Just a little update!

It amazes me sometimes when I sit and

think about where I am in life right now. Firstly, I am married to my best friend, and everything about that is amazing. Seriously, at the end of the day, I just feel so extremely lucky to have Glenn in my life and to be able to share everything with him. We have been having the most insane, magical, adventurous days lately. If that's not enough, then secondly, my internship has been going amazingly. I cannot comprehend how 3+ years ago, I thought that it would be a dream come true to live in Reston. And now, I'm working there, which is basically only like one step away.

For those who don't know, I'm interning with Reston Association, Parks & Rec division. It's been so much fun! In the morning, I go out with the field guys and pull invasive weeds and perform other various errands in Reston's natural areas, and then after lunch I get to sit my butt in an A/C office and play with GIS for the rest of the day, which is ridiculously fun to me. I'm excited to get some hands on GIS experience, because ultimately, I think that's the kind of job that I want. The outside work is exhausting, especially with the 100*+ heat we've been having, but it's so great to have some diversity and not have to do the same thing all day long.

Thirdly, and something that amazes me daily... I'm living in the south which is one of my dreams turned into reality!! It's so great to know that someday when I look back, this decision will be one that I will treasure having made. There are so many things in life right now that I feel so grateful for. I am happy!

But, there are definitely the hard parts too, that keep this from being exactly what I would want it to be.

I miss my friends and having them randomly drop into my parent's house to watch The Office and eat sushi on Saturdays, or watching the most terrible, awful movies about people being sewn together. I hate the fact that I cannot be there all the time to perform my very important MOH duties, such as look at bridal magazines together. I hate missing the opportunity to see out of town friends when they go home to visit. I miss delish meals and relaxed visits with my married friends. I miss picking Zoe up from daycare on Mondays and playing together for a few hours with Uncle Glenn. I miss working with my dad every day. I miss sitting on the back deck with my mom and trying to de-stress each other. I miss my sister and just being able to call her and say that I wanted her to come over and hang out and she'd be there within an hour.

So, how about you all just move down here with me, so it will be perfect?!

It is hard to be away, but when I do get the chance to visit NY, it seems waaayyy more exciting than it ever did when I lived there. There is always something to do or someone to see since there's only such a short amount of time to squeeze it all in.

I feel like it's so hard to strike a perfect balance, because so much of want I want in my life is where I am at right now. But so many people that I need in my life are so far away. I miss you all, and I think about you every day!!

Lovely little piece of breakfast made for me by my hubby! <3

New York!

So! What an eventful few days I had back at home! Mim and I started our journey in a dark parking lot in the middle of DC (in the rain!) The bus ride was actually not too bad, totally worth the $27, and I would most definitely do it again if I had to! The bus had wifi so I played on facebook, played some words with friends, and kept Rachel up to date thru texts. She tried to convince me to drive 3 hours out to Lowville to see her. I kept trying to convince her to drive three hours out to Albany to see me. She told me she had work over the weekend and couldn't =[ BOO!


My dood picked us up in Rensselaer (best dad EVER!). He had done SO much work in the morning so he could make it on time to pick us up. I know of NOBODY in the entire world who works as hard as him. We got back to the parentals, and the door was locked! Mini conflict, my dood resolved it quickly.


Marci and Zoe came over to play that evening, and it was so great to be able to see them and hug them for reals! *And not just through the webcam* Zoe has, of course, grown in leaps and bounds in the past two months. She totally astonishes me by her intelligence. She is starting to get a really good grasp on that whole "how I can always get my way" thing. Candy ended up stopping by too, which was amazing!


Thursday was uneventful until Charlotte showed up in the afternoon! We did lots of chatting, catching up, it was nice to see her pretty face again! Then Amanda showed up shortly later! And OF COURSE within the first 5 mins of her being there we were both laughing until we were crying. I mean, she even had to go to the sink to spit her soda out, that is how great it was! Amanda, Char, Miriam and I had a mini shopping adventure until we landed ourselves at Zumba with Michele! It was good to exercise! And it was GREAT to see Michele's fancy new studio! And it was even better to spend time with my ladies! The evening was rounded out by some food at Pixies and watching American Idol with the parents.


Friday was Zoe's birthday! Mim and I crafted in the morning while listening to Disney radio on Pandora. I picked Zoe up from daycare like the good old days, and we went back to her house to have some birthday fun! We played in her awesome playhouse, made playdoh smiley face people, vacuumed (which she insists on doing herself), used sidewalk chalk and blew bubbles! It was so good to spend some quality time together, I definitely needed it! Then before I knew it, it was time to celebrate! We had birthday dinner *delish!* and watched Z open up her presents. I made her a frame with colorful and music note butterflies, since her real gift is music lessons at The Music Studio starting in the fall. Z blew out her candles and was very interested in the frosting on her ice cream cake!


