Brotherly Barbecue (9-15-12)

Jeff kind of inherited/stole his dad's old grill. We couldn't let the summer pass without having some company over for a little barbecuing! Who better to have than Bryan who served his mission in Alabama and was anxious to show us how they smoke dem ribs and bake dem some macaroni. I lived in the south for a little bit so it's not offensive that I wrote that last sentence that way.

 Jeff made a delish garden salsa for an appetizer.

 Bryan and Celeste whipped up the mac and cheese. Hello beautiful.

Salsa was gone in 2.4 seconds.

Smokin' dem ribs.

Boys and fire. This is my life.

 Jeff's seal of approval that the meat was ready.

We couldn't have a southern barbecue without cole slaw gracing our plates!

I basically kicked back with my feet up the whole time because my contribution was rosemary bread which I had made earlier.

Why did I ever move further away from Alabama, ya'll?!?

Oh yeah. The cockroaches. And scorpions. And tornadoes. It's all coming back to me.

Shake Things Up (8-3-12)

Dating cards have become half the fun of date night for me. I love coming up with a little saying and seeing Jeff try to figure out what we're doing.

I don't think he guessed that we'd be making homemade ice-cream for our date this week. I was reminded of how to make ice-cream in a bag on Pinterest, so I got the ingredients and made a date out of it.

It was really simple. Only three ingredients, a little ice and salt and you're ready to start shaking.

Caution: Date may cause frostbite. Take precautionary measures.

Hello beautifuls.

So tasty. So perfect. So delicious. So refreshing on a hot summer's eve.

We enjoyed our snack on the front porch mmmmm-ing all the way. It was so good. So good that we made another batch for lunch the next day.

In an effort to stick with the shaking theme, I suggested we could play Yahtzee, but we were feeling lazy and opted to get a RedBox instead. It was a good choice. I fell asleep 20 minutes into it and definitely needed the extra sleep after our first week of Jeff's busy season.

Sarah High - Talking on the front porch.
Sarah Low - Getting bug bites on the front porch.

Jeff High - How good the ice-cream tasted.
Jeff Low - He thought the movie was dumb. (Mirror, Mirror) But yet he stayed up to watch the whole thing basically by himself. Something tells me he liked it a little more than he wants me to believe...

Love and War (7-27-12)

Jeff had a craving for homemade lemonade to kickoff our date this week.

There was a slight problem when he got to the store and found he couldn't remember how many lemons the recipe called for. So he just bought 20. Turns out we only needed 8. I guess this is a good example of why I do the grocery shopping.

Jeff worked on the lemonade as I was running between the kids' rooms to make sure their bedtime needs were met. Once the kids were finally nestled in bed, I made myself useful by stacking lemon peels while Jeff finished up our evening beverage.

Jeff also bought some mangoes. He decided a few weeks ago that he needed to try a mango so he picked one up along with his 20 lemons. It was slightly disappointing.

After our taste testing, we went down to the basement to cool down and play a nice, friendly game of War.

The great thing about War is that it requires zero brain power -- perfect way to ease out of a busy week. Of course, we did spice it up a bit by playing with two decks.

Yeah. This happened. War has a way of bringing people together.

When it proved to be impossible to win with two decks, we made up a new rule: when we both laid down the same card, instead of laying down the typical three cards, we laid down the same number of cards as the cards that caused the war. It was so much more fun and so much faster and gave me so much more anxiety.

Then we got a couple double wars and that was just nuts.

Sarah High - Amping up our game with all the extra cards during the wars.
Sarah Low - I lost the battle royale.

Jeff High - Double Ace war.
Jeff Low - The game never ended.

Drawn to You (7-20-12)

Nothing says "It's Friday!" quite like a hot, homemade pizza to kick off date night. We've been trying to perfect the art of pizza in our house. This beauty was by far our best yet.

With the kids in bed, we took our date to the sidewalk to do some chalk art and discover we are not artists.

We played a game I used to play with my siblings in church. I couldn't remember the exact rules so this is how we played: You start with a scribble. Then you have to take turns turning the scribble into a picture. When you pick up your writing utensil your turn is over. If you can't add to the picture you lose.

Once we started playing, it became obvious that there were some loopholes in the rules but we forged ahead anyway. I started trying to turn our scribble into a Teepee...

While Jeff was turning it into an airplane.

I liked his idea better so I went along with his picture.

Jeff has more of an artistic eye than I do.

I discovered my lack of artistry when I attempted to draw a bird. You know. That thing right in front of the pilot. Yes. I'm blushing at the thought of anyone seeing my lack of chalk talent.

