30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #16—Cook with Unfamiliar Ingredients

Yes, that's right: We're back to edible awesomeness. Today, we cooked with ingredients we had never cooked with before. We made Spanakopita, a kind of Greek spinach pie, and it involved cooking with phyllo dough, something we had certainly never attempted to work with before.

Aside from the phyllo, the recipe also called for ingredients we have certainly used in the past, but never in the same dish. The filling called for spinach, a lot of feta cheese, Greek yogurt (the best yogurt, in my opinion—so good with honey drizzled on it!), chives, minced dill, minced mint (I chewed several leaves during the food prep), lemon zest and juice (once again, my microplaner proves to be the best Mothers' Day gift ever), garlic, eggs, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and, of course, salt and pepper. 

Stirring it all together. This is the first place David and I have ever lived where there have been windows in the kitchen. Don't kitchen windows make cooking so much more lovely?

Another ingredient we had never worked with before: Pecorino Romano cheese (and my microplaner strikes again!). This is one of Italy's oldest cheeses, says Wikipedia, and it comes from sheep's milk. It is hard, salty, and very, very good. We have plenty leftover for salads and whatever else we can think to grate it on.

I was so nervous to work with phyllo. It immediately begins to dry out, harden, and crack as soon as it reaches open air, so whenever I didn't immediately need another thin sheet of dough, I had to cover it with plastic wrap and a damp towel. This is definitely something that would be difficult to make without someone watching the kiddos while you cook. Thanks, Davie!

My spanakopita filling on 10 buttered layers of phyllo dough.

Before baking.

After baking! I know it isn't perfect, and I would certainly be embarrassed for a real Greek to see my attempt at their dish, but I'm pretty proud that it actually looks something like what's supposed to look like!

In the meantime, David fed Hollie carrots, gave her a bath, and got her ready for bed. Anyone who has been to our house between 5:00 and 7:00 knows that this is not a one-person job. Getting this roly-poly wiggleworm into pajamas alone is typically a two-person job around here.

Making a huge experimental Greek dish requires some sharing with friends, so we invited some dear friends over to help us eat everything. David made a salad and some roasted potatoes with thyme and caramelized onions (his specialty), and our friend Joleen brought some homemade wheat bread with lemon curd. For dessert, our friend Kellyanne brought strawberry/raspberry shortcake. Could we be any more spoiled?

You'd think an actual dining-room-sized dining room table would be on our to-buy list before all of these extra bookshelves. Especially since we certainly eat as much as we read around here.

Melanie, Joleen, and Kellyanne have dinner with us while Hollie remains the center of attention.

Thing #16: Cook with Unfamiliar Ingredients (Make a Spanakopita) = ACCOMPLISHED.

30 Things in 30 Days: Day #15—Halftime

Curtains are up! Hollie's room is officially the inside of a tree now. Thanks to my mom for the Hobby Lobby gift card!

Read all about this adventure and several more on Dave's blog.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #14—Sew some Curtains

My grandma gave David and me a sewing machine as one of her many wedding gifts to us nearly three years ago on August 14, 2009.

We had never used it.....................until TODAY.

We've been trying to sew curtains for Hollie's room since Christmas or something. A long time. I think we bought the material for it in March. So today's Awesome Thing has been a long time coming.

And, actually, we need to wait a little longer.

Note the pile of string and the bobbin I finally abandoned for a new one (an unlucky bobbin, I tell you!). The white cloth to the right is my practice fabric. And boy, did I ever need practice.

You see, we started this project in the a.m., but I what I didn't realize was how long it was going to take me to relearn everything from high school home economics classes. I've sewed with my mom pretty recently, but she's in charge of all the hard parts like prepping the bobbins and stringing the stringies (I obviously am not well-equipped with the necessary terminology. Which is particularly embarrassing considering how much Project Runway I've watched over the past five years).

We ran to Hobby Lobby for some more necessaries, and then we came home and ate dinner around the crafting spot (P.S. to Sherry if she is reading—you were right about Jamie Oliver's cauliflower mac & cheese: super yummy. Also, I wish I would have read your latest comment before we stopped by the library for a third time this week!).

