Flip and Ching’s Annual Holiday Gathering
Posted on January 10, 2013 by Ching under Events, Family, Food and Drink.
Our annual gathering usually happens before Christmas, but we had to put it off until after the New Year because all of our friends were out of town for the holidays. The first ever annual gathering we had was at Cracker Barrel. The second one was at Pacific Coast Pizza. This is supposed to be our third one, but instead of taking place in 2012 it happened in 2013. And, instead of taking everyone out to eat, we decided to just serve breakfast at our house.
We served hash browns…
…cinnamon rolls…
…Nutella-filled crescents…
…a breakfast casserole dish using a recipe that Brian found on Pinterest…
…and mimosas.
I was actually amazed that mom got dad to come. He never leaves the house. I think it was the draw of the mimosas, though. LOL.
Brian and I really enjoyed making food for everyone. We had a lot of fun even though we had to get up at the crack of dawn to start baking because we only have one oven. One of these days I can get a fancy dual-oven range thing. Until then, we’ll just have to bake everything in batches.
Thanks to everyone who came out. Until our next annual gathering!
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Spreading the Word About the Flying Stove
Posted on January 9, 2013 by Ching under Food and Drink.
We met a few friends at the Natural Grocers on Rock Road where the Flying Stove was parked for lunch on Saturday. Jarrica, Mark, Cory, April, and Misty all tried it for the first time. I’m glad we could all get together and meet up for lunch, and enjoy great food on such a lovely day. We even ran into Gina Ann’s brother BJ.
I think everyone had the same idea because they sold out of the steak plate which is what I really wanted. It worked out okay because it gave me an opportunity to try their Thai red curry.
It was good, but I was disappointed that it had no meat. Apparently, it’s a vegetarian dish. Thus, the VEG written next to it. I can be a little dense sometimes. LOL. Anyway, I think it would be really good with some chicken in it.
The truffle fries are a must-have. We always ask for a large order to share.
Brian tried the LA street tacos for the first time. He said they were really good.
Cory and April had the gourmASIAN burger. It looked really good as well.
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Cards for the Cure
Posted on January 7, 2013 by Ching under Poker.
Brian and I decided to participate in Cards for the Cure this year since our friend Jay (The Travel Junkie) is putting a couple of teams together. Brian normally hates it when I donate to random charities, but this is one that he doesn’t mind because he gets to play poker out of it. And, hopefully win some prizes at the same time.
The downside is that we haven’t played poker regularly in a few years so we are quite rusty. I invited everyone to play poker at Nilla’s (they’re located next to Club Rodeo) last Friday to knock off some cobwebs. It’s the only free Friday I had left since my Zumba classes are about to start again. I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t have to teach on Thursday or Friday nights this session, though. I really miss our salsa nights.
But I digress… Darcy, Cory, and April joined us. We all met up for dinner at Taste & See first. Cory and April had never been there before. It was the perfect night to go too, because Chef Jason will be gone for a week. He is leaving for LA today to film his episode of Bar Rescue. We took the opportunity to congratulate Chef Jason and wish him a safe trip.
Sorry, kids. No pictures of food this time because Darcy and I arrived later than everyone and Brian vetoed the picture-taking because, “We already have dozens of pictures of Taste & See food.” I didn’t argue because I was starving after working out with Darcy (my first genuine workout post-surgery) and he’s right. We didn’t order anything that night that we hadn’t already tried before.
After dinner the five of us went to try and conquer the poker tournament at Nilla’s, but only two were successful. Darcy was knocked out first, right before the break. I wasn’t getting any cards at all, but the add-on during the first break helped me last a while longer. Brian was the second one out. I followed shortly after that when my pocket jacks ran into pocket kings and the kings held up. Ironically, I had tripled up on pocket jacks vs. pocket kings vs. AQ earlier that night. I had the pocket kings that time, so I had the best hand going it at least. I just had to dodge an ace, which I did. So that helped a little, but it was about the only hand I had all night.
There were still three tables going when I got knocked out. Since Darcy, Brian, and I were all out of the tournament, we told Cory and April that we would just wait for them at our place where the drinks are free. LOL. Since we moved to this part of town, we live conveniently close to Nilla’s now.
