5 years!

Well, this is a little late being posted, but I have a good excuse since we have been busy moving the past couple weeks....

I can't believe it's been 5 years, needless to say this isn't quite where we envisioned ourselves at our 5th anniversary. We were picturing a long vacation to Hawaii, owning a house near a beach, and Mark working full-time (I guess we really didn't think things through). Five years later none of those things have happened but we are so happy together. Here are some pictures to reminisce over...

Won't you be my neighbor?

We came home from church and this is what was going on out on the sidewalk.

In case you can't make it out in the tiny picture, they are playing Xbox 360. They have everything plugged into an extension cord and they even have a subwoofer hooked up. You would think that after a year I would stop being surprised by things my neighbors do, but yet they continue to surprise me :)

Happy 4th!

We had a fun 4th of July. My sister, Amanda, came to visit for the weekend. We got to go to a birthday party for a friend's little girl who turned 2, she's just two months older than Cala. They had a cute party table set up for the kids, yum food, a sprinkler to play in, and cupcakes for dessert.

At one point Cala grabbed a whole entire sausage off Mark's plate and then tried to share some sausage joy with Amanda.

Later I discovered that Cala and I are perfect cupcake-eating partners... she eats all the frosting and then I get to eat the cake!

This is Cala on her second cupcake with her friend, Lucy (or See-See as Cala calls her).

Later that night we braved the crowds and went downtown to watch the fireworks. It was great and the fireworks were amazing!

Happy 4th of July!

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.