hip hip hooray to having a kitchen again!

This past week we finally got the green light to use our kitchen again! We had to shut the gas off due to a gas leak we detected during our first week here. It took a few trips from the gas company and my sweet in-laws' hard work to finally get our kitchen up and running again! For the past month or so, we've been living off of cereals, salads, fruits, sandwiches, bagels (toasted via our toaster) and microwavable foods. What a blessing to have our gas turned on and kitchen working again!

Immediately after I got the green light, I rushed over to the grocery store to get my supplies. I was so excited! Strangely, more than anything else I was craving fish and veggies for the past few weeks. I've also been experimenting with my slow-cooker and trying to find tried-and-true recipes I can gather for safe-keeping. Not a whole lot of success quite yet, but we're getting there!

Here's my little cooking adventure from this past week-- actually, this was all in one day. (Sorry, not sorry.)

There was definitely some chicken-herbing going on..

..which also meant there was also definitely some chicken-searing happening. 

This was smelling really wonderful!

Then there were some vegetable cutting and layering (in my crock pot)

Chicken meets the bed of vegetables.

Chicken broth action shot.

I actually took these pictures just in case I liked the recipe enough to share it. I ended up not liking the recipe all that much so we will just enjoy the pictures for now :)

I cooked brussel sprouts for the first time. They were amazing! (Thanks for the inspiration, Amanda!)

Healthy lunch packed for him (left) and her (right). Craving satisfied. :o)

I couldn't choose between Salmon and Tilapia so we had both. On the same day. For the same meal. Yup..

One of my co-workers told me about this cookbook a few weeks ago and I was so inspired by it that I asked Eugene if I could buy it. We swung by Costco today after church and purchased it! I'm excited to use my new kitchen to make lots of tasty and healthy meals for my family! Yay! (See, I already started marking my pages.)

Another sweet thing about living at our new place is our "study room".  My very cute in-laws set up our desks so that we'd be facing each other. (Isn't that so adorable?!) We loved this arrangement so much we decided to keep it. It's nice because a large chunk of our time together at home is spent studying (for him) and reading, book-keeping, mail-organizing, budgeting, blogging (for me) so this makes our time together all the more sweet!

I love having Sundays off to spend worshiping God with my church family, spending time with Eugene (so rare these days!) and preparing for the busy week ahead. What a blessing it is that God knows our need for rest and grants us days such as this!

Cheers to many, many, many cooking adventures and recipes-sharing ahead!

Have a great week, friends!

Give Thanks -  a working kitchen, spending time with Eugene, fellowship within our church family, days to rest, sleeping in, my new cook book (!!!!), furniture searching fun, a great week of work, excitement for the week ahead, God's grace in helping us persevere through every season!

my funny valentine

This past week, Eugene and I celebrated our 3rd Valentine's Day & 3rd year together. We started dating on Valentines day 2010. It was unexpected, and not intentional but it happened to be on Valentines day. Eugene and I aren't really the celebratory type, but we'll never turn down an excuse to spend some extra time together and eat good food!

For Valentines day, he came home from school at 2pm (Yay!) and we went to grab lunch at a decent seafood buffet-type place near our house. It was OK (the best part was it was less than $10). We had major food coma because of all the salt and MSG so we decided to go to the mall and my sweet husband took me shopping! We're not huge shoppers and even when we do shop, we're pretty asian about our discounts and digging through the clearance sections. We've also been on a pretty strict budgeting system so I haven't really bought any for myself in a pretty long time. Eugene said I could go "ALL OUT" and have a shopping spree and I spent a whopping $70ish dollars... It was exciting! :) Our Valentines day was full of good food (we didn't eat dinner though because we were still full from lunch), getting boba, walking around in the mall, taking naps and studying-- so it was a wonderful day. 

Sharing a lemonade in the middle of a busy shopping day!

Eugene's been taking a lot of naps lately. I don't mind because he is one cute napper!

Valentines day was actually just our pre-Valentines day because our actual celebration was today at Lawry's. About 2 years ago, my sister Audrey and her boyfriend got me a Lawry's giftcard for my birthday and we finally had a chance to use it. The entire time we were there we kept saying "this is the fanciest place I've ever been", "this is the nicest dinner I've ever had", etc etc. The food was amazing, the service was great and it made us feel fancy! They even gave us chilled forks for our salad...What whaaaat! (Thanks Audrey & Sang!)

