Our First Dance

Our wedding videos arrived in the mail today! 

I have been SO waiting for this moment and the videos were even better than my wildest dreams!

During the early stages of the wedding planning, I told Sam I wanted to have a "YouTube-Worthy" First Dance. We found a great instructor (Tayler) at Bella Ballroom and started taking lessons about 3 months prior to the big day. 

Tayler choreographed all the moves herself, made videos to teach our fabulous wedding party over the internet, and then held an hour-long lesson with our bridal party two days prior to our wedding to teach all of our bridesmaid and the groomsmen the dance moves. Huge kudos to her, and to our amazing friends, for taking our idea and running with it. 

Without further ado, here it is!

Long Day

Yesterday I was at the office just after 8 a.m. and didn't leave until just after 7 p.m.

It was a long day. I cannot even begin to describe how nice it was to walk in the door and have Hunter greet me with his warm tongue and sparkling eyes. Even better, Sam had BBQ'ed pork loin and made us a spinach salad.

Sam then gave me 45 minutes to continue to wrap up a few projects from work and then tucked me into bed to start reading Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease. He read it on the plane during his trip out to Philadelphia and thought it was right up my ally being that I'm so focused on health. While I was reading calmly in bed, he took Hunter down for a short walk and then joined me. It was just what I needed to calm down and unwind after a stressful day at the office.

I am such a lucky wife.

Thai Cooking Class

The Menu: Pad Thai, Green Papaya Salad, Chicken Coconut Green Curry, Spicy Basil Shrimp

For my birthday this year, Sam's mom and dad gave me the money for a Sur la Table cooking class. Sam decided he would like to take one with me, so for Christmas I gave him an IOU. We decided to take "Secrets of Thai Cooking"since we loved our 2011 trip to Thailand so much.

We decided to take the class on Monday night, since it was right after we got back from our trip home for the holidays. I wouldn't recommend coming hungry, because we had to cook everything before we ate, and our 6:30 p.m. class was supposed to be over at 8:30 p.m., but that's when we started eating. Sam was about to pass out by the time we finally got to serve ourselves.

Sam was the star pupil! Our instructor brought him up to stir the curry.

All in all, the class wasn't what either Sam or I expected. There were 14 of us, situated into teams of 4, 4, 3 and 3. Each team prepared a portion of the recipe, and then the chef had us take turns preparing the final dish.

For the most part, we just watched other people putting it together and ate dinner super late. It felt like we were basically paying for the recipes, which we did get to take home with us, but we probably could have found them online. The techniques she used, such as how to cook the food in the wok, was pretty much what I remembered from the streets of Thailand.

One of the downsides to the recipes is the ingredients are all, obviously, pretty exotic. While the chef assured us that everything can be found at the 99 Ranch Market, the items come in larger quantities and have a shelf life of roughly three months. So we'd have to make the whole meal more frequently than once a month, and that's unlikely.

All our dishes prepped for dinner!