Fortunately, babies' high chairs come with their own table. Of course, this doesn't keep the sweet potatoes from reaching a five-foot distance in any direction. But Little Baboo kept the mess to just her goatee area this evening, like a good little girl.

After Hollie went to bed, David put himself on ironing/measuring duty, and I was on sew-it-all-together duty. We did it! But now the baby is sleeping. So you all will just have to wait until tomorrow to see what it looks like in Babaloo's bedroom (I know the anticipation must be terrible).

The sneak peek:

We wanted fabric that made Hollie's room seem like it is inside a big tree, and when she opens up the curtains, it is like pulling back tree branches. It also reminds me of this flowered wallpaper my grandma used to have on her walls. My sister and I are still a little obsessed with that wallpaper pattern.

Awesome Thing 14—Sew some Curtains = ACCOMPLISHED, almost/sorta

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #13—Entertain a Friend

Our Sunday nights are generally game nights, so today's Awesome Thing included playing a game with a friend. Miss Hollie was pretty sleepy tonight, and she was so good at eating plenty of sweet potatoes (sometimes she decides she hates solid foods and just nurses for multiple days in a row.....that ever happen to anybody else's 6-months-going-on-seven-months-old? [and yes, that was a bad Sound of Music reference]) that we decided we had better stay in tonight and let the little gal sleep in her own crib rather than on one of our chests at someone else's house. Also, I've been feeling a bit weary today, and a little glum, so I wanted to be a bit of a homebody, in spite of our 30 Awesome Things pact.

Fortunately our good friend Joleen came over and brought Ticket to Ride, a game that never fails to make David crazy because there is almost more risk than strategy in this board game. I love it. I always win. (Well, almost always. I won tonight—that's what matters.)

Baby Hollie sure wished she could hold those trains. Thankfully, she went to bed approx. 30 seconds after I took this picture.

I also tried out a new cookie recipe from Martha. (I think Martha is a hoot. Has she always been this kooky, or did it start post-prison? Her sense of humor is marvelous, and I love that she is actually kind of sloppy and imperfect in the crafting and the cooking that she does on her show. Her guests seem far more capable, and I love her for so gracefully botching crafts here and there and then telling her guests that she likes her own imperfect piece better than theirs anyway. I don't watch a lot of Martha, but the little I've seen lately has been to that tune. Do you agree?) Her lime meltaways were a hit, and they were super easy (and I still have another roll of dough to put in the freezer).

I'm pretty sure these cookies will look better if you wait to cool them before shaking them in a bag of powdered sugar. But hey, the Grovers refuse to wait for cooling! It's basically a family rule to never wait.

 In making the cookies, I also got to try out my new microplaner (instead of using that super-small grating side of the cheese grater). How I have lived this long without a microplaner?! A game changer, my friends! A GAME CHANGER! I have never enjoyed grating lime zest before today. I want to zest everything now. I want to purchase 10 dollars worth of citrus fruits just so I can zest them.

Isn't she a beaut, ladies and gentlemen? It even has a sheath, like a dagger. I basically pull it out like I think I'm Frodo Baggins, and I promise I will stop comparing myself to Tolkien Hobbits after this post.

So, pretty awesome. We entertained a good friend. And now I think I will eat a few more lime meltaways, drink a Nalgene of water, and curl up to some Hunger Games (a series I never read, and a film I never watched. I'm finally giving it a go. And you know? I'm actually enjoying myself. This is the kind of summer reading I recall from my youth. And speaking of summer reading, David took a turn about the local libraries yesterday afternoon. Looks like we're going to need a bigger bookshelf [and yes, that was a bad Jaws reference]).

Speaking of books, we watched Matlida today and it reminded me about how uncomfortable I am with a seven-year-old reading Moby Dick and The Pickwick Papers. Furthermore, when Miss Honey leaves The Wind in the Willows for Matilda, wouldn't Matilda find this book a little beneath her? Oh well. On a separate note, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman are great in that film. And whoever plays Trunchbull aces it. Roald Dahl would have been pleased, at least with those three.