In the fanciest waiting room ever, with free chips (baked in peanut oil) and meatballs (we couldn't have any because they called our name right as they were bringing the meatballs out. Eugene was sad.)

These chefs haul warmer carts around and you just tell them your order and they cut you the prime rib right in front of your table. He was cutting for the table in front of us in this picture.

Here we are excited about feeling fancy! 

Our salad with the chilled fork.

That, my friends, is a $14 lobster the size of my palm. Never again, haha.. 

It was a sweet Valentines day, and it's been a wonderful 3 years. 

Thankful for the precious gift I have in Eugene and the grace I am shown daily from the Giver of all good gifts! 

Have a great week, friends!

XOXO,

sharon

Give Thanks -- prime rib, creamed anything (spinach, corn), a busy but sweet weekend, a long afternoon to spend with my small group, power naps, iced coffees, mornings with Jenna, excitement for another week of work, the great gift we have in God's Word, reminders of Christ Incarnate and the fact that Jesus would become flesh so that he could sympathize with me.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, 

that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 

Hebrews 4:14-16

my first zumba experience.

When we moved to SGV, I decided to get a 24 hour fitness pass since I had a lot more time to myself. There are a few fitness centers close by, and I figured I'd try to get back into the gym groove. It's been good so far! I've set a goal for myself to go at least 3 times a week (excluding the 3 days I work, and 1 day as a "break" day). The monthly payments definitely serve as a good incentive for me to frequent the gym, but another reason I love to go is because of the classes they offer.

I went to my first Zumba class tonight. and it was really, really fun (and extreeeeeemely hilarious). Here is a picture of a zumba class I found on google:

I was laughing by myself for the whole hour of the class. I was so sad that I had no one to laugh with! There was A LOT of mexican music with a lot of "Mi Amor"s and "Ariba!"s and there was also some Ricky Martin and Shakira going on. The demographic of the class is 85% old chinese ladies who apparently frequent the class religiously. They knew ALL the moves, I totally got pwned (yes, I had to use gamer language. It was that bad). I was probably the most uncoordinated and discomboblated person there. The reason why this class was so enjoyable (and hilarious) was actually because of the 4 other people who were not of this old-chinese-lady group.

(Minus the headphones, mildly more heavy version)

1. The Grandpa - There was this cute old chinese grandpa who was in the class and he persevered through the whole, entire session. I was so proud of him! Although he wasn't able to keep up with all the fancy arm movements and hip bumps, he definitely followed all the foot work. It was impressive. Please remember that we had Ricky Martin and Shakira going on. There was some major booty-shaking going on and I got to spend the entire hour watching his version. It was great.

(Minus the head wrap, unfortunately)

2. The Ninja - I'm being completely serious. We had a ninja in the house. There was a middle-aged chinese guy who wore all black (tight black shirt and pants and shoes) who looked like he came out of a Jackie Chan/Kung Fu movie. He stood in the very front row in the corner by himself, fairly close to the mirror. He stared at himself the entire time (besides the few glances he took at the instructor) and he was completely serious. Never did he crack a smile. Also, he somehow managed to make ALL the zumba moves look very ninja-fied. It was intense.

(Not quite like this, but this was the most conservative pic I could find.)

3. The Clubber - The girl I was dancing next to looked like she just stopped by before hitting the club. Besides the fact that she was wearing tennis shoes and not high heels, this girl dressed for this class. She had tights/stockings on, with really short booty shorts and some bejeweled top on. Her dance moves (unlike the Ninja) looked really good. Like dancing at the club and everyone is making a circle around me good. There was some serious booty shaking going on, and the poor grandpa (previously mentioned) kept moving farther and farther away from her. If you ask me, her moves were a little too sexy for the group we were in the class with but whatevz.

