Surprise!!

I decided to surprise Ryan with dinner last night. I was so excited all day to try this new recipe, and it did not disappoint!! For all of you Bulkogi fans out there (or for any of you who want to try a new recipe) you should try this one. After dinner Ryan started pronouncing my name in Korean, and named me "Ky-Hawk" (anyone eaten at Sam Hawk in Provo??) Which means that my husband definitely loved the meal & loved the surprise!!





Note: Ryan served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) church in Korea. He lived there for 2 years for his mission, and then went back for an internship after that.


Ingredients

* 3 tablespoons soy sauce
* 1 tablespoon sesame oil
* 1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)
* 2 tablespoon minced garlic
* 2 teaspoon white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional- the soy sauce has lots of sodium)
* 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon cumin
* 1 teaspoon red pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
* 1/4 teaspoon sirachi sauce (optional for spiciness)
* 1 teaspoon honey
* 1 tablespoon corn syrup
* 1 pound beef top sirloin, thinly sliced (you can use any type of steak- and
ask the man behind the meat counter to slice it for you!)
* 1 green onion, chopped
* 1/2 yellow onion, chopped

Directions

1. In a large resealable plastic bag, combine soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, garlic, sugar, salt, black pepper. Place beef, and onions in the bag; seal, and shake to coat the vegetables and beef with the sauce. Refrigerate for at least 2 1/2 hours. I prefer to marinate mine overnight.

2. Preheat an outdoor grill for high heat. Remove meat and vegetables from marinade, and place on a large sheet of aluminum foil; seal. Discard marinade.

3. Place on grill, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or to desired doneness.

Serve with rice and lettuce leafs (if you want to eat as lettuce wraps like we do!) Next time I'll try to make those yummy Korean potatoes & I will buy some good Kimchi (which is growing on me!!) It makes a great meal on its own, or you can serve with steamed vegetables.

Enjoy!!

Unhappy? Do something about it.

This is seriously something you should try. Have you ever had terrible service from a company? Something that really made you upset or angry? Did you do anything about it? As part of a class assignment at BYU, I was tasked with writing a service letter complaint to a company where I had terrible service. I wrote the letter, didn't expect much, and was surprised to find that the company not only wrote me back, but sent me a $100 gift certificate to rectify the situation. Sweet!!

So, when I had a terrible flight on Delta last year, what do you think I did? I wrote a letter. What did I receive? $75 certificate for future flights.

Bad alignment from Firestone? (where they forgot to tighten my lugnuts and almost caused me a fatal accident) Check for $139.00 (full reimbursement for the lifetime alignment I purchased).

Bad service from Bloomingdales & the Bobbi Brown Counter (scheduled an appointment for my sister, the bride, on a holiday and did not notify me of early store closing)- 3 Free Bobbi Brown Products worth $100, and a gift certificate to Bloomingdales.

I'm batting 1000, here!! Each time I write a letter, I am not expecting much (because, let's be honest, I'm writing to large Corporations of America), and each time I get a better than expected response! These companies are in fact winning my loyalty with their responses, which is important for them in this economic time.

The cool thing about Bloomingdales is that they used my letter (see below) as a teaching tool. They shared the letter with all of their associates to teach them about good customer service and the result of bad customer service. Props to Bloomingdales!



My husband has now requested that I write a few more letters :) Let's see what Dish Network comes back with...

Goodbye, Sweet Briar

Today we officially close a chapter in our lives. We say goodbye to Sweet Briar Lane. We feel so incredibly blessed to have our prayers answered and to have a buyer be prepared to purchase our sweet little home. But it doesn't make it any easier to say Goodbye.





Goodbye to our first home. Our first year of marriage-- and so many other firsts. There will always be a special place in my heart for the warmth and memories that our sweet home gave to us.