After that day full of excitement, how could it possibly continue way on into the wee hours of Saturday morning?! Well it most certainly did. My mom, who is of course the best mom in the world, let me borrow her vehicle, so I drove to Diane's house after the birthday festivities on Friday. And ooooh it felt soo good to squeeze D until the end of time! I could have cried I was so happy to be back in her arms! AND! Not only was I graced by her beautiful presence, but her and Rachel concocted a surprise for me. Mrs. Rachel Lisk, sitting on the couch when I opened the door! THAT BRAT! She did NOT have work, she just wanted to TRICK me! Still cannot comprehend how I've only been friends with this girl for a year and a half. She drove three hours to spend like 4 hours with me. Insane. Love her forever. Diane, Rach, and I had a fabulous time cuddling together on the couch and catching up. It was like HEALING for me. Healing what? I don't know, but spending time with them is perfect. They're going to come visit me in June, and I cannot wait.


I ended up leaving at 1 am, so I could get a little sleep and make it to Zoe's TreePaad bday party at 10:30. What an adventure that was! A very cool place. All of the kids seemed to have fun, and it was really nice being able to see some family! Matt and Kate brought Cassie, and my goodnesss she is a gorgeous, funny, amazing little child. Ali is going to be SO lucky to have her as a big sister! I also got to see Parker and Lily. Watching them do their own thing is hilarious. They definitely inherited their parents' sense of humor. Had a little lunch at the Malta Diner, then went back to the parents house to prepare for a sleepover!

Amanda, Miriam, and I had the ultimate throwback sleepover. I made a golden discovery of Making the Band tapes, old cds, and home videos! We had an adventure to find some nail polish stickers (unsuccessfully) and ended up with a nail polish pen. We did zebra stripes on our toes! (Brotherman calls them tiger stripes, since they're orange and black lol) We then watched some Say WHat Karaoke tapes =] And then did what we always did at every other sleep over. DanCe!

Our rendition of the dance to the chorus of Liquid Dreams... LOL!

FUNdue, some more dancing, some ridiculous rolling around on the floor *backbends, front bends, front walk overs, hand stands??*, and it was 2 am before we even realized. Ahh to feel like a teenager again =] Amanda ALSO told me she was coming down to VA to visit. It is amazing what these people in my life do for me. Blows my mind.

Sunday was a nice mellow day with the fam. Candy came over and made us delishh chicken breast tenderloins and wild rice with cranberries! It was good to spend some down time with my parents since I had been running around all weekend. Well, I guess I did some running on Sunday too. My parents brought home a new family member, Brody. Cute little guy, but it was difficult for him to get adjusted to so much craziness in one day. He got out the door without a leash and took off. I took off after him down the road. He was FAST! I got him, with a little help from my mom who hopped in her car and took off after us.

Of course, goodbyes seem to come too soon, and I almost held myself together. Almost.

It's hard to say goodbye, but I was happy knowing that I would be going back to VA into the waiting and loving arms of my husband, whom I missed very much while on my trip! Thank goodness for technology, we got to facetime with our iPhones every night before we went to bed.





Dance party with Glenn, Rach, and Diane =]


So I've got about 1000 more pictures, but it's soo painful and slow to upload them on the blog, I'll have to just upload them to an album on facebook. What a great few days, thank you EVERYONE that made it such a special trip! Love you all, miss you tons!

Closing Time...

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

I'm going to stop blogging. At first I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch while I was gone, but really it has just put me more out of touch...

My hope is that not having a blog, I will hear my family and friends stories too, rather than everybody just reading mine. It's extremely isolating.

I will probably still use this for my menu planning, but that's it.

2 successful nights!

The chicken parm burgers came out SOO good! I was a little threatened by using ground chicken since I never have for anything before, but it was easy. Ground chicken sticks to your hands wickedly, and I found the solution is to wet your hands. I also had to cook them more than what the recipe calls for, maybe it's me being crazy about raw chicken, maybe the temp on my stove top wasn't high enough, either way I ended up cooking it about 6-7 minutes per side.

Here's a picture of the final product

and here's a link to the recipe!

The pulled pork I knew would be a sure thing. Glenn uses this recipe, and it's like fool proof. Perfect for me. I always buy pork butt (not actually butt, its a shoulder cut with the bone in). And wayyy too much because I love leftovers! I bought 4.5 lbs this time. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
Pork Butt (4.5 lbs seems to be enough for leftovers like 2 or 3 times for 4 adults)
2L coca-cola
BBQ sauce (we use Sweet Baby Ray's original)
Sandwich Rolls (also a preference, we like potato rolls!)