Thing # Lucky 13: Entertain a Friend—ACCOMPLISHED. Grover out.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #12—Clean the House

Today we cleaned the house. REALLY cleaned the house. But don't take my word for it.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #11—Hunt Down Our Summer Reading

It might surprise some people that the first thing (besides snowcones) that David and I love to do just as soon as school gets out is go to the library and bring home heaps of books we want to read. Even I am surprised that after a semester of barely getting things read, barely getting things written, and barely getting through grading, we would have any desire at all in returning once again to the stacks so we could burying our noses into even more dusty old tomes.

But summer reading is very different than the required forced marches through a semester. This last semester, I took a class on Charles Dickens (this year was the celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth) and we read most of the books that Americans typically find "too long" to read. This is a shame, because some of his best works also happen to be his longest (he was writing in monthly installments over periods of several years, though, so you have to think them less as what we think of as novels today and more like serialized television dramas). Even though I loved these novels, it was tough! In one semester we read The Pickwick Papers (848 pages), A Christmas Carol (an easy 80 pages—go read it if you haven't already!), David Copperfield (950 pages), Bleak House (942 pages), Great Expectations (400 pages), Our Mutual Friend (880 pages), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (248 pages—this one is a murder mystery that Dickens died before he could finish. That's right: a MURDER MYSTERY in which the author never got to say whodunnit. Who murdered Edwin Drood?! We'll never know!)—not to mention all of the journals, letters, and criticism that was part of the syllabus. Just these books alone consist of approximately 4,350 pages. And that's just one of my classes!

Summer reading is lovely, though, because there is no pressure, no writing assignments, and no classes that you have to wake up and go to. Even though most of my summer reading consists of books I am studying for my qualifying exams sometime next spring (instead of coursework this year, I just have to read a few hundred books and then take the scariest essay tests of my life sometime around March), they are books I have been looking forward to reading (the whole reason I am in school is so that I can read these books, after all).

So David and Hollie and I embarked on our hunt this afternoon. We took a half-hour walk to campus, and by the time we reached the library David and I were sweaty (it was 90 degrees today) and Hollie was asleep. The crisp air-conditioned air of the library shocked some life back into the three of us—I don't know what scholars did before electricity was invented. Hot, sweaty, sticky books.....I can't imagine.

With call numbers scrawled hastily on scrap pieces of paper, I sent Dave and Hollie to the top floor stacks while I hunted down Samuel Johnson and Fanny Burney and the rest of the 18th-century gang on the third floor. After a complicated check-out (a billion books, two separate graduate student cards, and a baby passed back and forth—that's enough to throw off any librarian on a drowsy Friday afternoon at the end of finals week), we tossed all the books to the bottom of the stroller and made our way home. It was a grim adventure at times: we were too hot, the books were heavy, and it was Hollie's nap time, but once we got home and took a look at our loot, we were satisfied.

Exhausted Baby Girl and a whole heap of books.

Dave quickly showered and then went to help some LDS missionaries teach a lesson to a person investigating the church (sometimes it's easier for investigators to ask questions to a regular old member of the local congregation, and it certainly is easier to visit a church you've never been to if you've already met someone who goes there), and on his way home he bought a bookshelf with some of our monthly "fun" money (our bookshelves are overcrowded, you see).

A few of our summer reading highlights:

• collections of essays by Dorothy Van Doren (last year, David and I obsessed over the Van Doren family. Charles Van Doren is the guy that Ralph Fiennes plays in Quiz Show, the professor involved in the tragic quiz show scandals of the '50s. Dorothy is Charles's mom, and we love her essays.)
• collections of essays M.F.K. Fisher (David wraps up library books every year for my birthday and "gifts me an author." Last year, he gifted me Richard Peck, and this year he gifted me Fisher, an essayist who is also a cook and a really rad woman. I can't wait to start reading!)
• Toni Morrison's Home (every summer I read a Toni Morrison book. This year, Dave's mom got me her newest book, which came out on the same day as my birthday. How great!)
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince (That's right: it's The Little Prince. In French. Wanna know why? Because David and I are going to learn French this summer! Someway, somehow. As an 18th-century scholar, I pretty much need to know some French. Most critics in my field don't even bother translating French passages into English. The least I can do is learn how to pronounce the words.)

