New Years

I would love to tell you all that I am so excited to blog about New Years, and I am. But in reality what i am doing is procrastinating the days goal of painting the downstairs bathroom and hallway to the garage. There’s just so many tiny corners!! I've been off most of the week, so on Monday I painted the upstairs bathroom. Its a pretty blue color that coordinates well with my warm brown Longaberger baskets (shhhh... don't tell Tom that i actually took my baskets into Lowes with me and stood there making sure our paint selection was the best color to coordinate with my baskets. I also wouldn't mention that the paint people were highly amused by my baskets. He'll role his eyes at me and probably shake his head too!) Tuesday was my first day at my new job and after lots of paperwork and a chat with my new boss I have decided that i think this job will be ok. That said, i actually have a cubical. A cubical!! I’ve always had an office (even if it was a shared one) or worked out of my car. I’m an office drone! Actually I’m not, I’ll be spending a lot of time out of the office doing visits with participants (that’s what my new clients are called, “participants”). Anyway, enough random speak of paint, baskets and new jobs…




Tom and I were able to spend a long weekend with my parents in Arthur over new years. Mom and I did a lot of wedding planning, a lot of revamping things we thought were set in stone. Over Christmas the topic of wedding came up at Grandma’s house and it was nice to hear other perspectives and ideas. We are very much a talking, discussing, planning family. Many big life events/decissions (or little ones) are brought to family and discussed or reviewed. This often takes place at grandma's kitchen table late in the evening. That said, the unspoken rule is, after you have been given a fair opportunity to share your thoughts, you are expected to not come back days or weeks later with a new view or thought you didn't share earlier :) The discussing is not open forever! So over New Years we took some of those ideas and re considered a few things about the wedding.

On New Years day Tom consented to be the chef and we had our 2nd annuel post Christmas fried rice dinner at Glen and Sue's. It all started last year when dad gave Uncle Glen a sample of Tom's fried rice. Later that weekend we decided to make fried rice for Glen, Sue, Todd and Shelby. That became a much larger group by the time it was all said and done - and a tradition appears to have developed. This year Brian came over to the house to have a fried rice lesson. Tom thinks nothing of making fried rice, but because we did not grow up with the ingrediants or style of cooking its a bit of a novelty. Plus, its really good!!

the cooking lesson begins

chicken fried rice - Tom says he never used chicken in fried rice before we specifically requested it last year. This year he marinated the chicken in some Tom Style concoction - it was really tasty

My Personal Chef  ;)

We had so much rice, we put it into crockpots - 3 really big ones

By the time it was done, we had 56 cups of cooked rice (before the meat and veggies were added)

There were leftovers, but not as many as you might think

Shrimp fried rice

I always think the eggs look like the difficult part

Our menu turned out to be quite eclectic - there was plenty of fried rice - chicken, shrimp and cabbage bacon (my favorite!) There was also apple and pecan pie with dad's homemade ice cream. Yummi!

~Dori~