Put the pork into the crockpot, cover with coca-cola (it usually takes a whole 2L for me, but I get huge cuts and my crockpot is pretty big). Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until the pork falls off the bone.
Take the pork out, pull it, discard the bone. Shred the pork with two forks, or with your fingers. Discard any fat. (The most tedious part of the recipe, if it isn't cooked enough, this can take FOREVER!) Discard the coca-cola, rinse the crockpot.
Put the pulled pork back into the crockpot, add BBQ sauce to coat all of it.
Cook on low for another 1-2 hrs, stirring every 20 or so minutes.


Tonight I was going to do the spinach stuffed turkey tenderloins, but Miriam is going to home for dinner tomorrow night, so we're going to have leftovers tonight instead and the turkey tomorrow!

Attempting to plan out meals for a whole week...

Stealing Kate's idea for "Menu Planning Monday"... I'm sick of wasting money going out to eat! Hopefully if I write it all out now, I can stick to it. Going grocery shopping now, wish me luck!

Monday: Chicken Parmesan Burgers
Tuesday: Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Wednesday: Spinach Stuffed Turkey Tenderloins
Thursday: Breakfast for Dinner or leftover Pulled Pork
Friday: Beef and Sweet Pepper Pasta
Saturday: Dinner out at Cherry Blossom Festival
Sunday: Steak Feta

Snow?!

While I don't expect any of you NYers to be pitying me, we woke up to snow here this morning! That's just silly, considering last week it hit 80.

Last week started with zumba! (Of course, every Monday is now zumba!!) The week got really exciting when Glenn and I got our tax return back. We are putting most of it towards paying off some credit cards/student loans, but we took a little bit out to plan a trip for our 1 year anniversary. I'm super excited because we got a great deal on a 4 star all inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We ended up saving 60% off of the original rate. We booked our airfare with frequent flier miles. So this trip, although quite big for an anniversary trip, is quite cheap compared to what somebody less frugal than me would pay for the same exact thing. We booked a superior sea view room. Very important to have a view of the water =]

I am still loving the classes at the gym. I actually took two classes on Thursday. Hopefully I can keep up going at least 4 times a week. I need to get in shape for Mexico in 2 months, 1 week, and 1 day!!

I started little tickers on my phone to countdown to all of the things I have planned up until June. Here it is so far...


I can't wait to add more on to it. Which by the way, brings me to my next topic. I'm coming home for a few days in mid April for Zoe's birthday party. I'll be around April 13-17, with very few plans (Zoe's party on Saturday... that's it...) So... if anybody is free, I would like to see everyone! Please let me know!!

Friday night I finally got to see my beautiful Sam~i~ness. It was so nice to hang out and catch up, I definitely missed seeing her and am very excited that we live so close now!

I'm very excited that the next two weeks are all about the cherry blossoms. I dont know how they are fairing because of the cold weather overnight, but I hope that they're okay. The cherry blossom festival goes on for the next two weeks, with parades, fire works, music, arts & crafts, vendors and food! We are going into DC next weekend to do some celebrating.

Yesterday when DJ got out of work, we went to a Thai/Japanese restaurant in Arlington. I bought a groupon $20 for $40 worth of food. It was so worth it. Very delish. Glenn and I got duck spring rolls, a bagel roll (smoke salmon, cream cheese and jalepeno), and I got chicken lo-main.

If you don't use groupon or living social yet, I would definitely recommend it! It's a good opportunity to save on things you probably would have bought anyway. Glenn and I got 2 movie tickets for $9 from livingsocial. I love saving money.




Random things I did this week.

-Saved a lost puppy
-Made penne ala vodka & chicken
-Found Belle's dress in adult size
-Got some Fruity Yogurt
-Found Waldo

-Almost had a heart attack from the amazingness in the Disney store

-Played DD for a way overloaded civic

Virginia has been treating The Perrigos pretty well. Glenn is quickly learning and excelling at his job (as expected). I'm addicted to the classes at my gym. I'm now a full member of Xsport Fitness, and I love it!