One little bookshelf taking up some space beneath our Christmas presents from my photographer brother Will (fortunately, these pictures had not been packed in The Boxes).

Thing #10—Hunt Down [at least some of] Our Summer Reading = ACCOMPLISHED

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #10—Finish Grading

Davie wrote this one. Good thing, too. I'm typed out after grading so many online essays. Yeargh.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #9—The Inaugural Summer Snowcone

Note the color-changing spoon. It goes from turquoise to purple. Pretty awesome.

Winter melted, spring sprang, and summer is now upon us (temperature-wise, at least). Even though our schoolwork is submitted, David and I have still spent our days grading the last of the student essays, so our time for doing Awesome Things is pretty rushed still. So David came up with the awesome idea of getting the first snowcones of the summer, and I added that it would be even more awesome if we ate them on a blanket in the park—our old park, next to our old apartment complex, by our big old pond.

Awesome Things apparently do not require doing my hair or wearing makeup. But they do require purple Kangaroos sneakers, usually.

Much to David's disgust, I ordered the Wedding-Cake-flavored snowcone with ice cream at the bottom (I love the flavors of snowcone that aren't supposed to taste cold and icy, like blueberry muffin, sugar cookie, and apple pie. I'm the same way with Jellybellys—my favorite are the flavors that aren't supposed to be round and chewy, like popcorn and German chocolate), and David, much to my puckered lips, ordered the SweetTart-flavored snowcone, all ice. Hollie sucked on her binkie.

Eating snowcones in the park might not be the most awesome thing in the world, but it sure felt awesome after a day of grading papers. Though I probably shouldn't get too sentimental about our 30 Things in 30 Days until at least Day 25, I've been impressed at how suddenly meaningful every day has become. It has been fun to make awesomeness a daily priority, no matter how busy we are. I'm always waiting for David to say, "Maybe we should skip today—you have a lot of work to do," but I know better than that, anyway. One of Dave's mottoes is to do one fun thing everyday, and it is hard to go back on one's motto. In any case, this 30 Day experiment has resulted in really helping me to identify the awesome moments in my life as they happen (rather than in nostalgic retrospect).

One of the many thoughtful faces of Little Miss Hollie.

An old friend of mine lost her baby girl this week, a little baby that had had some health complications since birth. Another old friend of mine has a teenage son who has struggled with cancer for over a year, and looks to be nearing the end of a long struggle and an all-too-brief life. A stranger whose blog I read almost by accident writes of losing an 18-month-old baby girl in a ditch filled with water outside her home. After I read each account, I went to David crying, and he held me. We would pray for our own family, trying to compute our own unaccountable blessedness compared to our equally (if not more so) righteous, equally smart, equally capable, kind, and lovely friends whose trials seem so overwhelmingly more tragic, bitter, and aching than our petty problems. It is hard for me not to feel consistently on the brink of some tragedy that will even the scores (even though I know that life and God does not work this way).

In the end, I know that there is little I can do to prevent any and all possible tragedies from reaching my own little family—there is no guaranteed fairy dust I can sprinkle on my David and my Baby Hollie to keep them safe from all harm, forever and ever. But I also know that living my life in fear for the worst is no way to live.

But recognizing one awesome thing that I get to do with my family every day is a pretty good way to start finding that best way to live. Even though I can't predict the future (nor do I want to), I am finding myself really loving the present. Snowcones in the park with my handsome (clean-shaven!) husband and my darling, hilarious sneak of a little girl is very, very awesome, and I'm so very, very happy to be able to document this first day of summer here.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #8—Clean up the Streets!

