celebrating four years of marriage

today, we celebrated our four-year anniversary. what a milestone, even though it doesn't seem like it's been four years. Dave & I have actually been together for about six years.

it was great to be able to have a celebration brunch with Dave's mom, his sister Karen and her husband Alex. Mom treated us to brunch at Los Gatos Cafe.

celebrating our three-year anniversary

the journey of a thousand miles has arrived at year three. today, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary with a brunch at Mimi's and exchanged cards and lots of kisses :) we feel so blessed to be able to share our lives together and hope to celebrate many more happy anniversaries to come!

reconnecting with friends

we drove to Davis on Saturday night to have dinner with friends i had not seen in almost 10 years.



Phil and Carol Hayden were my colleagues at Taiwan Adventist College. we were there from 1990 through 1993. as the chair of the music department, Phil was my boss. Phil and Carol flew in from Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend the weekend with their oldest of four children, Katie, who now lives in Winters, a small town near Davis. Katie plays the viola and performs with various orchestras in the Bay Area. we got to meet her husband, Scott Miller, for the first time. Scott is a composer currently pursuing post-graduate studies. visit his website and listen to demo samples of his work.

we had dinner at Bistro 33 located in the historic city hall building in downtown Davis. had a great time catching up and getting acquainted. sorry, no photos of the excellent food we had. for starters, we had the Artichoke and White Bean Puree with Olive Tampanade that was served with crostini. for dinner, i ordered the Butternut Squash Risotto and Dave had a Tillamook Cheddar Cheeseburger. the restaurant has a lovely ambience. the outdoor dining area with a "burning rock" fireplace will make a great summer dining venue. i highly recommend it. thank you, Phil and Carol, for a lovely dinner treat!

Annabel, if you're reading this, Phil and Carol said to say "hello."

exercising again

after a four-month hiatus from our regular exercise routine, we finally managed to drag our lazy butts out of the house this morning to the track. the sun was out and a nice cool breeze was in the air. we'd never seen so many people at the track at any one time before.

after four rounds (= a mile), i was ready to quit, but when i asked Dave if we were done, he said, let's go for one more round. i say, why? he says, 'coz we can! so we did.

we figure the distance between our apartment and the track is a mile roundtrip, we actually walked two and a quarter miles in all. feels good to be exercising again!

lunch in bed

well, taxes took a big chunk out of our savings and we're a little tight on finances right now. so we're trying as much as possible to save by not eating out. i was determined to make lunch after coming home from Gilroy Presbyterian this morning, but was having such a difficult time staying awake on the road. i've been fighting this cold and it's zapping energy from me. when i got home, all i could think about was sleep. i sent a text message to Dave, who was still at Church on the Hill, and said that maybe we could use our 2-for-1 coupon at Panera's instead.

when he got home, i was still so groggy i didn't feel like getting up to go out. as i lay half asleep in bed, i could hear rustling of packaging and microwave activity in the kitchen, and thought that Dave was helping himself to snacks.

next thing i know, he's waking me up from my stupor and serving me lunch in bed! wish i had a picture of the wonderful chicken meal he made us. he improvised with what we had in the fridge and made a spicy citrus glaze on baked chicken that was cooked so perfectly! served it with mixed vegetables and rice. i didn't even think i was hungry but i started eating and cleaned up my plate even before he was half way through his lunch! what a nice treat!

i love my husband!

taxes...done!

so i stayed up till the wee hours of Wednesday morning trying to complete our tax returns. finished up state returns later that morning and both federal and state returns were in the mail by afternoon of the 11th. after paying penalty and interest because we filed for an extension last year, i vowed i would get our taxes in on time this year. no more "charitable contributions" to the IRS!

this morning, Dave treated me to pancakes for breakfast, his "secret" recipe, as he put it, of oatmeal pancakes. yum! then for lunch, we went to Hobees and dessert at Cold Stone Creamery. that was my reward for doing our taxes.

vacation in Singapore

Singapore Jurong Bird Park
Originally uploaded by missuspie.

Our vacation photos from Singapore and Tokyo are finally on flickr. We spent two very relaxing and enjoyable weeks in Singapore visiting family and renewing old friendships. We also got to spend a few hours in Tokyo around Shibuya Square (Tokyo's Times Square) on our way home.

If my mom's internet dialup wasn't so slow, I probably would've written my daily blogs while in Singapore, but there's too much to do right now, so visit our flickr site and have a little taste of our travels.