Some of the highlights:
Raking mountains of fall leaves.
Dinners, and breakfast, and lunch out on our deck.
Grilling out. For ourselves, and for our friends.
Our first snowfall.
Taking bread and other goodies to meet our neighbors-- and trying to remember their classic names: Ernie & Jinx, Pit & Peggy, Esther & Dick, etc.
Hosting family: Mom & Dad, Jarron & Olivia, Ryan's Mom & Dad.
Getting buried in 6ft of snow all winter long.
Seeing the first signs of life after winter, as the tulips popped out of the ground.
Our First Home Crisis.
Bike rides on the many trails.
Horseshoes and Tennis at Burns Park.
Celebrating our Month-a-versaries with our fine china.
Laying in the hammock looking up at the trees, and the stars.
And of course, listening to the bells of Zion Lutheran every hour.

There are so many more amazing memories we shared in our first little home. I was completely in love with Sweet Briar-- from the street name, to the floor plan, the coved ceiling, the white picket fence out front, the hardwood floors, mudroom, wallpaper, the amazing chandelier (sigh) etc etc. I feel so lucky to have had the chance to have a piece of paradise to share with my wonderful husband our first year of marriage. I know there will be many more adventures and sweet memories to be shared, and we will live in and own many more houses in our future, but I will always cherish our first home.

Running. In the City.

Now that life is getting back to normal, I am finding I have the energy back to actually go out and exercise!! I like to run in the mornings, it gets my blood pumping and its one of my favorite things. The best is to have a running partner, but I am without one of those right now, so I try to take my camera and take pictures of cool things that I see while I'm out. I don't always take my camera, and of course on the days that I don't, I always regret it (like when I walked Ryan to the train, and then took off on a run, and they were filming Transformers 3 in the Union Station building!! Missed opportunity!!)

I definitely miss the beauty and serenity of the Minnesota Trails, but a girl has to take what she can get! So, I run the streets of Chicago.

Here are a few photos from my recent runs in the city:







I love all the flowers in Chicago. They do such a great job of planting amazing flowers --real and fake.





I just can't get over this beautiful city skyline.

Chicagoans

We realized today that we have now lived in Chicago for almost 4 weeks! Time flies by so fast We are finally feeling acclimated to our new home and are trying to take advantage of all that it has to offer. We started our Chicago Bucket List, and I am so excited to work on it!! One of the great things that has resulted from this recent uproot and move is that we have realized this:
Live like you will be moving in one year because we just might be! We are so grateful that we dug our roots deep in Minnesota and were constantly out exploring and falling in love with all the things that make Minnesota so unique. We put our hearts in our callings and tried to love and serve our neighbors and ward members. This made the move extra hard because we had completely fallen in love with our home, neighborhood, friends, and ward. This also made the experience of living in Minnesota so much sweeter. I vowed to myself that in each place we moved to in our lives, I would move with the attitude of diving in and living and serving with my whole heart.

We've been able to do some fun things in Chicago so far-- and look forward to many more! Here are some photos of our first week in Chicago:


One of the first things we did was walk to Union Station and figure out where Ryan needed to go for his first commute to Naperville on Monday. The original Union Station Building is beautiful. This is a picture of Ryan's first day (of course I walked him to his train).


My mom came into town right after we moved to help us unpack boxes. It was amazing to have her help so I could work and we could get ourselves out of these boxes!! We also tried to show her a good time while she was here. That first night she was in town we decided to paint the town red. We walked from our apartment, up to state street for some great shopping and then up to the Magnificent Mile. Sorry for no photos, it was so hot and it actually raining on us 20 minutes into it, so we were a hot mess :) We ended up walking from 4pm-10pm for a total of 6 miles not including all the shopping in stores...don't worry, Ryan was out with his friend from college that night, we met up on the Mag Mile around 9:30.

The next night we walked down to Millenium Park, and "the bean".

Note our sweet "walking shoes" --we learned from walking 6 miles the day before that tennis shoes are must if you decide to walk the city!!



Love the Chicago Skyline from Millenial Park.