David blogged this one, too. Get the scoop!

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #7—Spotted a New Bird Species

David blogs about it here. You don't want to miss this one, folks.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #6—Mothers' Day Breakfast

Today has been a great today. But last week was a long week. This post will be a short post. But don't let the brevity of my details fool you—today was jam-packed with the absolute spoiling of me by my darling Davie and my Hollie-Jollie.

This morning I awoke with Hollie in my arms. I must have brought her back to bed with me somewhere around 5 a.m. I would like to lie and say that I woke up to her big toothless grin and sparkly eyes, but to tell the truth, I woke up to her purple-nurpling me in her sleep. She wasn't nursing—she was literally purpling my nurple with her thumb and fore-finger. In her sleep. But I'm letting it slide because she is just a baby. As soon as I pulled her hand away, she woke up and gave me the big toothless grin and sparkly eyes. So all is forgiven.

Hollie and I spent the morning watching The Sword and the Stone (my favorite line will always be Madam Mim's "I HATE Shun-Shine!" and I will always tear up when Wart and Merlin have to leave the lady squirrel to weep over her lost love). Meanwhile, David cooked up a secret breakfast in the kitchen. When Hollie and I returned to the dining room, we were greeted by this gorgeous sight:

David made a quiche with red peppers, artichoke hearts, bacon, and gruyere cheese. The yogurt parfaits were delicious—I don't know how David found the best looking blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries that I've ever seen, but he did. The sliced almonds were toasted and crisp, and the granola was nice and granola-y. And roasted potatoes are Dave's specialty. It was wonderful. And the flowers are beautiful (and how great that we now have a purple vase!). Dave also got me a microplaner, which I know doesn't sound romantic, but I've been wanting one for years. I can't wait to start putting lemon zest, chocolate shavings, and grated parm on all future foods! It's the start of a new life, I say!

During breakfast, Hollie finally bit into a rice cracker for the first time (up until now, she's been more interested in smashing them against things).

This is her not knowing what to do with the cracker once she gets a piece in her mouth.

After breakfast, we watched the first twenty minutes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which has always been near and dear to me, mostly because of my crushes on both Paul and Robert, as well as my desire to somehow, someway end up as beautiful and intriguing as Katharine Ross) until we decided that the day was too beautiful to stay cooped up inside, so we went for a walk to go birding. More on that for tomorrow's Thing #7 (yes, that's right, this post includes a cliff-hanger! My blog is turning into a terrible Dan Brown novel).

Anyway, it was a wonderful Mother's Day, and I love my creative, selfless, giving, talented husband very, very much. When I was a girl, I fantasized that my future husband would make me laugh and make me surprises. When I was in my early twenties, I realized that that is a fantasy that little girls have and big girls grow out of. I'm so very happy and relieved that my late-twenties self now knows that what I wanted as a little girl was worth waiting for. My days are full of laughter and surprises, more than I ever could have anticipated. It's mushy to say it, but I have to say it: it's like magic. It's like magic that I spent my whole childhood looking for a friend that matched me head-to-head and wanted to do all the stuff I wanted to do; I spent my teenage years trying to talk myself out of believing in such a person; I spent my 20s getting brainwashed by TV sitcoms and dramas that portray relationships as bewildering, muddling, frustrating, and difficult-but-worth-it-maybe-hopefully; and now suddenly I am married to the person I was looking for when I was a kid. And it isn't muddling or frustrating or even all that difficult. It's everything I always hoped that living in a house with my best friend would be. (Which, according to my oldest fantasies, means that David is basically Pippi Longstockings. Only without the horse and the monkey.) How do I write about this? How can I ever sufficiently express what I mean or what I feel? It feels like miracles.

Best little Mother's Day package ever.

