HAPPY BIRTHDAY Erin and Sarah!!!

Hope you both have great days!

And hope you all were watching USA hockey- so close!!!!! (And having great days too!)

Hanging out in/on the 'Hood

This past weekend, while Bryan was between jobs, we headed to Hood River, OR; we dropped Bruno off to spend time with his crazy Aunt Blitzen, Mom and Dad for the weekend and fought Olympia traffic on our way down south. The day before we left, I had checked the internet for hotel rooms and found that there were very few left in Hood River; however, on the morning we were going to go (didn't know where at this point), Bryan called the Best Western Hood River Inn and asked if they had any rooms. The manager said that he had just had a cancellation and could get us a room (for less than the internet was advertising)! We were sold, so once I got off work, we were on our way!

We showed up at the hotel, checked in and found out that Bryan had scored big with the manager: the room we got was not a normal hotel room, but a king suite, in a brand new building, right on the columbia river, and on top of it all, it was $100 off the normal rate. Sweet! The room had two flat screen TVs, a dual sided fireplace (one in the "living room", one in the bedroom), a fully furnished living room and a full kitchen. Amazing! That night, we met a friend from Whitman who lives in Hood River (Calder) at a great restaurant.

We spent the next day skiing the whole day- it was amazing! We had midday beers for lunch (and hot dogs, too.... very healthy), which I think ended up knocking us out later that day. After skiing, we were so pooped, but still managed to make it to the Full Sail Brewery and the restaurant from the night before. And then... we fell asleep by 9:00. No joke....

We woke up, checked out the next morning and headed back to the slopes. What beautiful weather and fun times! We had an absolute blast and really want to go back. The skiing was a little more like spring skiing than mid-February skiing (icy at first, but sun melted top layer for some decent runs by the end of the day). And, unfortunately, we both caught the skiing bug and spent the four hour drive back talking about how we can get out on the slopes more... uh oh!

Anyway, it was a fabulous trip. Thanks to Mom and Dad for "renting" us skiis and boarding our puppy!

Hope all is well with everyone and we hope to talk to you soon!

Love, Lauren and Bryan

Click HERE to see more pictures!

Click HERE to watch Lauren ski!

Click HERE to watch Bryan ski!

Click HERE to watch what the drive looked like back from Hood River to Portland!

Bryan's Last Day!

Just to update, today is Bryan's last day at Mama Stortini's! Congrats Bry!!!

He gets the next 4 days off (woah, I know!) so, we're going to take a mini-vacation while we can (Hood River? Walla Walla? Other suggestions?), and hope to fully relax!

Nothing much else is new here for us.... sorry! Bryan worked Valentine's Day, so I got to go hang out with my Valentines (Mom and Dad)- we went to a dive-ish bar for burgers and beers and let's just say, it seems like dive bars are not the restaurants that get most of the Valentine's day business! A great dinner nonetheless :-)

Also, some friends from Charlotte were in town! Joey and Amber were visiting some friends and we got to see them too.... We met up Valentine's night for sushi in Belltown and were a rowdy table of seven in the midst of many, many two tops- it was a blast!

Bryan, Amber, Joey and I at Umi

After that, Bryan and I headed to a local bar, the Beveridge Place Pub (three blocks from our house!), for some beers and shuffleboard- I won two out of three games! Someday, when we have a little more room, we definitely will need to get a table of our own.....

In other news, Bryan's nine year old dresser from the TKE house days has seen it's last pair of boxer shorts. Mom and dad brought up my armoir from their house and now we have two pretty nice options for clothes storage in our room! Thank goodness.... not that it was that disgusting, but for those of you who have experienced the Whitman TKE house, you will understand!

Anyway, I hope you all are doing really well and enjoying the spring (west coast), summer (AZ) or winter (east coast/south) weather! Talk to you soon!