(Hispanic version of this guy)

4. The Balla' - Lastly, there was a hispanic guy who was dressed much like the boy pictured above. He totally looked like he came to the gym to play basketball with his jersey and basketball shorts and what appeared to be basketball shoes. However, he was most definitely there for the zumba. He, like the chinese ladies, probably frequent this class quite a bit because he was probably one of the more experienced ones there tonight. He wasn't actually that fun to watch but he was definitely really serious about his zumba. During one of the breaks between the songs, I went to go get a sip of water from the fountain inside the room and he followed shortly after. While I was drinking the water, I could see his feet in my peripheral vision tapping aggressively and impatiently as he waited for me to finish. Once I finished he took like a 0.1 second drink of water and ran back to his spot so that he wouldn't miss the intro of the next song. I will definitely bring my own water bottle next time..

Overall Zumba was a fun experience and I'm definitely going to a class again! Hopefully I will make friends with some of the chinese ladies there :) If you're ever in the area, go with me so we can laugh together!

Our first month in SGV!

Happy February!

Can't believe we're already in the second month of the year. January was busy with lots of packing, unpacking, furniture shopping, commuting and adjusting to our new home. We're slowly starting to get used to the area. I, for one, am becoming quite familiar with the nearby grocery stores, trader Joes, targets, 24 hour fitness centers and local coffee shops. It's been very sweet so far.

Here are a few random tidbits/blessings/lessons learned from our first month in SGV (For those of you who don't know, SGV is San Gabriel Valley. Eugene and I had no idea what that was until we moved here either!)

1) I am extremely thankful for my iPhone. Apps like Waze, Grace to You, bible.is , DesiringGod, Pandora and Songza have been so instrumental in helping me survive and adjust to my commute to work and church. (Of course Yelp is always extremely helpful as well.)
2) We are eating so much Chinese food I feel like it is flowing in my veins!
3) I haven't cooked in over a month. Our gas was shut off since we've moved in so we've been eating cold foods like cereal, yogurt, salads or going out to eat. (I lied, I cooked once and it was at my Irvine apartment..)
4) Eugene and I have started budgeting more intensely. We started an allowance system that limits our weekly spending and we've saved a lot of money so far! More on that soon..
5) Eugene and I have been doing pretty well on our weekly dates. Since I usually only see him in the mornings before he leaves for school (before 7am) and at night (usually after 9 or 10pm), we've been having to be all the more intentional about spending time together. We've been pretty consistent so far. So thankful for Eugene! :)
6) I didn't get to accomplish any of my goals last month or this month (we're already halfway through the month!)... but I expected that with the busy-ness of the move and all... hopefully I'll get back into the groove of things.
7) I will never again take the wide roads of Irvine and the big portions of Aloha BBQ for granted again. There is always construction going on in the busy streets around our house and the Hawaiian BBQ places here are pretty skimpy with their portions!
8) We are becoming more familiar with freeways other than the 405, 55, 5 and 73. We are now getting a hang of the 605, 210, 10 freeways. Woo!


This has been a busy month for the both of us. I started looking for jobs closer to home, and Eugene's been really busy with balancing school, work, internships, clinicals, etc. But as always, God is so faithful as he always has been. He provides us with the grace and strength we need to get through each day, to find reasons to rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances and causes us more and more to pray. So thankful that we have a God who is so faithful. :)

I didn't have my camera for over a week, so I don't really have any pictures for you guys-- so here's a picture of a kitty.

Give Thanks: days off, opportunities to share about my passion for stroke patients with other nurses, my job, God's faithfulness in always providing for us, Eugene and his heart to love and prioritize our family even in the craziness of his every day life, fellowshipping with sisters, days off to do laundry, my 24 hour pass, trader joes

My first dine LA experience!

Last week, I met up with one of my old time friends for lunch in LA. Kat and I have been friends since high school, and although we definitely don't see each other as often as I'd like-- it's always nice catching up with her. In high school we were known to be polar opposites of each other. She was the girly, peppy fashionista and I was the plain jane, let-me-just-wear-my-baggy-white-shirts-to-school kinda tomboy gal. It's been a long time since we've been friends, and I'm thankful that we still keep in touch after all these years!

It was dine LA last week so we went to The Roof on Wilshire to try out their fancy cuisine. It was my first ever dine LA experience. It was super nice! I was definitely underdressed (as always).

The Roof is literally on the roof of the Wilshire hotel, overlooking the streets of LA and Beverly Hills. 

The three-course meal was scrumptious and very well priced (only $20, thank you dine LA!). But more than anything else, it was sweet spending time with my old time friend. :)

Until next year!

XOXO,

Sharon