And now I'm learning the same thing about motherhood. Diapers don't bother me, baby food on the walls doesn't bother me, staying home all the time and being with my baby all the time is the opposite of bothering me. Everyone warned me that being a mom is a lot of work and one long continuous chore, etc. etc. Of course, of course, I am just the mom of one very happy baby. Maybe it will be different with the next few (I'd like a bushel of babies...the secret is out). But I don't think it will. Hollie is too much of a miracle. I don't think I could ever look at this little person and be tired of her. Even when she wakes me up every three hours all through the night to eat (while most of her baby-friends have been sleeping through the night since they were three months old), I'm always happy to see her and hold her and help her back to sleep. I know what it is like to worry that I may not ever get married and have children. I just don't see how I can ever take my David and my Hollie for granted. I aim never to do so.

This Mother's Day has left me stuffed! I'm full to the brim! Goodnight and goodnight!

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #5—Doorbell Ditching

They can't all be home-runs, ladies and gents. They—can't—all—be—home—runs. These past two days have just been exhausting. David is in the next room right now working on two papers due at midnight tonight. He will likely be at the computer until midnight—as many of you know, almost any paper in the world can be worked on right up to the minute of the due date. But Dave will actually probably be in bed earlier tonight than any other night this week, since he's been writing until about 2 a.m. every night.

So even though we've managed to do Awesome Things every day, it's felt a little sloppy, too. Bilbo Baggins keeps jumping into my head and whispering, "You and me, kid: we're like butter that's spread too thin...so thin...." (This is an appropriate literary character for me to empathize with considering that my sister-in-law Sarah purportedly referred to me as Gilgo Gaggins when she heard her brother was romantically involved with a girl named Gilliland. Of course, my family teased me about David, too: Grover has been my favorite muppet since I could first walk and talk, and one of my first words was "Goh-dee-goh" for "Grover." So yeah, my sister referred to David as Goh-dee-goh for about as long as my in-laws referred to me as Gilgo. Quid pro quo, I should say.)

To my point.

We wanted to go doorbell ditching for Thing #4 last night. Baking these cookies was absolutely not stressful. It was glorious, actually. An absolute stress reliever. And I'd been wanting to try these double-chocolate cookies for a long time, and this was my perfect excuse. But because we started too late, the cookies weren't done until 10:00 p.m. and we felt sheepish about knocking on anybody's door that late, even if we were bearing gifts. So, much to my chagrin, we bagged the doorbell-ditching and let the cookies cool overnight.

We made Molasses Spice and Double Chocolate cookies. We love the America's Test Kitchen cookbook because the recipes are almost always delicious (and scientifically proven to be the best!)

Momma Grover had to be on the road by noon, so rather than bring Hollie with us tonight (after her bedtime), we decided to doorbell-ditch the treats by the light of the sun, around 10:00 a.m. These are the things we learned about the experience:

1. We are old. (Seriously, we can't leave the house after dark anymore? Who have we become?)
2. In high school, you had a pretty safe bet that your friends would be home eventually to pick up the treats on their porch. When most of your friends are university students or university professors, though, and it is at the end of a semester, leaving treats on a porch with no car in the driveway is potentially leaving treats on the porch for a week or more. (Dear squirrels and stray dogs: enjoy, but don't eat too much of the chocolate cookies as they are not good for you.)
3. It is incredibly difficult to find hiding places in broad daylight. We managed, but SHEESH. Furthermore, David and I are big people. The typical shrub is not enough to cover our girths and lengths. Plus, have you seen Dave's hair?
4. We don't run nearly as fast as we used to.
5. Even when you make a bunch of treats and give almost all of them away, you still end up eating more than you ought to at home. (Hey, do you expect me to give out the funny-looking dud cookies? They were funny-looking!)

Our little partner-in-crime.

Our little partner-in-crime's tootsies.

Dave doing some ditching, wearing the carnation-pink adventure watch we bought at a Hello Kitty shop in Edinburgh when we realized we had come to Scotland without the means to tell time. It is ironically too big for my wrist, so Dave wears it on all our adventuring.

Also, we realize that doorbell ditching cookies and then crowing about it via Facebook and a blog is hardly altruistic. But, in our defense, we tried to hit up people who are not frequent Facebookers and who have never, to my knowledge, read this blog. However, if you did happen to get cookies this morning that look like the ones in these pictures.............it wasn't us. *cough*

Thing #5: The doorbell-ditch—ACCOMPLISHED, barely.