After remembering why I hated all my art classes in high school, we did our second favorite summer activity -- laying on the trampoline and chatting and getting eaten alive by mosquitos. That last part isn't our favorite, but a few bug bites are worth a good starlit discussion.

What you may not know is that for every picture you see on my blog, there are about 20 pictures that look almost exactly the same that didn't quite make the cut. Sometimes my excessive picture taking drives Jeff a little crazy which results in a few of these:

It was a short date since we were both tired from a day of potty training Eli so we chose to forego high lows. Our quick date made me realize it's still important to make time for each other even if we're feeling tired or busy. Just one hour of time away from distractions to spend with each other can make all the difference in reconnecting each week so I'm grateful Jeff's willing to make date night a priority even on the weeks that are a bit crazy.

I guess that's why I'm drawn to him. That and the fact that he's so photogenic of course.

Fire and Ice (7-12-12)

We didn't let threats of Thursday being the hottest day of the year or the constant media coverage of  forest fires blooming all over Utah take the sizzle out of our date night this week. We embraced the heat by creating a makeshift fire pit in our backyard and roasting some marshmallows.

We cooled off with snow cones (the ice portion of the date) as we waited for it to get dark. I don't care how overpriced that frozen sugar water is. Chomping on flavored ice is hands down my favorite summer activity.

As I patiently waited for our stubborn newborn to finally keep his eyes closed for the night, Jeff diligently worked on our campsite.

See. He was very diligent. He cut his scrap wood into tiny pieces to comply with our tiny fire.

Before long a fire was burning as strong as our love. If our love had to be restricted to the size of a backyard undercover fire, that is.

Yeah, okay. I'll admit it. A part of me was anxiously waiting for a fire engine to roar down our street due to a concerned neighbor noticing signs of smoke, but Jeff repeatedly assured me no one would notice our possibly illegal date.

He was right. Our street stayed quiet and all that was heard was the crackle of a cozy little fire.

You could also occasionally hear me scream when my marshmallows caught on fire. But the neighbors are used to hearing me screech about bugs and weeds and Eli eating dirt. So that was nothing new.

Chalk up a clever date idea to Jeff! Now I've got to go read my city's regulations to see if I need to be worried about some local cop reading this post and showing up at my house to take me away in handcuffs for being a neighborhood menace. Jeff thinks I'm paranoid, but hey, it could happen.

Sarah High - I've had this weird obsession with 20/20 this week. I like to watch TV shows while I cook for a little background noise, but there aren't many shows on during summer. I noticed three seasons worth of 20/20 were on Hulu, so I got sucked in. My favorites are the murder mysteries. I know! It's creepy but I find them interesting.

Anyway, after all my paranoia about the fire being illegal, at the end of the date, Jeff put the fire out and shoveled all the dirt back. Then as a final assurance the fire department wouldn't be showing up, he said, "There. It's like it never happened."

My mind immediately pictured someone watching Jeff digging from a window and then proclaiming "It's like it never happened." That probably wouldn't have looked good.

I need to lay off the 20/20.

Let's Tie the Knot (7-6-12)

When I saw we had a wedding present that's been sitting in its wrapping for the past four years, I knew the time had finally come to put it to use.

 All I can say is, "Why the heck did we not crack that baby open sooner?!?"

First we spun the spinner and wrote down all of our spins so that we wouldn't have to deal with trying to spin mid game. It worked like a charm.

Thank you self timer for helping us capture our date nights. What self timer didn't capture was Jeff's Twister strategy. He made sure I didn't have a lot of options and he got me in a garbled mess every game. I never knew he was such a skilled Twisterian. The things you learn from date night.

I forgot to mention that we had made some pretzel dough that was rising during our game of Twister. After we were twisted out, we hit the kitchen to continue our knotty date... (I couldn't help it.)

I need to take a moment to thank Mel for yet another delicious recipe. That girl is an inspiration.

You have to dip the molded pretzels into a baking soda/water mixture. Our mixture didn't stay mixed very well, so Jeff got the brilliant idea to put the lid on the tupperware we were using to give it a good shake. Surely that would get everything nice and mixed, right?

Nope. Somehow his shaking managed to further assist the baking soda in separating from the water. Sometimes dating your spouse leads to unintended science experiments.

Here are our bronzed beauties. They. Were. Scrumptious. I ate somewhere between 2-6 for breakfast this morning.

Jeff High - Knocking me over in Twister.
Jeff Low - He put too much salt on his pretzels.

Sarah High - This conversation:
Sarah, "Jeff, thanks for being such a good sport in putting up with these dates."
Jeff, "What do you mean, 'putting up with the dates?' I love our date nights. I'm not putting up with anything."  He's cute.
Sarah Low - I was sick. Boo.