On Friday we had a beach afternoon trip. Michigan Lake looks a lot like most beaches in Orange County on a Friday afternoon--minus the skyline.





My mom loves the beach just about as much as I do!


After the beach we found a little hot dog dive that was amazing. Our first official Chicago style hot dog as locals.




On Saturday morning it was time to take mom to the airport. Dad booked her a super early flight (he must've wanted to spend the rest of Saturday with her :)) So we were all up at 4am and got her to the airport by 5am. We decided since we were close to the Temple at that point, we would go ahead and do the 7am session. On our way to the temple we found a random McDonalds and decided that would do us just fine for breakfast. I noticed another McDonalds across the street that looked old school, and wondered why. While inside McDonalds, I found out. We were at the very first McDonalds location ever. The McDonalds I saw across the street had been preserved like a psuedo museum for McDonalds fans to go and view. They even have manicans inside that look like the workers. Sweet find, right?



The Chicago Temple is so beautiful. It was such a sweet experience to go to our new "home" temple. I look forward to going back many more times (and taking more photos of Ryan and I...no one was in the parking lot that early to take our picture for us!)



Another only-in-Chicago find was on our way to Costco. Does this look familiar?



That's right! It's the only replica of the Tower of Pisa in the United States! Approximately half the size...

So there you have it! Our first week in Chicago. Only, imagine a million boxes that were once in our condo that are now gone thanks to my wonderful mother!! I decided I was sick of looking at boxes and didn't take any photos of them...sorry.

Ps. If you know of any Chicago must-do's please comment on this post, so I can add it to our growing bucket list!!

Drumroll please ... I am pleased to announce err post- pictures of our new home!

We walked into a fresh and clean condo on Friday afternoon. In some ways it was better than we remembered! In others, it was smaller than we remembered (ie: the kitchen!) Such is the life of city dwellers.

Here are some before photos.

The living/dining room:


The Kitchen:


My Office:


And this is what our new little home looked like after the truck was empty:


Ryan putting my desk together.



So there you have it! Our new home! Oh, did you want to see more? You'll just have to come to Chicago and see it for yourself :)

The Great Move Part II

So we took off Thursday afternoon. The plan was to stop in Madison, Wisconsin and stay the night. Moving from one big city to another; we had to plan our trip around traffic schedules :)

Ryan drove the truck, and I drove the Xterra. It was fun to drive through Wisconsin and anticipate this new adventure we were embarking upon. This was my view the whole time:


And this:






We did notice a TON of Cheese Houses which is definitely unique to Wisconsin!! When I would get bored, I would just drive up next to my husband and make the honk honk sign. You know, the pull the chain move so the truck guy will blow his horn?





We got into Madison around 8pm. We dropped our bags in our sweet hotel and headed out to find dinner! We were starving. Of course right next to our hotel was ALL of my FAVORITE restaurants:

Chili's
Red Lobster
Applebees
Olive Garden
get the picture?

Somehow I got a second wind from the drive and talked my husband into driving us into downtown Madison. I'm so glad we did!! Madison is such a cool college town The Capital was beautiful, and there were tons of awesome restaurants to choose from. Ryan spotted this little Mexican dive and it proved to be a great choice.





After a great meal we walked around Madison a little more, and then went back to the hotel for a good night's rest. Friday morning we got up and hit the road. Just a few short hours later, Chicago skyline was in view.



And then traffic hit. So much for trying to miss it. Welcome to Chicago!


And finally, home sweet home.


Now we just had to unload our truck...easy peasy, right?!

The Great Move

The next few days were crazy, to say the least. The plan was to really pack on Tuesday. I had friends lined up to come and help us get things in boxes starting at 3pm (with the rest of my day booked for work). Of course, plans got foiled when we had 3 showing requests for that afternoon/evening. Of course we had to accommodate, so after boxing up a few things, we hid the boxes and went out to run errands and grab one last dinner at our favorite pizza joint- Punch.