Cory and April both did very well on Friday night. They both made the final table and, when they got down to five players, they chopped the pot five ways. They both made money. Great job, guys!
I doubt I’ll have time to play any more poker between now and the big tournament. I’ll just have to trust my instincts. I made a couple of mistakes the other night, which I recognized, but I thought I played well overall. I’m sure I’ll do well, rusty or not. And, if I don’t, it’s all good. My entry fee is going to a worthy cause that I would have donated money to anyway. See you all at the Hyatt in about three weeks!
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A Year in Photos
Posted on January 6, 2013 by Ching under Life.
I’d been seeing lots of memory jar pins on Pinterest over that last couple of weeks and I thought it would be fun to do for 2013 so I suggested it to Brian the other day. I explained how it worked — you write down things you want to remember (funny moments, serious moments, something you learned, a first, basically anything you want to remember and cherish) on pieces of paper and shove them in the jar throughout the year, then at the end of the year (presumably while celebrating New Year’s Eve) you read the notes together to look back on all the wonderful moments of the year. He was like, “Why would we do that when we have your blog? You document everything.”
I thought about it for a moment and realized he’s right. The memory jar idea works for normal people, but not people like us. We have a very well-documented life. To look back on the year, I need only to go through the blog’s archives. Although, it’s not nearly as much fun looking through the blog archives on the Mac as drawing random pieces of paper from a jar and reading it one at a time. The memory jar idea definitely creates a more fun, interactive experience for all those involved. Specially if you’re old school. Maybe we could make one for his grandma or our parents or something.
| 2012 PHOTOS |
| January (235) February (383) March (474) April (263) May (560) June (235) July (176) August (277) September (299) October (223) November (131) December (248) |
Speaking of a well-documented life, check out our year in photos on the right. You can also see links to previous years in the archives. While there’s something to be said about pulling pieces of paper out of a jar, there’s nothing like looking at pictures of all of these moments.
Thank heavens for Flickr so I can keep all of these photos in one secure place. Then I don’t have to scour Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else.
BTW, the numbers in parentheses are the number of photos in each month. While this seems like a lot, it’s actually 2,201 photos less than last year and probably almost 5,000 less than the year before that. I think I’m mellowing out in my old age. LOL.
I used to take a thousand photos between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. This year I only took 248 photos the entire month of December. I think this is because I quit carrying a regular digital camera around and have been relying mostly on my phone. These days I usually upload the picture immediately after taking the photo, as opposed to the old way of taking a whole bunch of photos on your digital camera and then uploading them as a batch later. I like the new process in terms of immediate gratification (that, and I don’t have to take time out of my week to upload photos) but it makes me far less prolific. I doubt anyone minds. I’m sure that others think that I can mellow out some more on the photo-taking.
Incidentally, I noticed that I took exactly the same number of photos in March 2012 as I did the same month the year before. Talk about consistency!
Anyway, I will leave you all with one of my most favorite photos of 2012. Keep making those memories. Until next time…
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Happy New Year
Posted on January 1, 2013 by Ching under Life.
Once again, it’s time to recap the year that was… Before we review 2012, here’s a look at my year-end recaps of years past.
Now that you’re caught up, let’s look back at some of last year’s memorable moments.
We started the year with Liz and Robby’s wedding. Last year was actually a banner year for weddings. We saw several friends tie the knot, including Cousin Tracy. We first celebrated with Tracy and Jeff on their wedding shower and then continued the celebration in Jamaica. They had a beautiful wedding at Coral Cove Resort in Little Bay. Then there was Mark and Jarrica’s wedding a couple of months later. Fortunately, their wedding was held in town so we didn’t have to hop on a plane or drive to another city. There’s also Daniel and Angi and then, more recently, Pia and JP. Congratulations to all of our friends who got married last year.
The trip to Jamaica was great by the way. It was a short trip for us because Brian and I didn’t want to take too much time off work, but we wanted to be there for Cousin Tracy and Jeff’s big day. We packed a lot of adventures on our few days there, including a boat trip to Negril, a visit to Rick’s Cafe, some kayaking in the cove, and plenty of sunbathing.
