I love food!

One of my favorite teachers in college would always give us life advice. One of the things she liked to tell us was that when we graduated and eventually got our first paycheck that we should first pay tithing but then we should go spend it however we wanted...so I did!

Mark and I took a day trip to the city and went on a food tour of Greenwich Village, and we LOVED it!

We sampled cheese from Murray's (they have about a million different kinds of cheese).

We ate a piece of pizza from Joe's and learned all about their oven, how hot it is, and the kind of tomato they use. This place might look familiar because it was in Spiderman 2.

We ate an olive twist from Amy's Bread and learned about the pastry chef that owns it and how she studied in Europe to learn how to make the crusty French breads.

We had charizo (cuban sausage) at Little Havana and got to meet the 76 year old woman that owns it and cooks all the food. We also got hear about how to get to the bathroom you have to go through the kitchen, so when the health department is there they pretend they don't have a bathroom!

We ate a rice ball (rice rolled with fresh mozzarella and herbs, then rolled in breadcrumbs and flash fried in olive oil) from Faicco's. I've never heard of rice balls but it was delicious!

We had a cinnamon-dusted pecan from a store called Aphrodisia where you can buy any spice you could possible imagine.

We had farroto from this modern Italian restaurant and learned about how their chef was on Top Chef. Farrotto is farro (a barley-like grain) cooked in vegetable stock then mixed with parmesean cheese, crimini mushrooms, and mint.

Then we walked around the historic part of Greenwich Village for a bit and gave our tummies a break. Does anyone recognize this building? (hint: Monica and Rachel lived there.)

Then it was back to the food with a cookie from Milk and Cookies. The owner of this place graduated from the Culinary Institute of America!

Then we saw a sign that our street could definitely use!

Our final stop was at Rocco's Pastries where we had a hand-piped cannoli. YUM!

All the food was amazing! I totally recommend this tour next time you're in the city!

My funny little girl...

...loves to cook and bake (pretend-stlye for now). Although, once I was chopping vegetables on the counter, and I walked away for a couple minutes to go help Mark with something. When I got back Cala had pushed a chair over to the counter and she was happily trying to cut broccoli with a big chef's knife.

...absolutely loves her snow boots! She usually puts them on first thing in the morning, generally on the wrong feet as shown in this picture.

...isn't shy about helping herself to food. She was apparently still hungry one morning after breakfast, so what's the perfect after-breakfast snack?...Cheetos of course!

...is not a very good strawberry-picking helper. She would take one bite out of every strawberry that I picked and then put it back in the basket.

...always finds a way to make me laugh!

Nemo #2

Since we had all the gear we decided to give having a pet fish another try... This time, however, we went to Pet Smart, instead of Wal-mart (a possible cause of the Nemo #1's death? I think so).

And in case any of you are contemplating getting a fish, here's what we learned... Goldfish have a really high metabolism and so they produce lots of ammonia (which is toxic to them). They need a 20+ gallon tank with a filter (not a little fish bowl like we have). Instead the Pet Smart lady recommended a betta fish, they have a low metabolism and produce much less ammonia. In other words, perfect for a little fish bowl.

So here is Nemo #2!


On the way home from the store Mark and I were talking about betta fish and I said, "Hey, remember when..." And Mark finished my sentence with, "people used to fight their bettas?" Nope, that was not what I was going to say at all. Who gets together to fight their fish?!

What a week.

We found out that Cala's hair is long enough to french braid, thanks to my friend Nicole. I have no idea how Nicole got her to stay still, and I doubt I'll ever be able to replicate this so enjoy the picture :)

Cala always wants to do everything that Mommy does, which is so cute...except for when she tries to put on make-up... I managed to get ALMOST all of this out of her shirt but kept finding purple streaks all over the apartment for the rest of the day.

We got distracted one night and forgot to turn off Cala's bath water...who needs a swimming pool when you've got a bathtub?!

A beautiful early morning in the park where we got to feed some cute ducklings.

Mark bought Cala a goldfish that we named Nemo. Cala was so excited! Then 26 hours after arriving home from the store...Nemo died. (good thing the sales guy at the store told us to buy the small thing of fish food) And we definitely watch Finding Nemo too much because we're consoling ourselves with the fact that all drains (even toilets) lead to the "heavenly ocean".

Against my better judgement I hid a bunch of dirty dishes in the oven so our landlord could take pictures of our apartment. I promised myself that I would remember to take them out before turning on the oven...ooops! We spent half an hour scraping melted tupperware off the bottom of the oven.

So there it is...a week in the life of the Hipple's.

We're moving!!!

Our current apartment

Our new apartment

Reasons why we are excited to move:
- The new apartment is about 3-4 times the size of our current apartment!
- No more litter-strewn streets 5 minutes after the street cleaner goes by because people don't feel the need to use trash cans
- No more finding empty liquor bottles on our front steps
- We won't be awakened at 2:30 in the morning by people screaming "F-- You" anymore.
- No more having to ask total strangers to move off our front steps so we can get into our apartment
- No more worrying about finding parking during snow emergencies
- No more sitting in my room on a Sunday afternoon trying to read the Ensign while my neighbor has rap music blasting from his car stereo that is so loud it sounds as if his car is actually in my living room
- No more doing dishes by hand, the new apartment has a dishwasher!

Reasons why we are sad to move:
- Leaving the best landlord we have ever had (she would let us use her apartment when she was gone, she would even babysit for us!)
- Our backyard garden will have just have started producing veggies!

My kind of camping...

Last weekend we went camping at Senaca Lake (one of NY's finger lakes). It's an LDS-owned camp, and they have a lot of girls' camps and youth conferences there. We went to help get the camp ready for the summer. When I agreed to go, I was secretly dreading it. I am not a camper! But this was definitely my kind of camping...cabins (bug-free, I might add), electricity in the cabins, flushing toilets, and showers!

We went a little early on Friday so we could squeeze in some fun. Much to our surprise they had canoes! The lake was beautiful, crystal clear, and freezing cold :)

Cala playing in the water with her friend, Lucy (or See-See, as Cala calls her).

Cooking dinner on the campfire. My main goal with food was "easy". Mark and Cala had hot dogs, and since I hate hot dogs...I brought a hot pocket! I even cooked it over the fire on a skewer...they're definitely better in the microwave. Luckily, some friends were nice enough to share some of their yum tin foil dinners.

On Saturday we got up at 6:30am to go for an early morning canoe ride, but the water was way too choppy. Then we tried to eat breakfast on the pier, but it was a little too cold so we went back to eat by the campfire.

During the day Mark helped dig out fire pits and lay gravel, while I helped clean this funny round minty green boat house. Apparently a BYU intern is coming out for the summer to be the waterfront director and this is where she's going to live. It hasn't been lived in for 2 years and it was DIRTY!

After cleaning we spent some time by the water, had some lunch, and packed up and went home. It was a fun weekend., and Mark and I added Senaca Lake to the long list of places that we would love to live someday.

Popcorn Poppin'

Cala is a very energetic little girl who loves music...as you will see in this video :)