good eats.

ricks and i have been acting very southern these past couple of weeks. and by that i mean our eating habits have been very southern. we have grilled 4 times in the past two weeks and 3 of those times we actually smoked our meat low and slow. tonight we are smoking some pork ribs over mesquite wood chips. on my end of things, ive made us a strawberry-rhubarb pie, some skillet corn bread, and tonight im making home-made coleslaw. yum.

reading.

one of my new years resolutions was to read more frequently. i made a list of books that i had been wanting to read and started at the top. here is a summary of my progress thus far:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Cold Mountain
The Road
The Fight Club
Girl in Translation
The Bell Jar
Atonement
My Name is Asher Lev
The Life of Pi
Mere Christianity
Team of Rivals
1984
It Sucked and then I Cried
Never Let Me Go
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me and Other Concerns
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Eve and the Choice Made in Eden
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Millennium Trilogy
-The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
-The Girl Who Played with Fire
-The Girl Who kicked the Hornet’s nest
The Lovely Bones
The Sisters Brothers
My Sister’s Keeper
Unorthodox
Santaland Diaries
Ceremony
The Happiness Project
Gilead
after ending college, actually, more specifically, after leaving BYU, i realized that i never read anymore. at BYU, i was reading all of the time for classes and then, once that stopped, my reading stopped. so it took me a while to get back into it but, around october or november of last year, i started reading again! for fun! i started with the color purple and then read really quickly through the poisonwood bible, the help, bossypants, and the history of love. i felt like my old self again. i was the kid who stayed up late at nights, not because i was sneaking out to be with friends, but because i was up reading. if you have any good book recommendations, feel free to share! im blowing through them!

almost summer.

things are quiet around here. ricks is splitting his time between studying for finals and fighting allergies. class ends this week for him. and finals will go until may 16th. we are taking suggestions for what we should do during the time between his last final and when his internship starts (our summer break : ). we know that we will be spending one of the two weekends in utah for the triplets blessings. and, as for the other weekend, its a toss up between finding a warm beach so i can soak up the sun and read and so that ricks can surf with his kayak or finding a campsite in the redwoods. maybe well do both! in other news: i broke my toe. after stubbing it on a door. quite a stupid injury. also, the weather has gone from warm and pleasant to hot hot hot and its only going to get hotter... im already melting. its going to be quite the summer! and that about sums it up. like i said, its quiet around here.