Life in the Hamilton/Delhomme House

Hi all! We may have to change the name of our blog because we have a houseguest. As we were driving home after a Super Bowl party at Travis and Maya's house, we stopped by our neighborhood Safeway. There it was. A (sort of) life-sized poster of Bryan's idol and his wife, Jake and Keri Delhomme. I'm not joking. In Seattle. So, I found the grocery store manager and guess who came home with the poster! Oh yeah.

So, now we have a house guest. He likes to watch TV with Bryan:

He likes to take showers:

He even likes to help Lauren with the laundry:

Seeing that we had a guest, Bryan went all out and made a wonderful miso salmon with wasabi glaze and a side of honey and ginger lacquered carrots. Yum!

Hope you all had a great Super Bowl weekend!!

Love, The Hamiltons and the Delhommes

What would Bryan do?

Hi all- TGIF!

So, you'll be impressed with me. I think a little of Bryan is rubbing off on me (or maybe a lot because I can quote from memory the past ten superbowl champions- really, we tested ourselves the other night.... fun times in the Hamilton house!). I was at the grocery store today picking up my gallon of milk and I saw some green beans. Now, they're not really in season (or maybe they are and I just don't know), but they looked so good and made me yearn for summer. So I bought some.

I came home and then realized that I didn't know really what I wanted for dinner and I was getting hungry and I had a ton of green beans just sitting there. I thought to myself:

What would Bryan do?

To answer that, I went to epicurious.com and searched "green beans pasta". I found a recipe that used some other leftovers we had in our fridge- feta, tomatoes (we only had cherry tomatoes but they worked too), and a half an onion. AND, it helped to deplete our pasta supply because for some reason, every time we go to the store and see pasta on sale we buy some. And pasta is on sale a lot.

Oh boy, I am so proud of myself :-) And, it was a great dinner! Kind of on the "summery" side, but in WA we need a little summer in the winter sometimes! (PS- those of you out east don't freeze this weekend!)

So, if you want to join in enjoying this salad with me, you can find the recipe by clicking HERE. Look in the reviews if you don't have white wine vinegar- a lot of people wrote about how they subbed basalmic vinegar instead! Oh yeah, and I didn't use the kettle- just a pot that called the kettle black. Ha.

Enjoy and have a great weekend-

Sometimes what you need in life is a good chardonnay and bacon frying on the stove.

Yesterday Lauren and I went to the minor league hockey game here in town. Seattle T-birds vs Kelowna (BC) Rockets. As with all minor league games, it was highlighted by two terrific fights. The local boys lost the game 2 - 1 in OT, but I think its fair to say they were 2 - 0 in the fights, with one ending with a bit of blood on the ice.... All in all, a great time; we went with Billy and Alaina to celebrate Billy's b-day (which was actually in October, but this was the first time they had a game we could all attend - thank you Bryan's schedule).

Before the game we yesterday we did all of our chores, so today we were able to just relax once Lauren got off of work. I planned a meal, and when Lauren got off work we headed for the junction. Thank goodness for the Seattle Fish Company: We picked up a few jumbo prawns and sea scallops 5 minutes from our house - you know you are lucky when you live in an area where you can get fresh seafood like that, never frozen so close to home.

Thanks for the African apron Kristen!

Anyway, we ended up with a great three course meal, Butternut squash soup (a puree of sauteed apples, squash, onions, and spices), Prawns with lime, vermouth, garlic, and shrimp stock butter, and a main course of seared sea scallops with brussel sprouts and bacon. I'll be the first to admit, that doesn't sound that great, but it was. Cook bacon until crispy in a pan, reserve the fat. Halve sprouts, caramelize in pan, then deglaze with a bit of chicken stock, chop bacon, and toss back into the sprout mix. Meanwhile, pour the bacon fat, and some XVO into another saute pan, and sear the scallops. Remove, hit the pan with lemon juice and stock, and reduce until you have a sauce to pour over the whole concoction. It was definitely a winner. (and trust me, they are not always winners...)

Pair with mom's favorite la crema chardonnay and you have yourself a wonderful 3 course meal on a Monday night.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and we'll talk to you soon!

love lauren and bryan