At this point I'm way too scared to go by myself, so I haven't gone all weekend (Mim's been in NY) and it's just about KILLED me to stay away. That is my bedazzled gym card =]

Last week had its stressful moments. Glenn and I attempted on Monday to get our VA licenses. We both failed. Glenn had issues with NYS DMV to resolve (which we didn't know about prior to our VA DMV trip) and the paper I've been using as my birth certificate is not accepted as proper identification in VA! Glenn got the NY thing straightened out and we went back on Thursday and got his license successfully. Miriam and I group efforted corned beef and cabbage for St. Pattys day (not without spilling blood, unfortunately). Mim's okay though, DJ Brotherman is a good little nurse. Along with all of that craziness, I also highly considered dropping out of my program at Johns Hopkins. I attempted to figure out what I'd owe back from my student loans. It was an excruciatingly awful process that nobody in the world seemed to be able to help me with. I finally got an answer on Thursday evening, and it wasn't good. So I made the decision to stick it out, finish the program, and get a degree. Even if it's not what I'm passionate about, it will be able to land me a job.

The weather was gorgeous all last week, feeling much more like summer than spring with temps up to 80*! Spring has sprung and there's evidence all around. I am most excited to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. {{So Soon!}} I'm also excited for the beginning of April because my lovely TwinFace mamBa is coming down to the DC area, and I will be able to see her and hang out for a while.

Friday night we tried dinner at Dogfish Head Ale House. It was delish and the service was excellent. I cannot believe the amount of restaurants there are around here, it's so overwhelming.

Yesterday, Glenn and I went geocaching for the first time since we've lived in VA! We had errands to run, so on our way out and between places we found a couple. It was nice to see that there are still green spaces in all of this smushed residential, urban sprawl chaos. I cannot wait to have an entire day to dedicated just to geocaching again. It was like coming back to life after a winter of conscious hibernation.

Oh we picked up a geocoin too! That was pretty exciting. Glenn and I combined our user names so we don't have to double log every cache, and so we can share geo coins and travel bugs rather than decide who gets to log them. It makes more sense because neither of us geocache without the other. Our new name is pretty clever, if I do say so myself. Mr&MrsDellCreek... =] Get it?? We didn't want anything too literal, and it seemed pretty befitting to make it something "nature-y". I had to get back at a decent hour to work on my mid-term paper. I got a break at night, Glenn and I ventured into DC to take pictures of this "super moon". Too bad it was "super lame". The night before last night though, it was so bright, when it shone in my bedroom window, it woke me up and I thought it was somebody standing in front of me with a flash light. Pretty freaky. I had to wake Glenn up. We took some pictures at the Washington Monument, the White House, and then crossed back over the river and took pictures at the Iwo Jima Memorial. Definitely my favorite view. By the time we got home, we watched some TV and I passed out on the couch. So much for working more on that paper. I did spend the good part of today finishing it (and all of my other homework). I'm very excited to have a week off from school work, it's our spring break! Half way through my first semester of grad school. Only... oh... about a million more to go after this.

So while all of this is very exciting and new and fun, I am missing my family and friends so much. Letters definitely help! Rachel completely turned a really crappy day around this week. It's like, her words just cleared my head and helped me to make a decision. If you know me, I cannot make decisions to save my life, so it was like therapeutic to just read some nice words from somebody I love very much.

It's so hard to know that I'm not picking Zoe up from daycare tomorrow. She seems to change so much between each skype date. She does this hilarious thing when she's thinking now. She makes a concentrating face and puts a finger to her chin. I almost died the first time I saw it. She is such an amazing little human being and it's very very difficult to not be there to hug, play with, and learn with her. Her 2nd birthday is next month, and I cannot even comprehend that this precious little baby is going to be 2 years old already. Her growth and progress since being a tiny little 2lb 3 oz peanut is so miraculous. AWww I miss her.

In other news, Glenn and I are quickly approaching our 1 year anniversary (oh, and 7 years of being together!) We discussed taking a trip, and as of right now, we are talking about going to Mexico. We will see what happens, we get our taxes back this week, so we want to pay off some credit cards and put some aside for a potential trip. We've got frequent flier miles, so we'd just have to pay for the all inclusive resort *$800*. Definitely the cheapest I've found with decent reviews. If anybody has any other suggestions, we are open. Our only requirements are that it's on a beach and it's all inclusive.

This week I am excited to get back into the swing of things with the gym *ZuMbA tomorrow, even if Mim isn't awake after her long trip tonight, I think I might do this one alone. I have to find a Kay Jewelers asap this week. I went to get my rings inspected yesterday, and the guy told me the middle diamond of my engagement ring is loose! Yikes! Gotta send it in and get it tightened and replated. Other than that, I have no solid plans. Hopefully the job search will continue.

Other than that, there's not much else to say. Here's Roxy with a toy that was once Zoe's, then Lola got a hold of it, then it traveled with us to VA and became Roxy's twin.