As we were on our way back from dinner, my girlfriend called and let me know she ran into the couple who was looking at our house. They thought she was owner, so they started asking her questions like, "can we get some of their furniture"? We took this as a good sign and then hurried home to pack. We spent the next 4 hours packing our house with the help of our great friends and our new favorite cousins, Rob & Allyse.

Wednesday turned out to be just like Tuesday. A full day of work, and then plans to pack all afternoon/evening, but then had FOUR showing requests for that day!! It was CRAZY! So we would start packing, then hide the boxes, and then pack and hide the boxes. It was EXHAUSTING! But around 4pm we found out that the buyers from Tuesday night were coming back to see our house on Wednesday night. We said a few prayers they would like our house and headed out the door.

Wednesdays errands included getting The Truck for the big move. Luckily for me, there was a Sonic on the way, so we hit it up for Happy Hour. That VDP tasted so good.




We took the truck back to the house and decided to go to the park during the next showing. The showing started at 6pm and they were there right on time. We tried not to watch them walk through the house, but it was just so hard not to look!! They were still there at 6:30pm, and even 7pm, when we had arranged for our Home Teachers and a few more friends to come over and help us. By 7:30pm we decided to just go back home and start packing -- they could stay and talk if they wanted! We introduced ourselves to the "buyers" and then went on in to pack the truck. Around 8:30pm we got a call from our realtor saying you're getting an offer! Such great news!!! We were so excited, but had to keep packing. We left out the furniture from the truck, since we knew they were going to ask for some of it.



Around 10:30pm the offer came into my email. Hallelujah! Although, thanks to comcast, we didn't have internet so we couldn't read the offer (the PDF file wouldn't come through on my phone). We were going crazy trying to steal internet from our neighbors, and even went as far as driving around town to try and steal it from someone else! No luck! Finally, I called my sister, who lives in CA, and asked her to read the offer to us. It was a pretty good offer, and after a little negotiating in the morning with the "buyers" we were able to seal the deal. They came over to the house at 8am and we all signed the docs!! Talk about a major blessing!! Signing the papers on your home the day you move. It's crazy. When the buyers asked when we were moving, we said "in a few hours". The place was pretty much empty.




Thursday was a blur as we got ready to leave. We had some movers come by and help load the final things in the truck, and my new favorite cousin, Allyse, was at the house helping me clean the whole place until about 2pm. By 3pm we were on the road -- and off on our new adventure: CHICAGO!

Goodbye Sweet Briar, we LOVE you!

Life. Post-Vacation.

As soon as we got back from Vacation we had our hands full! The move was scheduled for Thursday which means not only did Ryan and I have to get back to work, but we also had to pack up our house and clean. (and little did we know, leave our house a million times for various showings that got scheduled). Talk about a little bit of stress.

Luckily we have some really great friends who helped us schedule times for people to come over and help pack-- and also scheduled some time for us to have one last adventure with them before we left!!

Monday night after work we met up with our friends at Centennial Lakes for a picnic dinner & some lawn bowling action. I have been wanting to lawn bowl since we moved to Minnesota, so it was the perfect way to spend our evening with our friends & check off one of my last items off my MN Bucket List It was also convenient that we had a couple showings come up for Friday night, so we had to be out of the house anyway.

This was dessert-- a Katie Robinson Original. S'more Casserole. Yum.


Lawn Bowling Action:


The point is to get your bowling ball the closest to the little while ball.


And sometimes it takes very precise measurements to figure out who is closest.




The girls were killing the boys from the start, so we decided on an all or nothing final round.

See our balls? See where the boys are standing? Yup, that's how it ended!


The Ladies won it all!




Our handsome losing team:


The whole gang:


Why end things there? We found out The Dark Knight was playing at a Movie in the Park so we all headed over there.

Beautiful city skyline was our backdrop


Thanks everyone for a great night!!