A few weeks after returning from our Jamaica trip, I completed the Zumba Basic 1 training. I officially received my Zumba instructor license and joined the Zumba Instructor Network (ZIN) on April 20. We followed that up with a trip to Overland Park for the Gina & Tanya Rock the Stage Tour. We also had a fun t-shirt destruction party earlier that same month, where the girls made creative shirts to wear to the event. Incidentally, this was the same day as Stephanie’s birthday party at Ciao! A huge tornado came through Wichita that night. We all barely got out of the restaurant before it hit the area. Lucky for us, we lived right by Waterfront and we were home in a couple of minutes so we had enough time to evacuate to the tornado shelter under the clubhouse of our apartment complex. Pretty scary stuff.
For Brian’s 38th birthday, I took him to Nashville. He lived in Memphis for three years, but never got to go there. He was jealous when I went there for a conference the year before and kept saying how much he wanted to go so I decided that’s how we would celebrate his birthday. We stayed at Gaylord Opryland, which is actually like its own city. Brian got to see Nashville for the first time and also watch his first Grand Ole Opry concert. The best part about his birthday gift is that I got to enjoy it too.
I celebrated my tenth service anniversary with work at YaYa’s. It was pretty uneventful compared to the time Brian and I were there celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary. Speaking of restaurants and eating out, we got to eat out a lot in 2012 because I started writing restaurant reviews for the Wichita Eagle as part of Denise Neil’s Dining Panel. I’m so grateful to Denise for including me.
My cousin Reuel and his wife Sonny Jay visited Kansas in July. Reuel lives in Norway so I hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years. We were supposed to attend his wedding in the Philippines, but the airfare was quite high around that time and our budget just wouldn’t allow it. I’m glad they were able to visit us.
We spent our tenth wedding anniversary at Stewart Title closing on our house. We decided that our house is to be our anniversary present to one another… for the next ten years. LOL. We didn’t move in for a month because we wanted the entire interior repainted. We officially moved in around Labor Day weekend, which meant no trip to Texas this year. Ever since Sheryll and her family moved to Dallas, we’d been making the trip South every September. This would have been the third year of that annual tradition had we been able to do it. We were busy with moving and getting our new house in order, though. Perhaps we can resume the tradition next year. Although, now that we have extra space, we can host the Orbases when they visit us which hopefully will be here in a few weeks.
Since we didn’t go to Texas, we treated ourselves to an overnight stay in Kansas City for the Journey concert. That was my first ever concert in the rain. The concert was held at an outdoor arena and we had floor seats. I didn’t plan on it raining when I purchased the tickets. We still had fun, though.
Some of the other fun events we were fortunate enough to attend this year include Zoobilee, Oktoberfest (Newman University’s fundraising event), the sixth annual Brew Ha-Ha at Flint Hills National, and Becca’s 40th birthday celebration. I did some volunteer work at the Kansas State Fair and the Lord’s Diner. I really wanted to be able to do more, but was really busy this year since I started teaching Zumba.
Brian really enjoyed handing out candy on Halloween night, our first at the new house. We also attended a few Halloween parties.
We made our annual trek to Legends Outlets in Kansas City on the evening of Thanksgiving for Moonlight Magic. Brian and I have been doing the Black Friday thing for a few years now and I think we’ve finally gotten it out of our system. This should be our last year. There will be no crazy midnight shopping trips in store for us this year. Brian will be most happy about this news.
In December we hosted our first fight night here at the new house. Then I had my thyroidectomy. Brian was a mess, naturally. Other than an unnecessary trip the ER the Sunday following my surgery, recovery has been going well. I’m actually thinking about going back to doing some light running this week. I’ve been a slug all month and, now that my appetite is back, I’m starting to pack on the pounds.
Anyway, I think that pretty much sums up 2012. It has been an eventful year and I feel truly blessed. Each year that passes continues to be even better than the last and I have a feeling that 2013 will be the best year yet. I’ll see you guys again around this time next year as we recap the year’s highlights.
Until then… Have a fantastic year everyone!
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