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Over the holidays, we planned a roadtrip during the Christmas and New Years break.  After much debate, we decided to head east and hit up Park City by way of Las Vegas, my new favorite place.  How it took me this long to realize the awesomeness of Vegas is just beyond me.  After spending a great night in Vegas (we stayed at the Trump), we hit the road early in order to make it to Park City by dinner time.  Little did I know that Ethan had made reservations at a restaurant at the top of a mountain, which was only accessible by sleigh ride.  And little did Ethan know that Park City was in a different time zone than Vegas.

We flew through the beautiful desert landscape, stopping only for gas, in an effort to make these reservations.  Once we arrived in Park City, we collapsed and rested for a while (all that being-a-passenger-in-a-car stuff is exhausting!) until it was dinner time.  Ethan was still playing it cool and I had NO idea that anything was up.

Around 6pm, we made our way over to the sleigh (which is pulled by a Sno-Cat) and managed to get ourselves into the cab of said Sno-Cat. This ended up working out to our benefit, as they were grooming the mountain and our route up the hill took us through about 6 snow making machines.  The folks in the sleigh said it’s the coldest they have ever been.  And these are the hard core skiing type.  

Once at the top, the group strapped on snowshoes for the last 50 yard trek across the snowy (and flat…thank God) landscape, lit only by the moonlight.  At this point…Ethan started acting differently.  He kept pulling me to the back of the group (there were about 30 of us in a single file line) to “look at the surroundings” and “take it all in”.  Me, being nervous about group seating and not being able to sit together at dinner, kept pushing him to the front of the line.  And I might mention here, that it was about 9 degrees out.  I wasn’t about to hang back and risk getting lost in this tundra.  So Ethan kept pulling and I kept pushing.  Eventually, he won out and there we were, a few yards from the restaurant, when he asked someone to take our picutre.  After the picture, here is how it played out:

Ethan: I love you
Katie: Love you too [turns to run to restaurant to ensure good seating]
Ethan[grabs me]: I want to spend the rest of my life with you
Katie: Me too [turns to run to restaurant to ensure good seating]

At this point, Ethan realized the only way to stop me was to get down on one knee.  Cue the tears.  I started freaking out and jumping around in my showshoes.  Ethan shows me the ring, and then snaps the box shut.  What!? Is he serious? What was going on here…

Ethan: I’m not about to take this diamond ring out of its box, in the DEEP snow, in the moonlight. 

Fair point.  We run (awkwardly) to the restaurant, take off the snowshoes and he puts the ring on me. I am of course telling everyone I see.  Turns out the staff already knew.  He had coordinated it with them!  And low and behold…we had reserved seats.

Pic of us at the restaurant

Mozzarella and Tomato Pizza

First a bit on Surfas – if you live in LA and have any interest in food or cooking, you owe it to yourself to go. I hadn’t been to Surfas in about 5 years, and the last time I went they were focused on commercial and high-end cooking. Not any more – now Surfas has things for EVERY type of cooking imaginable, from baking to pizza to candy making. Not only that, they’ve got a gourmet meat and cheese counter, as well as every staple ingredient you can think of (the butters looked amazing). I wanted to share the site, but right now it looks like all they’ve got is this: http://www.culinarydistrict.com/. I’ll keep looking though, apparently they do weekly cooking classes every Saturday (this Saturday was Asian Street Food).

As for the pizza, I made the first attempt Saturday night. It offered a number of pluses in my book: 1) I got to utilize our new KitchenAid mixer for the dough 2) I got the try out using yeast (which is weird, terrifying, and fascinating at the same time – just watch your dough double in size in 2 hrs, it’s weird) 3) I got to make pizza, which I love.

Learnings:

1) Pizza dough is extremely sticky. It stayed together well, but at the same time it took serious work to get it to actually leave anything it was in contact with (bowls, paper, my hands).

2) I was told at Surfas that getting the pizza from the “peel” to the pizza stone in the over was all in the wrist – similar to a magician whipping a tablecloth off of a table. Well, first try didn’t work. It may be in the wrist, but it’s also in applying a BOATLOAD of flour under the pizza so that it feels like moving. It took one near catastrophe to learn that (which resulted in mozzarella burning all over the oven interior – waiting for Katie to clean that…)

3) Homemade pizza is way better than anything I’ve bought. Seriously. In the end, totally easy and way worth it.

NEXT STEP: Figuring out how to make pizza less than a half-inch thick. I honestly rolled out one tonight that was maybe 2 milimeters thick, still was almost 1/2″ by the time I pulled it out…oh well, good to have goals!

While Ethan was away, I also got to experience some fun aspects of the house that I don’t normally get to, such as scaling the electronic gate, in heels, at 11PM when it decides not to open…or killing a cockroach the size of Texas in our bathroom. 

Now that he is back, the washing machine isn’t as scary and I don’t have force myself to stay awake until my eyelids are so fatigued that they won’t stay open anymore.  I’ve also decided that dealing with gate and cockroaches are activities I will leave to him…he is just so much better at them then I am.

We managed to pack a lot into the trip including snorkeling in Key Largo, an Alligator Farm in the Everglades (where they did an alligator feeding), lunch and cigar shopping in Little Havanna and cocktails in Coconut Grove.    Of course we hit our fair share of Ocean Drive, the beaches, the pool and Lincoln Rd. 

Below are some pics, all from Little Havana.  The first group of pics are from Gomez Park, which is a member’s only dominos/cards area (the rules include “Don’t come drunk” and “Don’t bring guns”). We also went to a cigar store, which is where Schwarzenegger gets his cigars.  Also did a little shopping in a grocery, which was interesting – most of the produce was like nothing we had seen before (we bought something that looked like a mango that the guy swore was an avocado, turns out he was right), and there was a DEFINITE language barrier.  Despite that, the guy kept giving us these little “apple bananas” (which you can see Ellie eating in the picture)!

Domino Park

Domino Park

Cigar Shop - Back Inventory

Smelling Tobacco Leaves

Learning how to Wrap a Cigar

Market

Apple Banana

I’ve got LOTS of new updates, most of which I’ll plan on trickling out over the course of the week (have to keep you coming back for more!).

That said, it seems like the most pressing thing to share is the paint job (hopefully you can tell that the top pics are the updated ones!):

MUCH improved paint job in the front

Back of the house after painting

Shining Bright Through the Night

Our painters are obviously color blind, right?  That’s what we decided too.  Someone’s about to get fired for having to redo our garage at no charge.  After we peeled our eyes away from the giant Cheeto, we ran to the store to get the RIGHT paint samples mixed to test on the house, so we could prove to the painters that they should consider switching careers.  At the end of the day, our house looked like an artist’s palette, but we felt confident that the color on our garage, of the orange family, did not even come close to matching the one we wanted, of the brown family.

Next day, Ethan calls the painters to read them the riot act and after some back and forth we learn that the the color on our garage is…just a primer.  Sigh of relief (and cue tail between the legs).  But really…a) who uses a bright orange primer and b) doesn’t tell the homeowners?

Pics from the Move!

And one pic of me working hard (I’m sure Katie is somewhere slaving away here as I eat pita chips and hummus and gab on the couch):

Working hard - wondering what I'm listening to or watching (or eating?) that's making me make that expression...