As a bonus for my family readers, here are some pictures of Momma Grover and Baby Hollie from this morning.

Thanks for coming to visit us and help us get all our work done during finals week, Momma Grover! We miss you already!

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #4—Hang Up My Awesome Bird Art

All right, folks. This was not supposed to be our Thing #4. Thing #4 has had to be postponed as Thing #5. Today was a royal SLURGE through my last huge paper of my PhD coursework (although I really do need to get around to working out my shorter 15-minute mock conference paper for my final tomorrow..........when will this semester finally END?! Yeeararearaearaeagahahahghaghggggggpfffff!), so by the time we got around to preparing our Thing #4, the day suddenly ended before we could complete the task.

But tomorrow's Awesome Thing is prepped and ready for awesome action.

Fortunately, while I was riding my bike to the store (on a glorious stormy late afternoon! A perfect summer storm day for riding bikes!), Michaels called to say that the custom framed picture that was supposed to take THREE WEEKS to complete was finished in—shock!—TWO DAYS! Oh, Michaels. Please forgive me for all the times I wished you were HobbyLobby (which closes a half-hour earlier than Michaels, and somehow we are always trying to craft it up at 8:30 instead of 7:30 p.m.).

Momma Grover went to Michaels to pick it up for us, and behold the glory that is my birthday present from David:

The art is Etsy's Jason Laferrera's, and I am so impressed with this find. The bird is a Gray Jay, and, if you can see from the picture (if not, click this link!), the bird is composed from different pieces of maps where Gray Jays are found. David really knocked my birthday present out of the park this year—it is always the best when you are given a gift that you would never think to ask for but completely love when you see it.

I apologize for the bad lighting, but our house has no strong light after the sun sets (and doesn't get much strong light when the sun is up, for that matter). Here is a close-up of the frame itself. It was so hard for us to finally decide on a frame, but we're pleased that we went with this two-toned, sort of woodsy, sort of crafty frame. 

A close-up of the frame and mat. It literally took an entire hour to decide this specific configuration. I love how it turned out.

Even though this wasn't the planned Thing for today, I'm glad I get to showcase this gift. David and I discovered birding together after we got married and received a pair of binoculars as a wedding gift. It has been so fun to learn this hobby together (one of our future 30 things will be to discover a new species of bird that we haven't spotted before). Even though West Texas is the pits for a lot of things (frighteningly little water, no really great trees, incredibly hot summers, incredibly windy winters, and literally no cities around us for five hours in any direction), it has been surprisingly rife with beautiful birds. So was southeastern Idaho (I always pictured southeastern Idaho as all brown from April to October, and all white from November to March, until we discovered the Western Tanager and realized that our city was all kinds of colors we had never anticipated. When we saw a flock of White Pelicans and a Sandhill Crane eating a frog at Harriman's State Park, we felt completely exotic).

So this picture means a lot. David once wrote about how learning to bird was not completely unlike learning about each other. Our courtship was wildly brief according to most people's standards today—we were married on the six-month anniversary of our first kiss (Valentines Day. Chicago. The AWP Conference. A brief three-day introduction to the beginning of a long-distance relationship while David finished his graduate program in Ohio and I taught classes at BYU–Idaho.). So while we were learning the difference between Cedar Waxwings and Dark-Eyed Juncos (it seems so wildly obvious now, but we were bamboozled then), I was also quietly learning about how David breathes easier after the laundry is done and the house is dusted, and he was learning about how I start to avoid eye contact when I don't like the way a conversation is going (something he pointed out to me again today when he was trying to tell me that the original plan for Thing #4 just wasn't going to pan out). And learning all the new and different faces, habits, expressions, and tendencies of each other was just as gratifying and captivating as discovering new birds that had been around us all this time that we never had the eyes to notice before.

David in the Chicago Hilton, February 2009. I swooned over his Cosby sweater and his thick wilderness of hair. Looking at this picture still makes me a little wobbly in the knees.

