a pretty awesome weekend packed with lots of fun festivities. We are sad to see them leave tomorrow morning, but are so happy to have had them stay with us for the weekend. We hope that this post finds everyone in good health. Much love from Oregon!