Food Blog

We have been so so terrible about updating. Life has been pretty typical. Although our summer was crazy with several trips out of town and guests coming to see us.

I'm not sure that we will get much better about regularly updating, but if you would like to keep up with our lives, I (Erin) have started a food blog, so go visit! :)

www.confessionsofapickyeater.com

And feel free to leave a comment! :)

Happy Erin's Birth Month

This February marked not only Erin's 23rd birthday, but the fact that we've had Chloe for 2 months. It included our first weekend trip (to visit my Grandparents, Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin in San Antonio), and the the introduction of an Xbox Kinect to the Burke manor (Erin's birthday present). It saw the completion of a web project I was involved in, and the addition of a new one. It entailed Erin traversing the "icepocalypse" to make it home to Huntsville for a weekend, and (bless him) Bruce volunteering to do our taxes this year. All in all, it sounds like a much more exciting month than it was.

Now, lets break that down in slow motion

Erin and I had been making plans for some time to visit my family that live in Boerne, T

X, just outside of San Antonio for her birthday for some time. I took that Friday off, and we entrusted Chloe to the care of some friends of ours in town for the weekend. San Antonio is just a 3.5 hour drive away from Houston, and Erin and I really enjoyed getting to drive through the countryside and escape city life for a bit.

In San Antonio, we road a river taxi down the river walk with my Grandparents and cousin for a day of waking around being tourists. We visited the Alamo, ate at a restaurant on the river, and enjoyed just walking around in what's really been developed into a nice area in downtown San Antonio. We really enjoyed hanging out with, swapping stories with, and eating great food with my family members whom I had not seen in a shamefully long time.

Back on the apartment front, Erin and I have really been enjoying playing with both Chloe (who is getting quite big) and her birthday present: an Xbox Kinect. I'll confess, I did have yours truly in mind when I picked it out as her gift, but I promise she's really enjoyed it too! For those that are unaware, the Kinect is an addon to the Xbox I already owned that looks like a camera and allows you to play games using your body as the controller.

During all of this, I've been working on a website for a friend of mine called Cup Of Hope, which uses the production and sale of coffee in the Philippines and SE Asia as both a community income builder, and a way to support sustainable missions. If you're a coffee drinker, I recommend you check out their site.

When I sat down to write this post, I had about 20 minutes and thought that this "uneventful" month would hardly merit 5. But as I think I just heard noises in the kitchen indicating that dinner is ready, I'm going to snap out of it and go eat before small groups!

As always, you can follow our more daily life via twitter (@gerritburke and @erinblue18) or through our Facebook accounts.

Five January Highlights

Things that we did/happened in January:

1. We got a kitten. And she has grown a lot.

2. We watched Auburn win the National Championship. WAR EAGLE!

3. We had some surprise guests! Our friend Brittany and one of her friends had a 45 hour layover here in Houston on their way back from the National Championship. So we had a fun couple of days.

4. We joined a small group at church, which has been going fantastically so far.

5. Gerrit found out that he will be travel around the world (literally) for work in the late summer/early fall.

Now on to February! Which in my opinion is much better than January. Valentine's Day and my birthday. Plus I am going to travel home to visit my family, and we are going to take a mini-vacation to San Antonio to do some sight seeing and visit some of Gerrit's family.

Chloe Kitten

Here is our new cat. She is very cute and loving and mischievous.

She has also already grown a lot (probably more than doubled in size) in the 2.5 weeks that we have had her.

We already have randomly started calling her a ton of nicknames (Chloe Kitten, which has been shortened to Cloakton, El Cloketon (even though she is a girl), Chloster, etc.). She is going to be very confused about her name, so it is a good things cats don't really respond to them anyway.

A Very Married Christmas (and an Addition to our Family!)

Its tough to be grown up.

When you look on Facebook in early December and all your college friends are heading home on Christmas break, it really hits you how much the real world restricts you.

Fortunately, my supervisor gave me the option of working remotely for a few days before Christmas, meaning Erin and I got to head home for Christmas much sooner than my three vacation days had let us dare hope.

After getting up quite early and driving throughout the day the weekend before Christmas, we were thrilled to get to spend some time with both of our families at a joint family dinner hosted by Erin's parents. Even though it turned out most of my family was sick, we all managed to have a nice evening together.

Then, after a week filled with meals with extended family, an annual party with friends, lots of time hanging out with families, and me working during the day, it was Christmas!

Both of our families went to Christmas eve service together (after hearing the announcement that their church would be celebrating Christmas eve with a fireworks display, my parents decided to join us instead) which was very nice. Then, Erin and I headed over to my families house for our traditional Christmas eve turkey.

After almost my entire family fell asleep watching "A Christmas Story", we all went to bed while visions of sugar plums danced in our heads.

The next morning, we saw a thick coat of white blanketing the lawn. The first White Christmas in Huntsville since the 1960's! It was very cool, until road closings and Erin's aunt getting stuck on the mountain (having to be rescued by Erin's dad in a 4 wheel drive pickup) put our Christmas plans in temporary jeopardy.

We started out the morning opening up presents with my family, then braved the icy roads to make it to Erin's house to open presents with her immediate family before the annual dirty Santa game with her extended family.
In the end, everything went off without a hitch and we had a wonderful Christmas! So wonderful, in fact, that it was quite difficult to make ourselves get up to drive back to Houston a few days later...

Even though we miss home, we have quite the little distraction now after having adopted a 2 month old kitten from a local animal shelter. We've named her Chloe, and you can see pictures of her on my Facebook.