Grover Family Game Night in Dave's Chicago Hilton hotel room. (Maybe I should get bangs again. It's been a while.) Pat Madden is looking thoughtful on the far left, our professor friend who officially introduced David and me to each other. We basically owe him forever.

So today's impromptu Thing #4: Hanging up my Awesome Bird Art Birthday Present = ACCOMPLISHED.

Bird Art safely at home on our painted-over wood-panelled walls. Welcome home, Gray Jay.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #3—Sneak Treats into a Movie Theater

Catch this one here. It's David's turn to blog about it.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #2—Eat Breakfast for Dinner

I know it looks like we just woke up, but we've actually been awake all day, writing papers. *sigh*
Also, our baby is eating a toucan.

Dave's Mom is visiting us this week, and she came up with the great idea of eating breakfast for dinner. To make this awesome thing even more awesome, we dressed up in our pajamas several hours early. Hollie kept refusing to go to sleep, so we let her stay up and play in her high chair with us.

Our Awesome Dinner-Breakfast:

Texas Pecan-Filled Waffles with 100% Grade A Maple Syrup
Sugared Strawberries, Raspberries, and Blackberries with half-frozen Cool Whip
Scrambled Eggs
Bacon Strips and Sausage Rounds
Orange Juice

Evidence that David really was wearing his pjs and not just a blue shirt.

It was a breakfast to rival Christmas mornings.

It takes a real foodie to show off their waffles by picking them up with their bare hands.

Now it is back to the books so that we can have time for another Awesome Thing tomorrow.

Thing #2 = ACCOMPLISHED. Thanks Momma Grover for wearing your pajamas at 6:30 p.m. with us!

P.S. I promise that not every Awesome Thing will consist of eating something. However, given the old adage that "You are what you eat," it should not be surprising that this Grover family fills up on so much awesomeness.

30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #1—Eat an Ice Cream Cake

So, I turned 30 today. David is 30 until June 11, but he leaves to grade AP English exams in Kentucky on June 8. Thus, we have 30 days to spend together while we are both 30 years old. Ergo, we are celebrating this time by doing 30 *AWESOME* things in 30 consecutive days.

The list is not exactly set in stone, so feel free to post ideas of what kinds of things we can do here.

It is also finals week, and I am the world's best procrastinator of 25-page essays (the one due on Thursday is still only two pages.......whatever, I'm an English major. It's what we do. I'd better be able to whip those out, for crying out loud), so this week's Things will have to be a little less extravagant than the ones to come.

Today's Thing was to celebrate my birthday with an ice cream cake.

I've had an ice cream cake every year since I was pretty young....12 or 13 or something. It's tradition. My mom called to make sure that David got me one since she can't. I like ice cream cake much better than cake with ice cream on the side. But I also like cake with no ice cream on the side. But I get cake on everyone else's birthdays anyway. My birthday is the day for ice cream cake. (By the way, the four candles represent........the four corners.....of.........my....."your squareness," says David over my shoulder as I write this.)

• So, Thing #1 = Accomplished
• Turning 30 = Accomplished
• Having the last temper tantrum of my 20s when I went to Michaels with David to get a frame for this completely rad original art he found and bought for me (pictures to come after it gets custom-framed) and got hiccups (which I HATE HATE HATE) and had to sit down on the floor in the tacky glue aisle complaining about how crummy the end of semesters are and how I HATE HATE HATE hiccups = Accomplished (P.S. David stood guard over me while I sat on the floor hating the hiccups and shrugged his shoulders politely at people giving me concerned looks. We ended up having a great time picking out frames. And my hiccups went away. But seriously: the last tantrum of my 20s. I'm a 30-year-old now.)

And since you made it all the way through this post, here is a bonus video of Hollie from a couple of weeks ago, when she was still toppling over pretty frequently. I'm sure it will bore the pants off of most of you, but I can't stop watching it on my computer. It's so funny to me for some reason. I gobble this baby up.